Six Seconds

18

Cold Butte, Lone Tree County, Montana

Father Andrew Stone watched the wind-groomed grass undulate across the Great Plains, mile after mile until the earth touched the sky.

Breathtaking in its majesty.

Immortal for its painful history.

So deserving of what was to come.

Soon the pope would arrive here and consecrate this very ground, the Buffalo Breaks, where so many of

Stone’s ancestors had died.

His heart swelled at a dream come true.

But last-minute concerns were risking cancellation of the papal visit, the first ever to this corner of the country. Stone wasn’t worried.

For if there was one thing he’d learned from an old friend, it was that God’s plan was unstoppable. “Father Stone! We’re ready to start!”

Nearly a hundred yards back, the principal of Cold

Butte’s only school was calling him to the Papal Visit Planning Committee’s meeting on the letter from Washington.

120 Rick Mofina

Stone had read it.

The Secret Service had alerted the Vatican to the latest security and foreign intelligence-more inter cepted chatter about threats and potential attacks. Un related to the letter, the Washington Post had recently reported that a growing number of influential U.S. church organizations, fearing an attempted assassina tion, were privately urging the Vatican to cut venues in the papal visit, including the one planned right here in Lone Tree County.

Gripping his copy of the letter and the Post story he’d stapled to it, Stone started for the school, certain that the visit would ultimately take place. His faith was anchored by his devotion to God and his blood ties to the land where he was born.

Stone was descended from the Swift Fox, a small Plains tribe nearly wiped out by smallpox in the 1880s. At that time, Sister Beatrice Drapeau, a nun from France, had arrived with Jesuits and stayed to minister to the dying until she died of the illness.

The sick who prayed to her memory survived.

Her story inspired Stone to become a priest. After his divinity studies and ordination he was posted to the Vatican, working among the archives on the church’s role in Native American history. There, he befriended a wise cardinal who was taken by Stone’s call to God and the nun’s legacy.

“Sister Beatrice’s sacrifice must not be forgotten.” The cardinal raised one finger to Stone before he returned to Lone Tree County. “One day, my brother, I will make a pilgrimage to Montana to honor her.”

Years later, to Stone’s awe, the cardinal was elected pope. A few months afterward, Stone’s old friend, the new pope, wrote him a personal letter.

“My brother, to remember our Good Sister, I will, as promised, make a pilgrimage to the Great Plains on the next anniversary of her death. You may pass this news to others so that they may join in the celebration.”

Stone kept the note private but went online to share the news and the date of the pope’s upcoming visit to Montana.

Unlike presidential visits, news of papal visits was often made public in advance because of the scale and preparations involved. But Stone’s revelation had long preceded the Vatican’s expected official announcement of a multicity papal visit to the United States. This frus trated the U.S. Secret Service because it gave ample lead time to anyone planning an attack.

Now, as Stone entered the school and took his place at the meeting, he braced for a heated debate on any lastditch effort to cancel the pope’s visit to Montana.

“The very thought of canceling at this stage is a pre posterous notion,” said the reverend from the office of the Bishop for the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings.

“Absolutely,” the woman from the governor’s office agreed. “We’re down to a few short weeks from the event.”

“As the letter states, U.S. and foreign intelligence have been picking up chatter about threats and poten tial attacks,” a Secret Service official said through the speakerphone from Washington. “Granted, it’s not un common, but the volume has markedly increased and gives us concern. Especially since various plots against several world leaders and several other targets have

122 Rick Mofina been thwarted in the past sixteen months. The Secret Service is in no way advising the Vatican to cancel any events. Our role is to provide the intelligence for the Vatican to make any decision.”

“These groups quoted in the Post want a shortened tour and suggested the visit to Lone Tree be dropped,” the reverend from the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings said.

“That’s got nothing to do with the Secret Service,” the agent said.

“We’re aware these are challenging times, but to cancel any venue at this stage is contrary to the intent of the Holy Father’s pastoral mission to the U.S.,” the priest representing the Holy See’s Secretariat of State said from Washington. “Each location plays a key role in the pontiff’s ecumenical work.”

In Montana, the day of celebration would involve a presentation to the pope at the school by the children’s choir before he celebrated an open-air Mass in Buffalo Breaks for about one hundred thousand people. There he would bless the site and acknowledge that God allows people to rise above failings to ensure the spirit is not extinguished.

“Has anyone considered the fallout of canceling the first papal visit in the state’s history?” the principal asked. “Think of what’s been done, accommodating charter groups, arranging motel rooms from Great Falls to Billings, Lewistown, Miles City, even into North Dakota. The cost, the expectations created. Not to mention all the security and background checks everyone has already undergone. And the choir. Goodness, the children have been working so hard for months,” the principal said.

As Stone followed the nods that went round the table, he detached himself from the discussion.

“At this stage, the decision is not ours,” the Secret Service official said.

“That is correct,” the official from the Holy See said. “We must await the Vatican’s final decision.”