The organization is the principal group representing the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, and it counts more than 4,500 members. Its chief activity is to locate and give aid to the victims, which it does in group therapy sessions that help the victims acknowledge what happened to them. Many of its members join SNAP once they have reached adulthood, after years of shameful silence.
Cardinal Casey, at present prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, saw himself become involved in the scandal of priestly sexual abuse that exploded in the United States in the late 1990s. Casey, cardinal for the Boston archdiocese, was the most important figure in the North American Church and, many say, the strongest candidate to succeed John Paul II.
His career suffered a severe setback when it was discovered that for years he kept more than three hundred cases of sexual abuse in his jurisdiction out of the public spotlight. He frequently moved priests accused of the crimes of this nature from one parish to the next, hoping to avoid scandal. In almost every instance he limited himself to recommending “fresh air” to those so charged. Only when the cases were of the most serious kind did he send the priest to a mental health institution where he could receive treatment.
As the first serious charges began to surface, Casey agreed to settlements with the families of the victims, settlements whose large financial remunerations came with a vow of silence. After a period of time, the scandals became common knowledge throughout the country, and “highly placed Vatican authorities” found themselves forced to replace Casey. He was transferred to Rome, where he was named prefect for the Congregation of the Clergy, a position of some importance but which in any case would seem to be the last chapter in his career.
There are nevertheless some who continue to regard Casey as a saint who used all his strength to defend the Church. “He has suffered persecution and calumnies for defending the faith,” his personal secretary, Father Miller, said. But in the media’s eternal horse race over who will be the next pope, Casey is given few chances. The Catholic clergy is in general cautious and no friend to extravagance. Casey can count on supporters, but short of a miracle it seems likely he will receive few votes.
04/10/2005/08:12 (AP)
THE SACRISTY, SAINT PETER’S BASILICA
Sunday, April 10, 2005, 11:08 A.M.
The priests who would celebrate the mass with Cardinal Casey were helping one another with their vestments in the auxiliary sacristy near the entrance to Saint Peter’s, where along with the altar boys, they waited for the cardinal. The ceremony was to get under way in five minutes. They were forbidden to enter the main sacristy.
As of that moment, the museum was deserted except for the two nuns who served under Casey and the other cardinal who would be celebrating the mass, Cardinal Pauljic. There was also a Swiss Guard who stood watch in the doorway to the sacristy.
Karosky felt the comforting bulge that the knife and pistol made, nestled inside his clothing. He made mental calculations of his course of action.
He was at last about to carry off the prize.
The moment was at hand.
SAINT PETER’S SQUARE
Sunday, April 10, 2005, 11:16 A.M.
“We’ll never get through the Santa Ana gate. It’s heavily guarded and the only people they’re letting in are the ones with Vatican authorization.”
Dicanti and Fowler had reconnoitered the entrances to the Vatican at a discreet distance, looking them over. Each one alone, so as not to draw attention. In fifty minutes or less, the novena mass in Saint Peter’s would be getting under way.
A mere thirty minutes before, when Francis Casey’s name had, with the force of a bolt of lightning, appeared on the devotional card of the Virgin of Carmen, they had undertaken a frantic Internet search. From the press agencies they were able to glean the time and the place where Casey would appear, in full view of anyone who might want to see him.
And there they were, in Saint Peter’s Square.
“We’ll have to go in by the main door.”
“Won’t happen. It’s a classic funnel trap. Security has been visibly tightened everywhere except there, which is the entrance open to the public, so that’s where they’ll be waiting for us. And even if we managed to get in, we’d never get close to the altar. Casey and whoever is celebrating the mass with him will enter from the sacristy in Saint Peter’s. From there on out, the way to the basilica is clear. They won’t use the main altar, which is reserved for the pope alone, but one of the secondary altars, and even then there will be as many as eight hundred people attending the ceremony.”
“Will Karosky actually try to pull it off in front of so many people?”
“Our problem, Dottoressa, is that we don’t know who is playing which role in this drama. If the Holy Alliance wants to see Casey dead, they are not going to let us stop him from celebrating the mass. If they are intent on catching Karosky, they are not going to let us warn the cardinal. He is their best bait. I’m convinced that, come what may, this is the final act of the tragedy.”
“But at this stage in the drama there’s no role for us. It’s already a quarter after eleven.”
“Not true. We’ll find a way into the basilica, dodge Cirin’s agents, and slip into the sacristy. We have to stop Casey from celebrating his mass.”
“And how are we going to do that, Padre?”
“We’ll take a route Cirin would never imagine in his wildest dreams.”
Four minutes later they stood at the front door of a sober five-story building. Paola knew Fowler was right. Never in a million years would Cirin imagine Fowler knocking, of his own free will, on the front door of the Palace of the Holy Inquisition. The Sant’Uffizio.
One of the entrances to Saint Peter’s is located between the building that houses the Sant’Uffizio and Bernini’s Colonnade. It consists of a roadblock and a guard station. There are usually two Swiss Guards on duty. On this Sunday there were five, joined by a single Vatican police officer. He was carrying a file in his hand, inside of which were Fowler’s and Dicanti’s photos, a fact of which both were ignorant. The cop, a member of the Vigilanza, watched as a couple who seemed to match the descriptions crossed the open space in front of him. He saw them for only an instant before they disappeared, and he wasn’t absolutely sure it was them. He was not authorized to leave his post, so he made no attempt to follow them and find out. His orders were to report back if those individuals tried to enter the Vatican, and to detain them, by force if necessary. It was clear to him that those two people were of some special concern. He pushed the button on his walkie-talkie and gave a description of what he had just seen.
Just short of the corner with Porta Cavalleggeri, and a mere sixty feet from the guard station where the cop was taking his orders, stood the entrance to the Palace of the Sant’Uffizio. The door was locked, but there was a bell. Fowler kept his finger glued to the buzzer until he heard the sound of locks being turned on the other side. The face of an aged priest squinted through a crack in the doorway.
“What do you want?” he said. His tone was thoroughly unpleasant.
“We are here to see Bishop Hanër.”
“Who are you?”
“Padre Fowler.”
“I’m not familiar with the name.”
“I’m an old friend.”
“Bishop Hanër is resting. Today is Sunday and the palazzo is closed. Have a nice day,” he said as he brushed them off, like someone swatting at flies.
“Would you please tell me in which hospital or cemetery I can find the bishop?”
The old priest was taken aback.
“Excuse me?”
“Bishop Hanër told me he would never rest until he had made me pay for my many sins, so he must be either sick or dead. There is no other explanation.”
The look on the priest’s face changed a little, from hostile disinterest to slight irritation.
“It appears you know Bishop Hanër. Please wait outside.” The priest shut the door in their fac
es.
“How did you know that this Hanër would be there?”
“Bishop Hanër has never taken a single Sunday off in his entire life. It would be a sad thing if he did so today.”
“He’s a friend of yours?”
Fowler cleared his throat.
“Actually, he hates me more than anyone else in the world. Gonthas Hanër oversees the day-to-day working of the clergy. He’s an old German Jesuit who reins in the Santa Alianza when its overseas missions get out of hand. An ecclesiastical version of Internal Affairs. He put me on trial. He has a real aversion to me because I refused to say a single word about the missions they sent me on.”
“But you were absolved?”
“Just barely. He told me that he had an anathema with my name on it, and sooner or later the pope would sign it.”
“An anathema?”
“A decree of final excommunication. Hanër knows it’s the one thing I really fear in this world: that the Church I’ve given my life to will prevent me from entering heaven when I die.”
Dicanti gave him a troubled look.
“And so, Padre, why exactly are we here?”
“I have come to make a full confession.”
THE SACRISTY, SAINT PETER’S BASILICA
Sunday, April 10, 2005, 11:31 A.M.
The Swiss Guard tumbled to the floor as gracelessly as a drunk on the street, the only sound that of his ornate pike clattering onto the marble floor. His throat was slit from one side to the other, completely severing his trachea.
One of the nuns came out of the sacristy when she heard the noise. She never had the chance to scream. Karosky struck her on the face as hard as he could. The nun fell facedown on the floor. She was out cold. The killer took his time, dragging her by the right foot, which was nestled inside her religious garments. He felt around for the small of her neck. He chose the exact spot he wanted and put all his weight on the ball of his foot. Her neck made a dry cracking sound.
A second nun stuck her head into the sacristy with a confident air. She just needed a bit of help from her sister.
Karosky sunk his knife deep into her right eye. He threw her to the floor and dragged her over to the short hallway leading to the sacristy, where he had already deposited one of the bodies.
He surveyed his three corpses and then glanced at the door to the sacristy. He checked his watch.
He still had five minutes left to put the finishing touches on his work.
JUST OUTSIDE THE DOOR OF THE SANT’UFFIZIO
Sunday, April 10, 2005, 11:31 A.M.
What Fowler had said about a full confession made Paola’s jaw drop. Before she could get a word out, the front door of the Sant’Uffizio swung open with great flourish. Instead of the elderly priest who had greeted them earlier, standing before them was a bishop. Slender in build, with immaculate blond hair and beard, he looked to be about fifty years old. He spoke to Fowler with a German accent loaded with disdain and heavy r’s.
“Well, well. Look who turns up on my doorstep after all these years. To what do I owe the unexpected honor?”
“Bishop Hanër, I need to ask you a favor.”
“I am afraid, Padre Fowler, that you are not in the position to ask me for anything. Some twelve years ago I asked you something, and you refused to say a single word for days. Days! The commission may have found you innocent, but I did not. Please be on your way immediately.”
His index finger pointed in the direction of Porta Cavalleggeri. To Paola, his finger appeared so straight and inflexible, he could have drowned Fowler with it.
Fowler volunteered the rope himself.
“You still have not heard what I have to offer in exchange.”
The bishop crossed his arms.
“Go on, Fowler.”
“There’s a strong possibility that there will be a murder inside the basilica in the next half hour. Ispettore Dicanti, who is here with me, and I are trying to stop it. Sadly, we can’t get in. Camilo Cirin has denied us access. I ask your permission to pass through the palazzo as far as the parking lot so that we can enter the basilica without being seen.”
“And in exchange?”
“I will answer all of your questions about El Aguacate. Tomorrow.”
Hanër turned to Paola.
“Show me some identification.”
Paola didn’t have her police badge because Troi had made her surrender it. Happily for her, she still had the ID card that enabled her to pass in and out of UACV headquarters. She held it authoritatively in the bishop’s face, hoping it convinced him.
Hanër took the card from Dicanti’s hand. He studied her face and the photograph on the card, the UACV emblem, and even the magnetic band that identified who she was.
“Based on this, you can go in. I am inclined to believe, Fowler, that to your many other sins you have added concupiscence.”
Paola turned away so as to avoid having Hanër notice the smile spreading across her lips. She was relieved to see that Fowler stared back at the bishop with the same serious expression. Hanër cleared his throat, making no attempt to mask his contempt.
“Fowler, where you’re going you will be surrounded by blood and death. My feelings about you have not changed in the slightest. I don’t have any desire to let you in.”
The priest was about to respond to Hanër, but the bishop cut him off.
“Even so, I know you are a man of honor. I accept your petition. Today both of you will enter the basilica, but tomorrow you will meet me, and you will tell me the truth.”
That said, he stepped aside. Fowler and Dicanti entered the building. The lobby was elegant, painted a cream color and bare of moldings or adornment of any kind. The whole building hovered in a Sunday silence, and Paola suspected that the only person inside was Hanër, as wiry and agitated as an épée. The man regarded himself as the agent of God’s justice. She shivered just thinking what such an obsessed mind might have achieved if he had been around four hundred years earlier.
“I will see you tomorrow, Padre Fowler. And I will have the pleasure of showing you a document I am keeping for you.”
The priest led Paola down a hallway to the floor underground, without looking back once. He was perhaps afraid that he would find Hanër there, standing next to the door, waiting for him to come back tomorrow.
“Very unusual, Padre. People usually exit the Church through the Sant’Uffizio, not enter it.”
Fowler’s expression was a combination of irony and sadness.
“I hope that if we capture Karosky, we aren’t saving the life of a man who eventually is going to reward me with excommunication.”
They came to the emergency entrance. A window looked out into the parking lot. Fowler pressed the bar in the middle of the door and stuck his head out as innocuously as possible. One hundred feet away, the Swiss Guards vigilantly watched the street. He closed the door.
“We’ll have to make it quick. We have to get to Casey and explain the situation before Karosky can finish him off.”
“How are we going to get there?”
“We’ll exit the parking lot and keep going, staying as close to the wall as possible, walking in Indian file. At that point we are in front of the building where the pope holds his public audiences. We keep going, hugging the wall, until we get to the corner. We will have to cross on the diagonal as quickly as we can. Face right, because we have no idea if anyone will be looking for us in that area. I will go first, agreed?”
Paola nodded her head and started off, walking quickly. They made it to the sacristy without incident. An imposing edifice, attached to the side of the basilica. It was open all year to tourists and pilgrims, and its public spaces functioned as a museum that contained some of Christianity’s most beautiful treasures.
Fowler reached out to the door.
It was half-open.
THE SACRISTY, SAINT PETER’S BASILICA
Sunday, April 10, 2005, 11:42 A.M.
“Bad sign,” Fowler said as quietly as he c
ould.
Dicanti’s hand moved toward her waist, and she pulled out her revolver, a .38.
“Let’s go in.”
“I thought Troi had taken your pistol.”
“He made me turn in my automatic, which is standard issue for all cops. This little toy is only for emergencies.”
They crossed the threshold. The museum inside the sacristy was deserted, the lights turned off in its vitrines. The marble lining the walls and the floors reflected the minuscule amount of sunlight that entered through a handful of windows. It was midday, but the galleries were practically dark. Fowler led the way without a word, silently cursing the crunching noise his shoes made on the floor. They passed straight through four of the museum’s galleries without looking to either side. But in the sixth gallery, Fowler stopped in mid-step. On the ground a mere twenty inches in front of him, partially hidden in the shadows of the corridor he was about to enter, was an extradordinary sight: a white-gloved hand and an arm arrayed in vivid yellows, blues, and reds.
Rounding the corner, they discovered that the arm was connected to a Swiss Guard. He still clutched his staff with his left hand, but what had been eyes were now two empty sockets drained of blood. A little farther down the corridor Paola found two nuns in black habits and wimples, united in a last embrace.
Their eyes were missing too.
Paola cocked her gun. She and Fowler looked at each other knowingly.
“He’s here.”
They stood in the short hallway that led to the Vatican’s principal sacristy, which was typically roped off, its double doors left wide open so the public could satisfy its curiosity by staring at the room where the Holy Father put his robes on before celebrating mass.
The doors were closed.
“I hope for God’s sake we’re not too late,” Paola said, her eyes staring at the bodies on the floor.