The Accidental Pope (19 page)

Cardinal Robitelli appeared at the door. “Your Holiness, the world outside waits to meet you.”

“Be right with you, Your Eminence. Come on, Tim, Brian, let's greet our people.”

Word rapidly spread through the Eternal City as new crowds swarmed into St. Peter's Square to get a glimpse of their new pope. With bands playing and the crowds jostling, at precisely four
P.M.
the balcony door of the basilica pulled open. The massed faithful were awed and then fell silent when they saw Secretary of State Cardinal Robitelli step out. This itself was a surprise. Traditionally the first cardinal to appear would introduce the new pope, and it had been taken for granted that Robitelli was the front-runner. So much for the predictions of cognoscenti like Father Farrell.

The next moment was even more disconcerting. The cardinal did not announce at first the customary “
Habemus papam!
We have a new pope!” Rather, he raised his hands to motion for silence and tapped the microphone to make sure it would amplify him sufficiently. He seemed more in a sermonizing mode than about to make a momentous announcement.

“Dear friends of the Church,” he began, “we have caused you such anxiety and wonderment. You have been waiting patiently on us during this extended conclave. I mention also a necessary trip undertaken by Cardinal Comiskey of Ireland. We in the magisterium of the Church can tell you now that we were in these, as in other important issues, seeking enlightenment from the Holy Spirit on how best to serve the Church and its people. God alone makes the fitting choice for St. Peter's successor.”

The cardinal paused and his eyes traveled over the huge crowd looking up at him from below. “In my lifetime,” he continued, “I have been amazed how the Holy Spirit has given us such great, holy men in sometimes startling ways. But today I have such incredible good news for you that we find it necessary to … how shall I express it … lead you, our beloved laity, gently into our interpretation of God's will.”

Once again the cardinal, spacing his words to carry, benignly turned his head from side to side, gauging the temperament of the multitude below. “You are all aware of the increased role we have asked you, our lay people, to take within the Church since Vatican II. We, as the Church hierarchy within the Church, have felt often that no matter how hard we've tried, a great gap slowly has grown between the clergy and the laity. This last gathering of the college of cardinals took our concern for the laity as its centerpiece. After much, often heated, debate we finally concurred the Holy Spirit had indeed revealed to us the way to bridge this terrible gap. Thus, dear brothers and sisters, in the name of Christ, I have the providential honor of announcing to you that a layman and former priest—not one of the cardinals—has been elected our new Holy Father!”

The awesome effect of these words was like nothing that ever had been experienced in St. Peter's Square before. The multitude, even the news media, stood spellbound in wonderment. Cameraman Augusto Dante from the Vatican TV station, Tel Pace, was so stunned that he failed to focus his camera on Cardinal Robitelli. It dipped down instead to a crowd of people standing at the fountain of St. Peter's that included Maureen Kirby and her group from the Marymount School in the forefront. Their looks of amazement and disbelief said it all. The silence was the forerunner to a great explosion. Slowly the words began to filter through numbed minds that could barely comprehend what they had just heard.

Some began to mumble softly. “What did he say? A layman? Former priest? What does he mean?”

Robitelli allowed his statement to exert its full effect on the crowd and then concluded: “My dear friends, may I present to you, from the United States of America, His Holiness, Pope Peter the Second, an ordained and later laicized priest, a true fisherman in the tradition of St. Peter, our leader and founder pope.
Habemus papam!
”

16

THE ACCIDENTAL POPE

Maureen Kirby found herself trembling. She was standing in the square with her classmates from Marymount. They had been there long before the puffs of white smoke flew skyward above the Sistine chimney, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new pontiff. Maureen's mind darted back to her father's mission and his return with Bill Kelly, metamorphosed from fisherman to monsignor, who had allowed her to call him “Bill.”

Well, Cardinal Robitelli had not appeared in the white cassock! He had visited the residence and Maureen had a fairly good idea of what kind of pope he would make. From what she'd heard at home and from Vatican denizens she knew, this was all to the good. He was an old hand set in traditional ways, hardly understanding of her youth culture. But whoever the pope would be, she could now always say she had been in the square that day to see him. Someday, too, she would find out what was written in the documents that she had seen Bill carry into the conclave. It was all secret, but one day he might tell her.

“Bill!
Mio Dio!
” A scream of surprise, shock, and joy was wrung from a stunned Maureen as Peter II came onto the balcony, clothed in his hastily but meticulously tailored white cassock. Julie Rogers, a geometry teacher at Marymount, stared at the usually rather reticent young woman in astonishment but said nothing.

“I drove with Bill—Pope Peter—to the Sistine Chapel this morning,” she shrieked. The young students were certain they had not heard her correctly amid the cheering of the crowd.

“What did you say, dear?” Sister Teresa asked.

“Just welcoming Bill, the new pope!” she replied. This was no time for explanations. Maureen reached into her pocketbook and withdrew a small cellular phone and dialed her father's private number at the residence while staring intently at the balcony.

In the awed silence that gripped the square, Maureen heard the number buzz and her father answering.

She spoke to him, crying out over her cell phone that it was indeed Bill Kelly on the balcony. He said he knew. Ed Kirby saw his fisherman acquaintance on the TV screen just as his daughter's call came through from the square. Instantly he turned to Patrick. “Take the film down to the AP Rome bureau. Stay with them while it is developed, and after they've picked a couple of pictures of Bill and myself for their story, bring the film back here. Tell Elizabeth Redmond I'll call her with the details as soon as I talk to Washington.” Ed's heart was glad, he felt secure in the knowledge that he had helped to accomplish something very important and significant.

He strode from the sun room, where the enraptured chanting from the Vatican could be clearly heard.
“Viva il papa! Viva il papa!”
The overflowing tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square rejoiced as they had never rejoiced before. A barrier many centuries old had abruptly and totally unexpectedly tumbled down. High above the elated throng stood one of their own, a onetime layman, and they themselves felt elevated. The more they thought about it, collectively, the more excited they became.

Once safely ensconced in his private office, Ed Kirby put through a call to the White House switchboard. It was just after ten in Washington when his call was transferred to the office of the White House chief of staff. A deputy was on duty and Kirby asked to be put through to the president. The deputy had obviously read the morning paper and was reluctant to put Ed through. The Oval Office might now be off-limits, and his boss was out.

Ed explained. “Look, I was unavailable yesterday because I was escorting the new pope from Massachusetts to Rome. I know all about the
Post
story and I want to tell the president who the new pope is—an American, for starters.”

The news surprised the deputy to the point that he opened up. “The president is over at the Pentagon. Scout's honor. We do have a slight crisis going on, as I'm sure you know.”

“Then put me through to the First Lady. It's damned important!”

There was a hesitation on the line. Ed's voice uncontrollably rose an octave. “It's important that the First Lady herself hear what happened and that she tell the president.” He paused to let his voice calm down. “It's your fault if the president is asked a question by the national media before he hears directly from his ambassador. I was with the dark horse from his home on Cape Cod to here last night.”

In less than three minutes, Ed Kirby had the sympathetic ear of the First Lady on the telephone as he explained the entire situation. In the background Ed could hear the coverage on a White House TV set of the scene happening immediately below his residence in the square. When Kirby had finished explaining to the First Lady, she was enthralled with the story. “I'll brief the president immediately. I'm sure he'll want to talk to you directly, Ed.”

“I'll stand by at the residence to wait for his call—even at the risk of being accused of deserting my post at the embassy,” he chuckled.

Now that he had reported everything to his boss at the White House, he picked up the phone to reach the AP bureau chief. For ten minutes he briefed her on the story until Catherine came in, a grin on her face.

“Mr. Seedworth to see you, Ed.”

“Tell him to wait.” Back on the phone, Elizabeth Redmond thanked him for the exclusive pictures of Kirby and Bill Kelly.

“It's the biggest Vatican story we've moved since the Turk tried to kill John Paul II.”

“Glad to help. Just be sure to send back the negatives with my assistant.”

“Will do. And AP will be moving the first paragraphs in a couple of minutes. Wait till my pals at the
Post
read this!” she chortled.

In the sun room, Calstrom Seedworth was waiting for Ed, an innocent smile on his face. “Mr. Ambassador, we missed you yesterday.”

“Cal, what about this story in the
Washington Post
this morning?” Ed asked abruptly. “What's this about Nice, Monte Carlo, and Ireland?”

“A call came in for you yesterday from the
Post.
I told them you weren't here. The driver said he had taken you to catch a nine-thirty plane. They probably checked and found one leaving for Nice. You know these press guys.” He stared out the window and down at the Spanish embassy, where many diplomats were standing on the roof observing the excitement around St. Peter's Square below. Then he added helpfully, “I've asked the embassy press clerk to find out everything possible about the new pope for transmission to Washington.”

Kirby nodded noncommittally. “I understand that AP is putting out quite a story on our new pope. You know, how he arrived here in Rome so secretly this morning.” The hint of a smile flickered over his face. “They have researched some detailed background material on Mr. Bill Kelly.” The DCM was beginning to sense that there might be a considerable and embarrassing gap in his perception concerning the ambassador's absence.

Catherine came back into the sun room. “That call you were expecting is coming through.”

Ed turned back to the DCM. “You might get ready for a press conference about six
P.M.
when I'll explain where I was yesterday. Have it at the Cardinal Baum Room at the embassy.”

Before the startled DCM could reply, Kirby was striding out of the sun room and down the hall again to his office. He was resolved to let it all hang out with the president, let the chips fall where they may. This was no time to protect innocuous conclave secrets with the State Department setting out to destroy him.

*   *   *

It took half an hour before some semblance of order was restored in St. Peter's Square. When he thought he could be heard, Bill Kelly stepped closer to the microphone.

He began his talk in the simple Italian and Portuguese words he had picked up from many years of dealing with the immigrants who took the most humble jobs he could give them in his small fishing fleet. “My dear brothers and sisters,” he began in Italian and then switched to Portuguese and to English, “I cannot say why the Holy Spirit has led these cardinal princes to select a poor and humble fisherman like me.” From an utter ecstasy of jubilation the crowd was reduced to silence, absolute in its contrast to the uproar of a few seconds before.

“Like the first fisherman, Peter, I feel more like saying ‘Depart from me, oh Lord, for I am a sinful man.' But I know that being a poor sinner myself, Jesus Christ is the only one I can turn to. So I have accepted both His love and His cross.” Seeking to identify himself with the people of the Church in a spiritual as well as personal way, Bill glanced down at the one line in Italian written on the small piece of paper Tim had handed him and said the words which in English meant “Weakness reaching out to the weak in love.”

“In the days to come,” he went on, “you will learn every smallest detail of my life. So let me conclude with my sincere blessing.”

He paused and smiled benignly. “I have decided to use my own words. May our beloved Savior bless and keep each and every human being on the face of this Earth. May he grant us the grace to live together in peace! May the families of the world grow in God's love like the Holy Family. And may we all learn to know and love Christ as He knows and loves us.” Pope Peter II continued to wave as he departed the balcony and stepped back into the basilica. Only those cardinals near him could see the tears flowing freely from his eyes.

As Peter II disappeared from view, the crowd, which now reached all the way up Via della Conciliazione to Castel Sant'Angelo, began and continued to chant and sing long into the night. As Vincenzo, head cook at Sabitino Ristorante at Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, said to a group of pilgrims from Manchester, England, “I have never seen Rome like this before, and I was here when the Allies liberated us in June of 1944.”

The celebrations continued into the night like a Roman festival of ancient times. Enterprising hawkers had already taken the first available picture of the new pope from the special edition of the afternoon newspaper,
Il Tempo.
A life-size cardboard replica of Peter II with the Statue of Liberty in the background had been mounted. They were shooting pictures with their Polaroid cameras at twenty thousand lire a copy, finally running out of film as the excited spectators crowded about to make this historic day and night a personal thing. Everything American was selling out, even the remaining pirated Elvis Presley CDs and tapes down at Il Colosseo.