The Last Cato (36 page)

“That can’t be!” I argued, not because I doubted his allegations, but because I knew that would keep him talking.

“You don’t think so?” he was furious. We started walking again because Father Clark, Farag, and the Rock were way ahead. “Do you need me to prove it to you? Remember the Marcinkus case?”

I did know something about the case, but not much. Customarily, anything that was against the church stayed out of my life and the life of all priests and nuns. It’s not that we couldn’t know, it’s that we simply didn’t want to. A priori, we didn’t like to hear those types of accusations, and we more or less ignored any sort of anticlerical scandal.

“In 1987, Italian judges ordered the arrest of Archbishop Paul Casimiro Marcinkus, then director of the IWR, the Institute for Works of Religion, also known as the Vatican Bank. After seven months of investigations, he was accused of fraudulently leading the Ambrosian Bank of Milan to bankruptcy. It was proven that the Ambrosian Bank was controlled by a group of foreign corporations, with headquarters in the fiscal paradises of Panama and Liechtenstein, and that in fact it served as a cover for the IWR and Marcinkus himself. The Ambrosian Bank was ‘missing’ $1.2 billion, of which, after a lot of pressure, the Vatican gave back just $250 million to its creditors. In effect, the Vatican ‘swallowed’ more than $900 million. Do you know who was in charge of keeping Marcinkus from falling into the hands of the law and for covering up this murky subject?”

“Captain Glauser-Röist?”

“Your friend managed to get Marcinkus transferred to the Vatican, using a diplomatic passport that stopped the Italian police from arresting him. The danger past, he created a smokescreen to confuse the public, somehow getting some journalists to call Marcinkus a naïve, negligent, and very absent-minded manager. Then he made Marcinkus disappear and established a new life for him in a small North American parish in the state of Arizona. He’s still there today.”

“I don’t see anything criminal in that, Pierantonio.”

“No—see, that’s the point—he never does anything outside the law, he simply ignores it! A cardinal is stopped at the Swiss border with a suitcase full of millions, which he wants to pass off as a mere briefcase. Glauser-Röist goes there to remedy the offense. He goes and gets the cardinal, brings him back to the Vatican, gets the border guards to ‘forget’ the incident, and erases all traces of the matter as if the mysterious currency evasion never existed.”

“I still say I see no reason to fear Glauser-Röist.”

But Pierantonio was just getting started. “An Italian publishing house publishes a scandalous book on corruption in the Vatican. Glauser-Röist quickly identifies the monsignors who betrayed the Vatican’s law of silence, gags them with who knows what threats, and gets the press to completely bury the matter after the initial scandal. Who do you think writes up the reports that have salacious details on the private lives of the members of the Curia, leaving these men no choice but to silently agree to egregious reversals of fortunes? Who do you think was the first to enter the apartment of the commander of the Swiss Guard, Alois Estermann, the night he, his wife, and Corporal Cedric Tornay were killed, supposedly by shots fired by the corporal? Kaspar Glauser-Röist. He was the one who removed proof of what really happened and who invented the official version of the corporal’s ‘temporary insanity,’ so that both the church and the press accused the corporal of drug use and ‘hate-filled instability.’ He’s the only one who knows what really happened that night. A prelate from the Vatican organized a risqué nocturnal outing, and a journalist plans to publish scandalous photographs in the press… Not to worry. The article never sees the light of day and the journalist is silenced for the rest of his life after a visit from Glauser-Röist. Can you guess why? I bet you can guess. At this moment, there is an important prelate, the archbishop of Naples, who is being investigated by the judicial prosecutor of the basilica for usury, criminal association, and unlawful appropriation of wealth. You can bet he’ll be absolved. From what they tell me, your friend has already intervened in the matter.”

A very sinister thought popped into my mind, a thought I didn’t like one bit and that caused me distress.

“So what do you have to hide, Pierantonio? You wouldn’t talk that way about the captain if you hadn’t had some problem with him yourself.”

“Me?” he acted surprised. Suddenly all his fury disappeared and he was as innocent as the Easter lamb. But he couldn’t fool me.

“Yes, you. Don’t feed me some line about how you know all this because the church is one big family and everybody talks about everything.”

“But it’s true! We insiders who occupy top jobs
do
know everything about everything.”

“That may be,” I murmured mechanically, looking at the back of Murphy Clark’s, the Rock’s, and Farag’s necks in the distance. “But you can’t fool me. You’ve had problems with Captain Glauser-Röist, and you’re going to tell me all about it right now.”

My brother laughed. Just then, a ray of sun cut through the clouds and lit up his face. “Why should I tell you anything, dear Ottavia? What would compel me to confess sins that can’t be revealed, especially to my little sister?”

I shot him a cold look, a fake smile on my lips. “Because if you don’t, I’m going right over to Glauser-Röist and I’ll tell him everything you said and have
him
explain it to me.”

“He would never say a thing,” he asserted. His Franciscan habit didn’t humble him. “A man like him would never talk about that type of thing.”

“Oh no?” If he could play chicken, so could I. “Captain! Hey, Captain!”

The Rock and Farag turned around. Father Murphy turned his immense belly toward me a few seconds after they did.

“Captain! Could you come here a minute?”

Pierantonio turned livid. “I’ll tell you,” he muttered, seeing Glauser-Röist backtracking. “I’ll tell you, but tell him not to come over!”

“Sorry, Captain! My mistake… Please go on!” I waved him back with the others.

The Rock stopped, looked at me straight in the eye, then pivoted and continued on. A strange group of six or seven women dressed in black pushed past us. They were dressed in long robes that covered them from their necks to their feet. Each wore a curious headdress, a tiny round hat, pulled down over her forehead, held in place by a scarf tied around her head. I deduced they must be Orthodox nuns, although I couldn’t figure out what church they belonged to. Oddly enough, another group of women passed by, right behind them, wearing the same robes, but without the hats, carrying long yellow tapers in their hands.

“Little Ottavia, you’re becoming very stubborn.”

“Speak.”

Pierantonio was silent and meditative for a several minutes. Finally he sighed deeply and started in. “Do you remember the time I told you about my problems with the Holy See?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I mentioned schools, hospitals, nursing homes, archaeological excavations, a way station for pilgrims, biblical studies, the reestablishment of Catholic worship in the Holy Land…”

“Yes, yes, you said the pope ordered you to buy the Holy Cenacle without giving you the money to do it.”

“Exactly. That’s the problem.”

“What have you done, Pierantonio?” I asked, pained. Right then, the Via Dolorosa was actually turning out to be truly painful.

“Well…,” he waffled. “I had to sell some things.”

“What things?”

“Things we found in our excavations.”

“Oh my God, Pierantonio!”

“I know, I know,” he admitted, contrite. “If it’s any consolation to you, they were sold to the Vatican itself, through a front man.”

“What are you saying?”

“Among the princes of the church, there are great art collectors. Before Glauser-Röist meddled, a lawyer working for me in Rome sold something to a prelate you know personally. He used to work in the Classified Archives. He paid nearly $3 million for an eighth-century mosaic discovered in the excavations of Banu Ghassan. I think it’s hanging in his living room.”

“Oh my God!” I moaned. I was floored.

“Do you know how many good things we did with all that money, little Ottavia?” My brother felt no remorse. “We founded more hospitals, fed more people, created more nursing homes and more schools for little kids. What’s so wrong about that?”

“You illegally trafficked in holy relics, Pierantonio!”

“But I sold them to the church! Nothing ended up in hands that weren’t blessed by the priesthood. I poured all the money into the urgent needs of the Holy Land’s poor. Some of the princes of the church have incredible amounts of money, while here we need as much help as we can get…” He took shallow breaths. I saw the hate fill his eyes again. “One day, your friend Glauser-Röist showed up at my office. He’d done some research on my activities. He forbade me to continue the sales and threatened to leak the scandal, tarnishing my name and my order. ‘I can make you front page news tomorrow in the most important newspapers in the world,’ he told me without wavering. I told him about the hospitals, the shelters, the soup kitchens, the schools. But he didn’t care. Now we are drowning in debt, and I have no idea how I’m going to fix the problem.”

What was it that Farag had said in the catacombs of Saint Lucia? “The truth hurts, but it’s always better than a lie.” Now I asked myself if my brother’s goodness, even if it did harm, wasn’t preferable to injustice. Or maybe I felt doubt because this concerned my brother and I was desperately searching for a way to justify his actions. Maybe life wasn’t black and white, but a multicolor mosaic with infinite combinations. Wasn’t life full of ambiguities, interchangeable hues we tried to constrain in a ridiculous structure of norms and dogmas?

As I pondered this, our group abruptly turned a corner and entered the plaza of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. I began to choke up. Before me was the place where Jesus was crucified. I felt my eyes welling up with tears, my emotions overwhelming me.

The basilica Saint Helen had built exactly where she had found the True Cross of Christ was impressive—sharp angles, solid, millennia-old stone, large windows covered with grillwork, square redbrick towers. The plaza was crowded with people of all races and stations in life. Groups of tourists roamed around us wearing thin wooden crosses and singing hymns in several languages. All the songs mixed together in that echo chamber, sounding like one big, discordant buzz. In the portico were the Orthodox nuns we’d crossed paths with, their backs to the Catholic nuns who were dressed in light-colored habits with knee-length skirts. Many women wore beautiful rosaries around their necks and prayed, their knees on the hard, rocky ground. There were also many Catholic priests and other religious people from a diverse array of orders. Long beards abounded, typical of the Orthodox monks who wore all manner of black tubular hats: some were plain, some were trimmed with a little lace; some were chimney-shaped; some even had a large headdress that hung down their backs to their waists. Above this human chaos, a multitude of white doves floated from one cornice to another, one window to another, searching for the best view.

The facade of the basilica was quite unusual. Its matching doors were located under two counterpoint arch windows that also matched, although oddly enough, the door on the right seemed to be sealed up with large stones. And the interior… The interior was dazzling. You entered through the side of the nave, so you couldn’t get a complete view until you’d walked inside pretty far. Hundreds of Oriental oil lamps lit up the walkway. It was such an exciting moment, I can hardly recall everything I saw. Father Murphy explained in detail the particulars of each plaque we passed. In the atrium at the entrance, surrounded by candelabras and lamps was the Stone of Unction, a large rectangular slab of red limestone where it’s said they placed the body of Jesus after lowering him from the Cross. In a frenzy, people threw holy water on the stone, and dozens of hands holding handkerchiefs and rosaries shot forward. There was no way to get near it. In the center of the basilica was the catholicon, the place where the Holy Sepulchre was said to be. Its facade was covered with lovely hanging lamps inside silver globes, and above the door there were three paintings that told of Jesus’s Resurrection, each one in a different style—Latin, Greek, and Armenian. Past the door of the catholicon, you came to a small vestibule called the Chapel of the Angel, because it was said to be where the angel announced the Resurrection to the holy women. Behind another small door, you came to the Holy Sepulchre itself, in a small, narrow enclosure in which you could make out a marble bench that covered the original stone on which the body of Jesus was placed. I knelt down for a second—the influx of people didn’t allow much more—and left with less unction than when I came in. The atmosphere may have been hypnotic and disposed to a certain type of religious Stockholm syndrome, but the throng’s anguish cooled my ardor.

Down the stairs, we came to the place where Saint Helen found the three crosses, according to Jacopo della Voragine in his
Golden Legend.
The chamber was a wide, empty stone room, and in one corner an iron railing protected the exact spot where the relics appeared. Father Murphy tugged on his beard and started to tell us the story, but soon we discovered we knew much more than one of the most highly regarded experts in the world. When the affable archaeologist realized he was in the company of experts, he humbly listened to our comments.