The Accidental Pope (36 page)

The pope came to attention, gripping the battle-ax by his side. “Love is a many-splendored thing,” he quipped, as straight-faced as possible. Both men smiled and waited with quiet anticipation to learn the outcome within. A few moments later the door opened and the young guard walked out. The look of confusion on his face dissolved the pope's grin.

“Jan,” he asked anxiously, “what's the verdict?”

The guard seemed more confused than ever. Rubbing his chin with his hand, he searched for words. “I don't know, Your Holiness. I asked her if she would consider going out on a date with me. She glanced up and said … I think it was something like … ‘Wow, cool, man! Far out.' Then she just went back to rearranging the desk and chair.”

The pope laughed and handed the halberd back to the guard. “You'll have to pardon my daughter, Christensen. It took me as a parent a long time to decipher the term ‘cool.' She thinks you're ‘far out,' which means you are ‘far in.' Come by the apartment at six this evening. She has accepted your invitation. It will give her something to look forward to after our first audience with the public this afternoon. To tell you the truth, I'm delighted, Jan. Now, if you will, please see to it that no one disturbs her until it is time for the audience.”

The attitude of the young man had become one of total dedication. He would defend the pope, his possessions, and his beautiful daughter to the death. Stepping directly in front of the door, Jan stood at attention and set his jaw. “Your Holiness, no one gets by here.”

Pope Bill slowly departed with Al. The monsignor, now courting a smile, shook his head. “I would give even money that a military tank would have a hard time confronting that fellow now. Love is not only splendid, it's electric. Now we can get ready for your first audience.” Al gave Pope Bill a worried look. “Are you sure Colleen will be all right at the audience? I mean”—he rolled his eyes expressively—“no surprises?”

Bill's lips compressed a moment, and then he shrugged. “Surprises? I can't guarantee anything. But she will not embarrass the Vatican.”

*   *   *

“Colleen, please. Not to be nervous,” Bill urged as they were driven the short distance from the Vatican Palace to the entrance of the Paul VI Audience Hall, filled to capacity with people eager to see the pope's family.

“I am not nervous, Dad,” Colleen pronounced. “Meghan and Roger aren't either. It is the Vatican regulars that are doing the shakin' and sweatin',” she chuckled. “Let the people, the laity, get a look at us and adjust to this new millennium situation.”

The Kelly family faced more than an initial meeting with the people in the pews. Television cameras would be elevated above the audience hall in glass-enclosed side booths. The entire world was going to witness the first papal audience of the widower pope and three of his children.

Walking onto the elevated stage, both Bill and Meghan began to have “pregame jitters.” Amazingly, Colleen seemed not to have a worry or qualm in the world as she strode across the stage like a runway model at a Paris fashion show in a new black dress Maureen Kirby had helped her buy. It was both demure and exciting on her full body, contrasting with her blond hair. Roger looked out curiously over the audience.

A table with a number of chairs behind it faced the audience. A tapestry-like tablecloth depicting the Holy Family in the manger reached to the floor, serving also to hide microphone wires and the feet and legs of those who would soon be sitting there. Three chairs were placed for interpreters; the center chairs would seat the pope and his three children. The audience rose to show respect and applauded warmly.

The pope pulled out a chair on either side of his thronelike seat and gestured for each of his daughters to sit down. Roger sat next to Colleen. Glancing off to his right, Bill noticed that Leonardo Cardinal Bellotti was standing alone, like some dark specter, in the wings of the stage, almost out of sight of the large gathering of people. Here he could unobtrusively observe the pope's first public audience. The man was an enigma to Bill Kelly, obviously providing a set of eyes and ears for Robitelli. Even Cippolini seemed surprised to see the tall, black-haired, sharp-featured, angular cardinal surveying the large gathering with gleaming black eyes. Bill knew only that Bellotti was a Vatican expert on canon law.

Bill sat down and the children followed suit, coolly regarding the expectant throng excitedly chattering away. Monsignor Cippolini, taking over as master of ceremonies, tapped the microphone. “Please be seated,” he asked the crowd, which was mostly standing and gawking at the Kelly family. Then, without further introduction, he announced, “Pope Peter II will introduce himself and” he gulped audibly “his immediate family.”

Eschewing the usual procedure of introductions by a cardinal or bishop, Bill Kelly opened the proceedings himself. “As you are aware, when I was elected the two hundred sixty-fifth pontiff of the Catholic Church, I took the name Pope Peter II because, like the first pope, I was a fisherman, and I had a family. As is also well known by now, my name is William Kelly, and I was an ordained priest for seven years until I fell in love and married a beautiful girl from Ireland. Mary Kelly gave me four wonderful children and was a loving, caring wife and mother until tragically she died three years ago of cancer.

“As it was with the first Pope Peter, two thousand years ago, and almost every lay member of the Church since then, I, too, have had children to bring up and educate, a business to run, and bills to pay. I share your problems, your joys in your children, and the personal tragedies that happen in every human's lifetime. I think that in many ways, I am you and you are me.”

He paused a moment, surveying the largest audience he had ever in his fifty-seven years stood before. His welcoming smile seemed to catch the heartbeat of the multitude for a trice before he continued to address the eager crowd. Many of his enthusiastic listeners had waited since early morning for a seat to hear and see the new pope introduce himself and his family.

“To my left is sitting my daughter, Meghan. She is just eighteen. Beside her is Roger, a fourteen-year-old bundle of energy. The bandage you see above his eye is the souvenir from a skateboarding expedition about the Vatican hallways yesterday, during which he collided with a Swiss guard. The guardsman is expected to be back on duty by tomorrow.”

Pope Bill smiled broadly at the laughter from the audience, warming to this totally unexpected and already historic first papal audience by the new pope. “And now let me introduce my beautiful daughter Colleen, sitting to my right. She is twenty years old, majoring in Renaissance art and literature at her college back in America, and already a habitué of the Vatican museums and library.” He reached out his right hand to her. Colleen took it and stood beside her father a few moments, again revealing her statuesque beauty to the admiring audience. In any other milieu appreciative whistles would have sounded forth, but in this Vatican setting sensitive sighs and murmurs emanated from an already enraptured crowd.

“Colleen has an older brother by one year, Ryan Kelly. But my son Ryan, like the son of Peter I, is obliged to remain far from Rome, tending to the family fishing business.”

Allowing the audience to absorb the charm of the papal family a few moments, Bill Kelly seated Colleen and once again looked out over the now thoroughly enchanted holiday congregation. He paused meaningfully, eliciting an expectant silence from the rapt crowd.

“I would be negligent and thoughtless at this moment if I failed to tell you about the mother of my four children, my wife of eighteen years, Mary Kelly. She was visiting her uncle, the pastor of the Church where I was serving as curate. Priest or pagan, I fell in love with her, and she with me. I applied for a release from my vows. In due course I was laicized, eight years after my ordination. Mary and I were married by my seminary classmate, now Brian Cardinal Comiskey of Ireland. I took up the family business, fishing while Mary and I brought up the children, all but one of whom is here before you.”

Bill gestured at his children, seated on either side of him and staring up at their father adoringly.

“Then, just three years ago, Mary was tragically taken from us. But the entire Kelly family has worked hard to keep the household together, and we will continue that tradition here at the Vatican as our first Christmas season in our new home comes around.”

The pope cleared his throat, looked down at the prepared statement on the table in front of him, and began to read.

“I am humbled by the fact that your love for God and your deep faith brings you here to the resting place of the apostle Peter. Your sincerity convinces me more than ever that our faith is far from dying. Over the years pictures I have seen of so many coming to Rome to pay their respects to the pope, or the office he holds, have awed me. I know, of course, that you are really now paying your respects to Jesus Christ and His family, whom we honor always, but especially at the time of His birthday and the Sunday after Christmas, the feast of the Holy Family.”

The pope looked up from his prepared talk and put the typed sheets down.

“Since you are all here to see the new pope and his children, it is my belief that rather than hear me read a canned speech, you must all harbor concerns and questions you are hoping will be answered. To make sure that this happens I am going to turn over the meeting to you who have come from afar to partake of the Christmas spirit in the place where, for two thousand years, it has been fostered, kept alive, and celebrated. Therefore, my daughters and son will devote this first audience to you of the laity, for whose benefit and spiritual guidance the Vatican, the pope, and all the cardinals, bishops, monsignors, priests, nuns, and clergy are presumed to exist.”

From the corner of his eye Bill noticed Bellotti shaking his head slightly. At first the audience of several thousand sat stunned, but in a few moments, as Bill cast his eyes around the throng, he sensed the wave of new interest this extemporaneous approach to his first papal audience was generating.

“So now, if you like, the children and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have,” he concluded.

Hands soon shot up all over the room. Monsignor Cippolini, playing his role of the man for all occasions, stationed himself at the base of the podium. He strolled toward one woman conveniently sitting on the aisle close to the front of the auditorium. She seemed eager for the opportunity to have her question answered. He handed her the wireless microphone he was carrying. She smiled triumphantly at being selected to ask the first question. Pope Bill sighed silently. He had learned to recognize newspaper reporters instinctively.

Standing up, she held the microphone close to her mouth so that her words resounded throughout the hall. “As a fellow American, Miss Colleen Kelly, I have seen you on television back home on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. You first mentioned that you thought it would be very hard for you, and the other children, to make the adjustment of being uprooted and moved to Rome. I also believe that on more than one occasion you forthrightly told people interviewing you that you did not attend Mass, nor have you been a practicing Catholic since your mother died. I believe you have been described as feeling that God, if he exists, deserted you and your family. May I ask how you are feeling about that now?”

Pope Bill immediately took the initiative. “Before Colleen answers that,” he said into his microphone, “let me say I am glad you asked that question right off the bat, so to speak. Allow me first to make a brief point.”

He smiled and nodded in friendly fashion to the questioner, looking her in the eyes as she seated herself. “The death of a parent at a young age is always a shock to a child and particularly grievous for a young adult who has just become best friends with her mother. Mary, when she died, was thirty-nine, Colleen was seventeen. But I'll let Colleen explain her relationship with God for herself.”

The pope handed the microphone to Colleen with his left hand, patting her on the shoulder with his right.

Colleen, holding the microphone well below her chin, showing off her regular, clear-cut features, stood up and faced the huge audience in the Vatican's largest auditorium.

She paused a moment, as if savoring the spectacle. Then, “Yes, I expect I do owe the Christian world an explanation for some of my remarks immediately after my father's elevation to pope from laicized priest and fisherman.”

A natural performer, Colleen moved gracefully from behind the table to the front of the dais. Standing alone, yet with all the presence of a diva completing the lead aria in the first act of a grand opera, she smiled broadly and began.

“I have heard whispers from Vatican sources comparing me to another highly visible daughter of a famous pope.”

She smiled as the audience, mostly tourists and Italian residents, gasped. Almost all were conventional Catholics with little knowledge of Church history beyond what they were told by their parish priest and read in their Bibles. The thought of a married pope shocked them; indeed a widower pope with children was almost beyond the pale—one reason for the standing-room-only turnout today.

“That particular pope,” she continued, “born Rodrigo Borgia near Valencia, Spain, became Alexander the VI. His claim to fame, beyond total political corruption, was dividing up the New World discovered by Christopher Columbus between Spain and Portugal. His daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, lived and did her thing right here at the Vatican from 1492, when her dad became pope and she was married for the first time at age thirteen, until her father died in 1503. Despite Lucrezia's reputation, until her death at thirty-nine she conducted the greatest court in Italy for artists, writers, and musicians at Ferrara, the dukedom of her third husband. That, by the way, is the name of the car I hope to acquire over here. And let me add, there is no proof that Lucrezia poisoned anyone. History has greatly maligned her.”