The Holy assassin

44

It was time for the Farewell Procession in the Cove of Iria, when the Virgin Mary was carried in procession among the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims back to the Chapel of the Apparitions, where she would remain until the next year. A light mist marked the blessing of the act in this place central to the Catholic world, on a par with Saint Peter’s in the Vatican. Hundreds of thousands of white handkerchiefs waved in the air, marking the Immaculate farewell. People wept in prayer, with petitions for help, genuine or bizarre, because no one was there for no reason, out of a pure manifestation of faith and feeling for the Mother of Christ. There was always a request, a grace, Save my daughter. Help me in this business deal. Give me money and fortune…

To the right of the colonnade was the chapel of the Perennial Exposition of the Holy Sacrament, where the Congregation of the Religious Observers of Our Lady of the Sorrows of Fatima has prayed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus seven days of the week, twenty-four hours a day, since 1960. It’s a worthy act for forgiveness of worldly sins, according to the call of the Virgin in 1917 to the children, without requiring anything in return except peace on earth, no small thing, comparable to a miracle from Heaven. These were the teachings of Father Formigao’s disciples, whom the Virgin asked to forgive sins after the prayer. All this Marius Ferris experienced, kneeling in the last row of the chapel with the sister there in front of him finishing her turn at prayer.

After making the sign of the cross, Marius Ferris got up and left the chapel. From there, under the colonnade, he could see the sea of people crowding the vast enclosure, the processions in the back, on the way to their usual site, the exact place where the oak was found that sheltered the visions of Mary.

‘Do you believe that one of the bullets that threatened the life of the Polish pope in 1981 is in the crown of the Virgin of Fatima, Brother?’ The voice came from behind Marius Ferris.

‘That’s public knowledge,’ Ferris replied. ‘We know that Wojtyla was very devoted to Mary.’ He quickly bowed before the man confined to a wheelchair. ‘Your blessing, Your Eminence.’ He kissed one of his hands.

‘God bless you, my son,’ the other recited, concluding the ceremony of greeting.

The man was much older than Marius Ferris, near ninety you might guess. He was wearing a black suit and a large yellow gold cross hanging from a thick chain around his neck. A young cleric dressed in a black cassock, perhaps his aide, pushed the chair according to the old man’s wishes.

Marius Ferris rose after a few moments of prayer and looked at the old man in front of him.

‘I envy your physical fitness,’ the old man praised him.

‘Don’t be envious. I’ll never reach your age.’ A smile appeared on his face.

‘Only He knows that,’ the other observed. ‘Do me the favor of pushing my chair, Brother.’ It was a demand, not a request. With a gesture, he dismissed the young man. The conversation would be private now.

Ferris took the chair and pushed it smoothly along the colonnade toward the basilica. The voice of a prelate could be heard resonating from the loudspeakers inside. A polyglot expression of gratitude to all the pilgrims, directly from the altar placed in front of the basilica, at the top of the stairs, which was used in the international celebration of the Mass.

‘Is it the Roman envoy?’ Ferris asked.

‘Yes, Sodano.’

‘The one the pope forgot?’ A certain joking in the voice, a certain disdain.

‘He always finds a way to promote his position. Besides, the German has chosen a very bad secretary of state.’

‘Did he choose, or was that the only option they gave him?’ Ferris countered.

‘Could be. In any case the present pope knows what was agreed to in his election. If he should go back on the deal-’

‘What’s the deal?’ Ferris interrupted.

‘Whatever it may be, Brother. Draw in the Church, reassert the old dogmas, combat any menace of liberal reform, stop creating this constant circus in the media. Christ is not an amusement park.’ A certain flush showed how deeply he believed this.

‘A Church turned inward.’

‘How?’ the man went on, having just started his sermon. ‘If they followed the teachings of our Church, the only, the true one, we wouldn’t have half the problems society debates today. Abortion? Contraception?’ His irritation grew with each topic. ‘Ecumenism? Why? Interreligious dialogue? There is us and there is them. There’s no conversation. Yes, in some way, they attack us; we throw ourselves on them. It’s always been like that. Why are we bothering now with stupid diplomacy?’

‘It’s going to change,’ Ferris predicted.

‘I hope so. Otherwise we’ll have to do something about the German.’

‘I don’t think it’ll come to that.’

‘Is everything going as you planned?’ An almost imperceptible change of subject.

‘Until now, yes,’ Ferris lied. A small lie. He didn’t want to worry him with insignificant things that would be resolved shortly, perhaps already had been.

‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ the other rejoiced. ‘Are you going to blame the Russians and Bulgarians?’

‘They were actually guilty for a long time,’ Ferris asserted.

‘Do you know where I was on May thirteenth, 1981?’ the prelate asked.

‘In Rome?’ Ferris guessed.

‘Of course in Rome. In the Bethlehem Crypt.’

‘In the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore?’

‘Indeed,’ he confirmed. ‘Expiating my sins next to the cradle of the Infant Jesus,’ he confessed.

‘Is Pius still praying there?’ Ferris smiled, referring to a statue of the pope praying before the holy manger.

‘Yes, he is. But he was a real pope. He didn’t fool around with insufficient methods. He acted, made decisions, and kept everything in its place.’

‘Those were other times,’ Ferris observed.

‘The times are what we make of them. For fifty years we have had movie stars on Saint Peter’s throne.’

Marius Ferris stopped pushing the wheelchair. He looked at the procession of the Virgin, who was now in the place where she reposed daily, adored by millions of people every year, in person or at a distance. The ceremony had ended, and it would be hours before the asphalt enclosure emptied and returned to normal. Soon they’d see worshipers again, lighting candles, praying the rosary humbly, following the path on wounded knees, doing the promised rounds around the chapel to thank the Virgin for grace bestowed or asked for, since they had to pay in advance.

‘At the moment the Pole was shot in Saint Peter’s, I was praying for him. The Lord wanted him to live some twenty years more, and I always obey His will, even if I don’t agree, because He is infallible.’

‘In any case he turned out to behave himself well,’ Ferris said.

‘We managed to control him, thank God. At least until the end of the eighties. After that he followed his whims.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t bad. Ultimately he couldn’t go back on his word.’

‘It’s true. But I can’t forget who gave him that independence in the nineties.’ His voice was irritated again.

‘Nor I. We’re taking care of that.’

‘That’s good,’ the cleric advised. It sounded almost like a threat. ‘I want him dead.’

The man took off the chain with the gold cross, reached for Marius Ferris’s hand, and gave it to him.

‘In the Bethlehem Crypt, next to the manger, you will find what you need. It’s been there for twenty-six years waiting for you,’ he told him.

Marius put the gift in his pocket with as much care as if it were a treasure from Heaven, which, in a sense, it was. They resumed their way as if two friends on a walk.

‘At the precise time the Pole was being shot, I was praying for him in Santa Maria Maggiore,’ the old man repeated. ‘And now the bullet is right there, a few yards away, in the crown of the Virgin. It’s like a curse that follows me,’ he confessed.

‘This place is like a discount store for relics,’ Marius Ferris declared. ‘We have the three shepherds buried in the basilica, a few feet away from here a piece of the Berlin Wall.’

‘A testimony to our work,’ the cleric observed.

‘Of course. Every holy place is a guarantee of the Church’s capacity to realize its mission,’ Ferris asserted with a smile.

‘And what about Mitrokhin?’ the old man asked seriously.

‘What he left is controlled by the British. It’s in their interest, too.’

They stayed silent as they watched the faithful disbanding. At the back a little to the left there was the new Sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, with the capacity to hold almost nine thousand people. The power of the Church expressing itself in concrete.

The young attendant approached and took over the wheelchair. No one had called him, but he’d seen that whatever had to be said was said.

‘Bring our ship into good port,’ the old man said, calmer now, with a lethargic, pensive expression, tired from so much talking.

‘I can see it now,’ a confident Marius Ferris agreed. ‘We just need to tie up at the pier.’

‘You know where to find me at the end.’

They separated with a farewell gesture. This time Marius Ferris didn’t bend to ask a blessing. Everything in moderation, excess was the enemy of faith.

In spite of signs everywhere prohibiting the use of cell phones, he didn’t hesitate to place a call. Those were rules for the faithful, not for the clerics — benefits of the cloth and the profession.

‘Hello.’

He received the report without interruptions. Marius Ferris knew how to listen. His face relaxed.

‘Perfect. Attack the place. Keep me informed.’

He disconnected the call and took the chain with the enormous cross out of his pocket. He looked at it with intense respect, the personification of the body of Jesus engraved in gold, the threads of energy and history that penetrated deeply in his soul and made it resound with feeling. He got on his knees, turned toward the Virgin, Mother of Christ, in the distant chapel, and lowered his head, while a tear ran down his cheek.

‘They’ve been found. Soon they’ll be in our hands. I’ll avenge you,’ he promised. ‘I’ll avenge you and your son.’

Behind him in the chapel of the Perennial Exposition of the Holy Sacrament, the old sister continued praying through eternity.