He stopped short. “Why, Ms. Russo, you sound like a Cathar.”
“I do? You know I never heard of them before a couple of days ago, and now I can’t escape—”
“Neither could they,” he cut in. We continued walking up to the house. “They were the fastest-growing, not religion exactly, but Christian belief system, shall we call it, in Europe in the twelfth through the thirteenth centuries. Those who identified as Cathars disavowed all material things—church buildings with their golden chalices and gilt ceilings, up to and including their own personal objects, other than what they needed to sustain a holy and Christian life. They tried to emulate the way Jesus had lived His life.”
I shook my head, trying to absorb the information while feeling extremely cold in the warmth of the sun.
He looked directly at me as he continued, “The Catholic Church wanted two things from the Cathars: to secure the Cathar treasure and to wipe them off the face of the earth. It was a massive slaughter. Some accounts put the number at one million Cathars killed during the Crusades of hunt-and-destroy. A horrible holocaust perpetrated in the name of Jesus, who preached love.”
“Why Father Paulo, now you sound like a Cathar,” I teased back.
He laughed softly. He might have dressed as a Catholic priest, but this guy was a real rogue.
I continued: “Not that you seem to live like one! But tell me, why would people who eschewed all material things have a treasure?”
“That is your job to find out, I assume.…”
A horrid chill ran up my spine, and my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably—even though it had be seventy-something degrees that gorgeous day.
I unwrapped the terrible pink hoodie I’d tied around my waist and slipped into it, zipping it up tightly. The gesture did not go unnoticed. Jacobi gestured toward the house and made the double sign of the cross. And his gesture did not go unnoticed, either.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I changed the subject and asked instead, “So I heard the story about how John the Apostle supposedly brought Mary here to live after Jesus appointed him her caretaker as he was dying—”
“Not a story. A fact.”
He sniffed and raised one eyebrow and began walking again, and I followed, chastised. Somewhat. “And this is the region where John the Apostle ended up? But please tell me how you know that this is that particular house or that John and the Blessed Mother were ever even in Ephesus.”
The priest sat down on a small wooden bench and wiped his forehead. He was sweating—and I was freezing! I saw him take a small vial out of his black jacket and slip a pill in his mouth. He patted the seat for me to sit beside him, which I did.
“Are you all right, Father?”
“Yes, yes, old age is not, as they say, for sissies.” He composed himself and continued: “Let us start with John the Apostle, who is also known as ‘John the Evangelist’; although not everyone believes they are one and the same, they are. The Evangelist remained in Judea with the other apostles until the persecutions of Herod Agrippa I.
“At that point the disciples scattered throughout the various provinces of the Roman Empire—you can find that in Acts twelve, verses one to seventeen. It is our solemn belief that John then went to Asia Minor, where he began his mission.”
“And you know—or believe this—why?”
“Well, because a Messianic Christian community was already in existence at Ephesus well before Saint Paul ever even began his work here! According to accounts from that time, John had been the leader of that community. In fact, it was here in this city that John wrote three epistles.”
“But what does this have to do with the Blessed Mother?”
“John brought the Blessed Mother to live in Ephesus with him, as I said.…”
I must have looked confused. “John was Jesus’ favorite. He even called him ‘the Beloved Disciple.’ Our Lord instructed John to care for his Mother—and he gave him those instructions as he was hanging on the cross. ‘Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.’
“Yes,” I said, remembering what Wright-Lewis had said. “Gospel of John. Right?”
“Exactly! I’m impressed, Miss Russo!”
I decided to come clean. “Don’t be. I got that information just the other day from a woman—in fact it was the woman who urged me to come to Turkey in the first place.”
“Who might that have been?”
“Maureen Wright-Lewis? She was with the CIA back in the day and then vanished after being accused of being a traitor … in the 1980s?” I asked more to judge his reaction than anything else.