Papal decree

16

History never lies. Books that record it can relate what they understand: truths, lies, half-truths equivalent to whole lies, speculation, eulogies, heroic acts that never happened. Glorious acts last because someone was paid to extol them. There’s no better example than Rome, the Eternal City, the glory of God on earth, where He chose to dwell, without doubt.

Rome is a whore of a city with a palazzo on every corner.

They entered one of these palazzi, which in this case belonged to the wealthy family of the Medicis. Two famous cousins lived there before they moved to other, more sumptuous palaces, Giovanni and Giuliano, who became Leo X and Clement VII, respectively, the most powerful men in the world — by their own estimation, at least. The celebrated Catherine, the niece of Clement, who married Henry II of France, also resided there. Curiously, none of them gave his or her name or the family’s name to the palazzo, which, in an era when influential cardinals or Supreme Pontiffs engraved their names on every place they ordered built or reconstructed for posterity, did not escape notice. So Madama Margherita of Austria baptized a palace that to this day is called the Madam palace in her honor. The Medicis are long gone — Margaret, too — but the Palazzo Madama today houses the Senate of the Italian Republic.

The Mercedes entered through a side gate and circled the enormous edifice to the back. There it parked. The black priest who had come to Sarah’s room was the first to get out of the front passenger seat, open the back door for his superior, the cardinal, and would have opened Sarah’s door if she had not already done so.

They’d filled the brief ride with polite small talk, Are you enjoying your stay? The weather is beautiful for this time of year. The famous, warm Roman autumn. Unimportant observations that only served to fill an awkward silence. The cardinal, trained to be a good conversationalist, didn’t allow a single moment of unease to fill the backseat. Strangely, or not, Sarah was very much at ease. The situation required her to be alert and distrustful, since she was in a car with a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, completely at the mercy of his will, whatever that might be, given that his career with the church was not very well known, but she didn’t worry about that for one moment.

They invited her to enter the palace through a back hall, a large, ample area with a stairway rising to the higher floors. There was no doubt the Romans of the Renaissance knew how to build palaces. This proved it, if proof was necessary. They went up two flights.

‘I didn’t know this palazzo belonged to the Holy See,’ Sarah said to break the silence. She was panting, the result of not having worked out for a while.

‘It doesn’t,’ the cardinal replied in a friendly way. ‘Actually it’s the Italian Senate’s. We’ll see in a minute.’

‘Then why are we here?’

They reached the second floor, which opened into an immense atrium with enormous closed double-paneled wooden doors at the other end.

‘What better place for a private conversation?’ the cardinal disclosed.

The priest opened the doors.

‘Please.’ The cardinal motioned Sarah to go in before him.

Sarah accepted with a decisive step inside.

‘This used to be the library of the palazzo.’

The room had high walls, like everything else in the palace. Sarah tried to imagine it filled with bookcases from top to bottom. Now the walls were hung with paintings by artists who were unfamiliar to her, on various themes: religion, paganism, erotica, all chosen by someone who kept his reasons to himself. Two busts were placed against two facing walls. They were two men, Medicis, Popes Leo and Clement. The painting of a woman dominated the back wall. It wasn’t difficult to guess who she was… Madama Margherita of Austria.

There were in fact traces of modernity; a temporary exhibition spread across the room with paintings, parchments, and photographs.

Sarah gave herself time to get used to the atmosphere and then looked at the cardinal.

‘Why is it that the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wants to talk to me?’

‘You recognized me? I’m flattered,’ the prince of the church joked.

They walked side by side. The cardinal looked at the priest assisting him, who, with an obedient motion of his head, left the room without turning his back, and closed the doors.

Sarah looked at the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith inquisitively. She was still waiting for his reply.

‘Did your book signing go well?’ the prefect asked, changing the subject with a congenial smile.

‘You tell me, Your Eminence,’ Sarah said provocatively.

‘Call me William.’

If he’d been dressed like an ordinary man in a suit, shirt, perhaps matching tie, she might have complied with the request, but not in these circumstances. Not with a man in a black cassock with a scarlet slash dominating his chest, a gaudy gold cross hanging from his neck, and a cardinal’s cap.

‘I don’t think it’s standard practice for men so prominent in the church to seek out women in their hotels, drive off with them in their cars, and bring them to a palazzo. We’ll have to talk about that eventually, Cardinal William,’ she said, settling on a half title.

The cardinal looked at Sarah and smiled. Then he stepped forward to a display that showed a poster of Jesus Christ, a common image, recognized by everyone regardless of his or her faith. At the bottom was the title of the exposition in large letters. Sarah found them curious: THE FACES OF CHRIST.

And in subtitle: Artistic Representations of Christ Through the Centuries.

An engraving dating from the first century A.D. was next to the poster. An image of the Nazarene in a somewhat crude sketch that was faithful to the idea of Christ at that time.

Curious, Sarah thought to herself.

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ William asked.

‘Very,’ Sarah agreed, still looking at the artistic representations.

‘We have an image so associated with Him that we don’t realize that it came from the mind of an artist, and later from others, and so forth through the centuries,’ William explained. ‘Look at this one,’ he said, pointing to a painting in the third display that showed a powerful man with a sparse beard and his hand on the head of a kneeling man.

‘Is that Him?’ Sarah asked, curiously. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

‘But it is. An artist’s vision.’

Sarah had not expected an evening like this, wandering through a room in a palace side by side with one of the most influential cardinals in the college.

‘Why’d you bring me here?’ she asked, a variation on the question she’d asked before, like an artist creating something different from the same motif.

William pointed at the various images in the exposition. ‘For Him.’

Sarah looked puzzled at the different representations. Maybe William had not explained himself clearly. ‘For whom?’

‘For Yeshua ben Joseph.’ He proclaimed. ‘Jesus, the son of Joseph.’

She still didn’t understand. What was she there for? She waited for William to continue.

‘Sarah has a special talent. Rare in journalists, let’s say. Discretion.’ He praised her.

Sarah decided to stay silent. She didn’t know how to respond to the observation.

‘It’s not just journalism that lacks discretion. A lot of other professions could use it. Seriousness, too.’

‘Is the church discreet and serious?’ Sarah asked.

‘There are times when it’s not, I confess. Times we don’t like to remember, but today I’m proud to belong to an institution that excels in both qualities.’

Sarah didn’t doubt that William believed what he was saying, but she did doubt the complete honesty of his assertion.

‘According to the Holy Father, Sarah also excels in those qualities.’

Would the pope speak about her qualities? This remark left her perplexed, internally; externally she remained impassive. She’d learned not to show her feelings with Rafa… Oh, forget him.

‘The Holy Father?’ Sarah smiled. ‘Surely he has more to worry about than my qualities.’

‘Everything, Sarah. The Holy Father is a man who worries about all the sheep in his flock.’

‘Please, Cardinal William. I’m sorry, but I’m not a sheep in the pope’s flock.’

‘You have two books that prove it. That show you want to know the problems, that you want them to be solved, that you worry about them,’ the prefect argued.

‘Two books that, probably, the congregation over which you preside would censure if the Index Libro-rum Prohibitorum still existed,’ Sarah replied. She never thought she’d be speaking on equal terms with a cardinal.

‘The Holy Inquisition continues to exist, my dear. And it’s important that it does. But with respect to your reply, let me tell you that the Roman Catholic Church never for a moment opposed your books. There has not been one unfavorable review or angry sermon. Nothing.’

Sarah wasn’t convinced in the least. ‘Sometimes silence is the best remedy. The church is a master at letting time erase what it doesn’t want remembered.’

‘Let me remind you that you are alive because of this church you reproach and this pope you criticize.’

Sarah respected the remark. It was true. Twice. It suited the church to intervene in her favor, but, yes, it had done so.

‘Has the time come to collect?’ Sarah asked, frowning. Was that it?

William didn’t answer. He continued to walk along, looking at the faces of Christ. Some were very similar, others added something more: an athletic bearing, a physical detail, different hair, now blond, now brown, shorter, longer, thin, good-natured, smiling, suffering, contemplative, miraculous, enigmatic, angry, frightened. There were innumerable representations of the same person, each different and yet all the same, if that were possible.

‘The church needs you, Sarah,’ William concluded. ‘We’re in a war and under secret attack. It’s not a payback but an urgent request.’

Sarah was even more confused. What service could she provide for a church that made a cardinal look for her personally at her hotel?

‘In 1947 a Bedouin named Muhammed ehd-Dhib happened to find some parchments inside some jars while he was looking for a lost sheep,’ William began.

‘Qumran. The Dead Sea scrolls. I know the story,’ Sarah informed him.

‘Well, that story’s completely false.’

This was news indeed.

‘The person behind the expedition was an Israeli named Ben Isaac. Ever heard of him?’

Sarah searched her memory, but found nothing. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘He’s lived in the same city as you have for more decades than you’ve been alive,’ he said with a sad smile. It wasn’t a story he liked to tell. ‘He fabricated the story of the Bedouin to be able to investigate more thoroughly what his team had discovered. He was ingenious. In the ultimate analysis it was providential. The hunt for the scrolls began. Complete and partial parchments were sold on the black market for millions of dollars. Total fraud in the majority of the cases.’

William continued the detailed account. The church had its own agents in all the markets of the Near and Middle East looking for any documents relevant to the Holy See or the history of the West. Sarah imagined Rafael as one of these infiltrators, with turban and dagger, or saber, in a white tunic negotiating in the hot sands of Damascus, Amman, and Jerusalem. Of course he wasn’t old enough for this.

From time to time there was talk, whispers only to interested parties, about some fragment that appeared in some place in the possession of some person or another. Offers came in from all sides, always in a tent, never in the heat of the sun, and the church managed to acquire some of these fragments of history in exchange for large sums of money. They were translated and authenticated. The Dead Sea Scrolls do in fact exist. For some time they were not seen or heard of by anyone, but then two or three appeared at the same time. Ben Isaac released a few he deemed sufficiently provocative, but harmless.

‘And how was it they discovered his scheme?’

‘It was God.

‘They might never have been discovered. Ben Isaac was an intelligent man with an acute, discreet mind. But one of the archaeologists who was part of the Israeli’s team quarreled with his supervisor and resolved to abandon the project. Despite a pledge of secrecy, he sent an anonymous accusation to the secretary of state. It was the pontificate of the good Pope John that tried to verify the information. It was confirmed.’

William was silent for a few moments to let all this sink in for Sarah, who listened attentively.

‘But the story of the Bedouin prevails today,’ Sarah objected.

‘In the beginning we decided not to reveal the false story, until we saw what was going to happen. It turned out to be advantageous to both sides.’

‘For both sides?’

‘For the church and for Ben Isaac.’

‘He gave you what he discovered?’ Sarah was astonished.

‘Part of it. Fundamentally we had the same objectives.’

‘Which were?’

‘To preserve history,’ William offered.

Sarah didn’t exactly agree. She considered the church an institution that preserved only the history that served its own interests, not all of history.

‘So what was Ben Isaac’s plan?’

‘He wanted to keep the discoveries secret at all cost. Not just from the church, but from everyone.’

‘He didn’t want glory, like every other adventurer?’

‘No, he was born into wealth. He studied in London, fell in love, and married. He was a hard worker. Then he took on the mission of finding evidence of the Bible. Others before him had tried, without success. The place where the scrolls were discovered was a route of passage for the Jews. Jesus himself might have passed that way. He knew what had to be done and equipped himself with very expert historians and archaeologists. Money was not a problem, so everything came together in a positive final result.’

‘Yes, but I thought they found the gospels of Philip and Magdalene, which the church considers apocryphal and not credible, along with other irrelevant things. That’s what I read or heard, anyway.’

‘You’re well informed. That was only what they made public.’ He hesitated before deciding to go on. ‘The rest is protected by an agreement.’

Interesting, Sarah thought. The church and its secrets.

‘An agreement between…’ she insisted.

‘Between the Holy See and Ben Isaac. It’s called the “Status Quo.”?’

Sarah smiled, remembering a rock band with the same name.

‘It means the current state of something. It was signed by John the Twenty-third and Ben Isaac, and later, by John Paul the Second and Ben Isaac and their team of historians, archaeologists, and theologians, obviously. It was important to maintain absolute secrecy.’

‘He must have been very young when he signed the first agreement.’

‘A little more than thirty years old.’

‘That’s something,’ Sarah said with admiration.

‘Indeed,’ William concurred.

‘I still don’t see what I’m here to do!’ Sarah exclaimed. Her curiosity continued to grow.

‘We’ll get there, Sarah. Be a little more patient.’

At that moment one of the doors opened to admit William’s resolute assistant, who whispered something in his ear.

‘We’ll go at once,’ William murmured.

The priest left and the cardinal was available again. It was time for the question a good journalist would ask if this were an interview. ‘And what documents are included under this agreement?’

William didn’t answer at once. He approached Sarah, stopped looking at the faces of Christ, and focused on her. He hadn’t stared as intensely all night as in this moment. He felt uncomfortable, even blushed.

‘Two documents from the first century,’ he informed her at last.

‘Important?’ Sarah asked uncomfortably.

‘Very. One of them is the Gospel of Jesus.’