The Fifth Gospel(201)

            For once, his voice is heavy with emotion.

            “My dear brother patriarchs, please forgive me that I cannot stand to greet you, and that I cannot speak these words in my own voice. As you know, I am approaching the end of my pontificate. The Holy Shroud encourages us to meditate on our mortality, and I am humbled that our Lord has allowed me a pontificate of twenty-six years, when he allowed himself a ministry of only three. Yet Christ’s example reminds me how much can be accomplished in a very short time. This is what our predecessors proved by standing together against Iconoclasm. It is what I hope we will do together tonight.

            “Since I am no longer able to travel, tonight will be my last visit with you. Therefore it is fitting that I take this opportunity to express the following hope. Never in my twenty-six years have I been permitted to stand together with all of you. And so I ask: will you come forward, in brotherhood, and stand with me?”

            Archbishop Nowak stops reading and looks up. Every layman in the chapel bears an expectant look. No one could refuse a pope. No one could refuse this pope.

            But on the faces of the clergy, I see a different expression. We’ve spent our lives protecting this man, supporting him as he shouldered the burden of his office. To erase a thousand years of hatred in one gesture is asking too much, even for John Paul. None of us can bear to watch him fail.

            And yet, it happens. Not a single patriarch walks up to join him. The only one who even rises to his feet in respect is Bartholomew, His All Holiness.

            It strikes John Paul like a blow. When he sees they aren’t moving, his one good hand clamps down on his chair. His body hunches forward as if it might fall. From nowhere, two helpers materialize at his sides. They place hands on him and whisper in his ear, trying to finesse him back into the chair, but John Paul pushes them off. They look to Archbishop Nowak for support, but he sends them away.

            Now it’s just the two of them up there, Nowak and John Paul. They trade looks, debating something invisible, speaking the language of forty years spent together. Maybe Nowak is begging him to save face, but if that’s it, then John Paul ignores him. He begins pushing himself out of the chair again, trying vainly to get up. So, like a good son, Archbishop Nowak helps him.

            More than a year has passed since John Paul took a step under his own power. People say he can’t even stand. Yet he stares down the assembled patriarchs of the Orthodox Church across a marble staircase, as if he will climb down these steps if he has to.

            All at once, I understand what he’s doing. What problem he’s trying to solve. In ancient times there was only one man allowed to sit in a gold chair, and that was the emperor. No matter how many reasons the Orthodox have for not joining him on that platform, the most obvious is that no Orthodox will honor a pope on a throne. Not even if that throne is a gilded wheelchair.

            With his good arm, John Paul grabs Nowak’s cassock and pulls on it for balance. He flexes every muscle that still answers to his mind. And though they are one hundred and fifty years old together, these two men somehow bring each other safely down the stairs to the chair of the Ecumenical Patriarch.

            Bartholomew is visibly worried. He steps forward to keep John Paul steady. But John Paul is already bending his knees and folding his legs under himself. With Archbishop Nowak’s help, he lowers himself into a painful kneel.

            His All Holiness reaches over and grabs John Paul’s hands, trying to keep him up. “Please, Holy Father,” I hear him say in a surprised voice. “No.” But John Paul clasps the patriarch’s right hand, bows his head, and lowers his lips to kiss it.

            That is when it happens.

            To Bartholomew’s left are the other patriarchs of the ancient tetrarchy: Ignatius of Antioch, Theodore of Alexandria, Irenaios of Jerusalem. All are white-bearded and black-robed. All have hard, unflinching faces, like saints in holy icons. But they’re also younger than John Paul. And when they see him stooping at their feet, the oldest patriarch from the most honored See, they don’t know what to do.