The Fifth Gospel(199)

            Bachmeier says, “Those words were written by Pope Gregory, Patriarch of the West. But he didn’t stand alone. Here are the words of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople.”

            “Why would you punish those who paint Christ’s portrait, when Christ Himself left the image of his divine figure on a cloth? It was He who imprinted his own replica, by allowing a cloth to be placed over him.”

            “In Jerusalem,” Bachmeier continues, “three more patriarchs sent a letter to the emperor. After that, a full ecumenical council was called. And for the last time in our shared history, the bishops of Christendom spoke in one voice. For all posterity they declared that Christianity is a religion—the religion—of art.

            “It is therefore my great joy to ask His Grace to open the doors in front of us, and to ask the rest of you to follow him inside. For behind those doors, you will see what our unity, and our Lord’s example, made possible.”

            Even as Bachmeier speaks, Nowak steps forward and makes a signal with his hands. The Swiss Guards at the door part. As if by magic, the Sistine Chapel opens.

            A shiver goes through the crowd. Because past this threshold, the Vatican Museums end. The chapel of the pope begins. And on its ceiling is the crowning miracle of art.

            As we filter in, however, not a single eye peers upward. My heart pounds. The blood drums in my ears. Because inside this chapel, Michelangelo is not alone. Beside the altar stands a tall golden chair. And in that chair, alone, sits the small, stooped figure of Pope John Paul.





CHAPTER 37





SUDDENLY THERE ARE Swiss Guards swarming around us, finding the Orthodox bishops and leading them to the front. The bishops show no surprise, no confusion, as if they know why they’re here.

            There’s a logjam at the door, a hundred cassocks and tuxedos trying to push forward and see inside, a hundred more stopped dead in the doorway. The guards show the rest of us to red-cushioned chairs on the chapel floor, facing the steps where John Paul sits beside the altar. Already the air feels hot and thin. All around me, cardinals and dignitaries are trying to understand what’s happening. Distinguished-looking women fan papers in their laps, craning elegant necks.

            In front of us, however, John Paul never moves. I’m startled to see that he looks more decrepit and pained than ever. He wears a permanent frown over the thick mask of his face. Years of illness have transformed his body into something wrenched and misshapen, his torso wide and flat and hunched, the white wings of his simar hanging awkwardly off his shoulders like a tablecloth draped on a stump. He slumps in his specially built chair, the one that his attendants carry everywhere now, designed to prevent him from slipping out of it. A low grinding hum comes from behind the chair. A mechanical motor. All eyes are on the throne, everyone wondering what it will do.

            But it’s something behind the Holy Father that starts to move: a glass frame, mounted on steel tracks behind the altar. It climbs slowly against the altar wall until it hovers twenty feet over John Paul’s head, almost blocking the colossal Christ of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

            A gasp comes from the crowd as people see what the frame contains. Catholics in the chapel begin genuflecting, some on their right knees, some on their left, unsure of the protocol for this unprecedented sight. The Orthodox make metanias, Russians and Slavs crossing themselves before bowing, Greeks and Arabs bowing before crossing. But it’s the Orthodox bishops who do something all their own. In unison, as if they’ve been prepared for this moment, they lower themselves to the floor, in full prostration, to venerate God’s highest icon.

            Never have I felt anything like the hush of this room. The air is so tight that every sound squeezes upward into the outer darkness, like a conclave’s smoke. On the wall behind the Shroud, Michelangelo’s Jesus lifts his hand in the air, as if commanding time to stop. On the ceiling, electricity gathers in the sliver of nothingness between the outstretched fingers of God and Adam. All of creation, blanketed in the night outside, seems to press its ear against the chapel wall to listen.