The Fifth Gospel(4)
The trouble arrived even before Simon did. When news spread that John Paul was going to touch down on Hellenic soil, Greek Orthodox monasteries rang funeral bells. Hundreds of Orthodox took to the streets in protest, carrying banners that read ARCH-HERETIC and TWO-HORNED MONSTER OF ROME. Newspapers carried stories about holy icons that had begun bleeding. A national day of mourning was declared. Simon, who had made arrangements to sleep in the rectory of my father’s old Greek Catholic church, arrived to find that Orthodox reactionaries had vandalized the doors with spray paint. He said the police wouldn’t help. My brother had finally found the underdog he was born to defend.
That night, a small group of Orthodox hard-liners broke into the church and disrupted the liturgy. They made the great mistake of stripping the parish priest of his cassock and stomping on the antimension, the sacred cloth that makes a table an altar.
My brother is almost six and a half feet tall. His sense of obligation toward the weak and helpless is intensified by the knowledge that he is larger and stronger than anyone he meets. Simon vaguely remembers pushing an Orthodox man out of the sanctuary in an attempt to save the Greek Catholic priest. The Orthodox man says Simon threw him. Greek police say he broke the man’s arm. Simon was arrested. His new employer—the Holy See Secretariat of State—had to negotiate his immediate return to Rome. That was why Simon never saw firsthand how John Paul dealt with the same hostilities, with much better success.
The Greek Orthodox bishops made a point of snubbing John Paul. He didn’t complain. They insulted him. He didn’t defend himself. They demanded he apologize for Catholic sins from centuries ago. And John Paul, speaking on behalf of one billion living souls and the untold Catholic dead, apologized. The Orthodox were so amazed that they agreed to do something they had refused to do until that moment: to stand beside him in prayer.
I’ve always hoped that John Paul’s performance in Athens was a corrective to Simon’s behavior. Another lesson sent down from heaven. Since then, Simon has been a changed man. That is what I tell myself, again and again, as I drive south from Rome into the heart of the storm.
IN THE DISTANCE, CASTEL Gandolfo comes into view: a long hilltop breaching over the weird prairie of golf courses and used-car lots that yawn south from the outskirts of Rome. Two thousand years ago, this was the playground of emperors. The popes have been summering here for only a few centuries, but it’s enough to qualify the land as an official extension of our country.
As I round the hill, I see a carabinieri squad car at the bottom of the cliff—Italian policemen from the station across the border line, sharing a cigarette while the storm rages. But Italy’s laws have no force where I’m going. There’s no sign of Vatican police in this slashing rain, and their absence allows the pinch in my chest to begin to loosen.
I park my Fiat where the hillside sinks into Lake Albano, and before stepping out in the rain I dial a number on my phone. On the fifth ring, a gruff voice picks up.
“Pronto.”
“Little Guido?” I say.
He snorts. “Who’s this?”
“Alex Andreou.”
Guido Canali is an old childhood acquaintance, the son of a Vatican turbine mechanic. In a country where the only qualification for most jobs is blood relation to someone else with a job, Guido has been unable to find better work than shoveling manure at the pontifical dairy on this hilltop. He’s always looking for a handout. And though it’s no accident our paths don’t cross anymore, I’m looking for some help of my own.
“It’s not Little Guido anymore,” he says. “My old man died last year.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“That makes one of us. To what do I owe the call?”
“I’m in town and need a favor. Could you open the gate for me?”