“We meet again,” Steve said with a smile as he came forward to embrace his old friend.
“Steve! It is wonderful to see you. How long has it been since I visited you in Maryland… seven, eight years?”
“More like ten years, Angelo.”
“I am happy you managed to elude the Knights of Carthage in Israel, and forgive me again for giving out your address. But I explained why I had no choice. Now that you’re here you have to stay here with me. I’ll arrange a room for you.”
“In the catacombs?” Steve asked laughing.
“Good heavens, no. You’d freeze down there. Either that or the rats would nibble you to death.”
*****
A rear door opened and both priests rose to their feet as Angelo introduced Steve to Lucinda, a pretty young Italian woman who wore a big smile as she swept in with two cups of cappuccino, a tray heaped high with focaccia—lightly sprinkled with salt, fresh from the oven—and a large bowl of fagioli bianci.
After Lucinda went back to the kitchen, Angelo leaned over close to Steve and whispered, “Lucinda is our cook and housekeeper. For reasons of decorum, she is only here in the daytime. She comes here early to prepare breakfast, and lunch at midday. Then she leaves about six in the evening after preparing my dinner.”
“Are we having dinner now?” Steve asked, looking at the huge pile of food. “It’s only about three o’clock.”
“No, no. This is only a snack.”
“If I ate like this every day, Angelo, I would soon be as fat as….”
“Go ahead and say it.” Every morning when I say Mass I say to Jesus, “Thank you for making me fat and happy.”
Two hours later, after each had consumed three cups of cappuccino, and slices of bread which they repeatedly heaped with fagioli bianci and had relived old times at the university, Father Angelo listened attentively to all the details of Steve’s story. At the end of the tale, Angelo’s first reaction was that the whole business was ridiculous. “There’s nothing invalid about a human clone. Yes, the church would frown on the people who were involved in the cloning—certainly a mortal sin. But,” he laughed, slapping Steve’s leg, “it could be removed in confession with a million Hail Mary’s. The clone himself, on the other hand, would be an innocent party. Not a single Hail Mary.”
“But what about the animal cells?”
“Steve, my friend,” Angelo said affably as he reached over and patted his fellow priest on the shoulder, “we all have a touch of animal in us. We are animals! The only difference is that we are animals who have risen above the pack. We have learned how to build cities and churches, how to start wars, and how to make ourselves and others thoroughly miserable. Not always, but a lot of the time. So your cardinal is after you. Well, my friend, you’re safe here. I don’t recall ever seeing a cardinal leave the splendor of the Vatican to come to this musty underground place of the dead. And if the Knights of Carthage come looking for you, I will scare hell out of those young thugs with stories of the dangers that lie below. By the way, where have you been staying?”
“I’ve been staying at a pensione near the Spanish Steps.”
“Ah yes, the Piazza di Spagna. Well, you must come and stay here with me. I have plenty of room.”
“I’ll take you up on the offer because I’m getting kicked out of the pensione. Angelo, are you still in charge of the catacombs?”
“Of course! But not all of them. Only the San Callisto Catacombs. And that is enough for one man. It is my life work. I am what you Americans refer to as the CEO. I am the Chief Executive Officer of the place where the early Christians laid their brethren to rest. You may not know this, Steve, but these catacombs are a pretty big business.”
“I assume you’re referring to tourist admissions.”
“Yes, that brings in money, but the big money lately has come from your cable channels in America. Several of them have made TV documentaries of the catacombs.”
“You charged them for that?”
“Why not? Certainly I charged them. They paid an arm, my friend, and a leg. They can afford it. They make millions putting things like that on TV.”
“From the photographs on the wall you seem to be doing restorations. That must cost some money.”
“No. All that is paid for by universities. Out of their research budgets.”
Father Angelo stood up laughing. He slapped Steve on the back. “When you studied in Rome did you ever tour the catacombs?”
“Yes, but briefly. I had just a quick tourist visit one day while I was jogging along the old Appian Way. I’d like to see them again.” As Steve said this he had an unnerving feeling that he might need the catacombs as a safe hiding place in case Cardinal Rhinehart and the Passion brothers ever got wind that he was in Rome, not to mention the Knights of Carthage who knew he had left Israel for Rome.
“Then let me give you a real tour.”
Angelo brought Steve into a large outer room. “The doors over there lead to the chapel. We can visit that later. If you decide to stay here I’ll show you the rooms upstairs. The refectory is back behind the office we were just in.”
“I think I forgot how you get down to the catacombs.”
“There is only one real entrance. The staircase leading down is over by the wall. We bring the visitors into this room, give them a little talk, tell them to stay close behind the guide with the flashlight and not wander off by themselves. Then we take them down those stairs. There were originally a number of other entrances probably for workmen to bury bodies and seal the crypts, but the holes were kept covered… disguised. Then through the years they became completely obscured by overgrowth, and in fact, no one knew there were catacombs here until they were discovered sometime in the sixteenth century.”
Angelo picked up a flashlight and motioned to Steve to follow him.
The pair descended a crudely hewn stone staircase, no more than shoulder wide. Steve ran his hands along the rough-hewn walls for support as he descended. He noticed that Angelo had difficulty negotiating the confined space. Steve shuddered slightly at the cold that seemed to be coming out of the walls enveloping him, and the dank darkness lit only by Angelo’s bobbing flashlight. As they walked along a passageway, Steve noticed that another staircase led down to an even lower level. “How many levels are there in here?” he asked.
“Few people know this but in places it goes down five levels. The catacombs were ancient burial grounds, as I’m sure you know. Some historians claim they were used as places where the Christians could hide from the Romans because the Christian religion was outlawed until the time of Constantine. Others dispute this. I personally believe Christians hid here. I know this place. It is the largest of the catacombs. The intricate passageways are said to run thirteen miles—perhaps as far as fifteen miles under Rome, with scores of side passages. Who could find a better hiding place… a place where you could perform religious ceremonies without detection? And we are blessed with the fact that there is a crypt here where nine early popes were laid to rest. Now, Steve, stop me if you remember this from an earlier visit, but if not let me continue.” In the back of Angelo’s mind was the thought that if Steve stayed at the catacomb he might be able to help giving tours to visitors because one of Angelo’s seminarian guides was off on vacation.
“Please go on, Angelo,” Steve replied. The same thought had occurred to him—while living there, he might pass the time by giving tours himself. He wanted to get refreshed on the details.
“Well, in the first few centuries after Christ,” Angelo continued, “religious persecution was widespread in Rome. Many Christians met death at the hands of Roman mobs or by animals in the Colisseum and Circus Maximus. They were the early martyrs for the faith. If their bodies could be recovered, they were buried here. It is believed that the Christians attended Mass and other services down here at altars built near the tombs of martyrs and saints. Here for example is an altar outside the tomb of a saint.”
“Where is the body? Th
e crypt looks empty.”
“Long gone. When the catacombs were, shall we say, rediscovered, the tombs were looted for bones of the saints. It was even done by some clergy for altars in the church. As you know, each Catholic altar used to require sacred relics—the bones of a saint perhaps, or more likely, tiny pieces of bone in the small reliquary under the altar stone. Many of those relics undoubtedly came from here. Of course, as you know, since Vatican II, altar relics are no longer required. And that is good, my friend, because this place is just about empty now.”
As the pair continued along the passageway, Angelo pointed to the frescoes on the walls with his flashlight. “The paintings display the message that death is not the end... for the faithful there is eternal life. This was the essential message of early Christianity. It was a powerful influence in the spread of Christianity.”
“However, not unique to Christianity,” Steve said. “The concept of an afterlife appears in many religions and cultures. The Egyptians are a good example.”
“True, Steve. Egyptian kings and nobility were believed to have the afterlife. But Christianity brought the concept of an afterlife down to the level of the common people.”
Pointing his light at the walls as the pair stepped slowly along the earthen-floored passageway, Angelo explained, “As you can see, Steve, many paintings depict beautiful gardens where the faithful would presumably spend the afterlife. Some of the artists seemed to think the afterlife would be filled with wine and perpetual dancing and merriment in beautiful gardens. It was their concept of paradise. You know, it’s a shame we have had to close many of the catacomb areas to the public because of these beautiful but delicate wall paintings that could be harmed by the moisture in human breath.”
Angelo stopped to take a breath after the exertion of winding through the catacombs and going up and down narrow staircases. After a minute or so, he continued his explanation. “The paintings are not only religious in nature but also give an idea of daily life in the first and second centuries after Christ.” Angelo stopped abruptly. “Look down there, Steve.” he said, pointing the flashlight down into the dark abyss below. “The galleries are five levels deep in this area connected by steep narrow staircases with uneven steps. You have to watch your step going down there. Further, some areas have abrupt dropoffs that go down to only God knows where. Many have never been explored.”
Further along the passageway, Angelo stopped again. His flashlight made a circle of light on the dark brown wall. “These walls as you can see are carved out for resting places for the dead. The crypts are stacked—cut out one on top of another.”
“Like bunk beds,” Steve commented.
“Yes, bunk beds for eternal sleep. See, this wall crypt could hold six bodies from floor to ceiling in one stack of wall sepulchers.”
“How many bodies to a crypt?”
“Typically only one. But some held room for a husband and wife if they died at the same time. The bodies were not embalmed. After the bodies were placed in the wall, the sepulchers were sealed after a fashion with thin slabs of stone and a type of mortar. Scratched in the mortar was the identity of the deceased. The seal was also important to block out the odor. It’s moldy smelling now, but in ancient times, the odor of rotting bodies waiting to be sealed must have been overpowering.”
“What’s that tomb over there?” Steve asked.
“Oh that’s the tomb of a wealthy person. Name unknown now. The wealthy were buried in marble sarcophagi, usually with carvings on the front.”
“Was this all done with rock carvings? Must have been tough cutting all this out.”
“Not as difficult as one might think. The rock under Rome is soft volcanic tufo rock—it lends itself well to carving and tunneling.”
Further on, after passing through elaborately carved archways and seemingly endless rooms decorated with fading frescoes, Angelo asked, “Had enough, Steve? Let’s go back upstairs.”
*****
A short time later, the pair sat again in the rectory office. Father Angelo poured the wine. “Seriously, my friend. Come live here with me and I guarantee you will be safe while we wait to get word back from the Vatican through—what do you Americans call it: Ah yes, back channels. I assume the matter of cloning and chimeras has been under study at the urging of your Cardinal Rhinehart. I have an influential friend who can find out what progress is being made, but frankly, a decision could be months or years away and, of course, it is subject to the approval of the pontiff. And let me be very frank, my friend: the power structure in the Vatican these days sometimes frightens me. You probably know that the powerful cardinals at the top are ultra-conservative. This does not speak well for questions that test the limits of the faith. As you are probably aware, every pontiff who came after Vatican II tried to throw the church back a hundred...maybe even five hundred years. Take this information to heart, but don’t quote me.”
“Yes, I know about that,” Steve said, shaking his head and frowning. “There are signs of it everywhere. If a college theology professor in the United States does not teach strictly according to Vatican dogma, he is dismissed. Nowadays in America, liberal thinkers are disciplined. And it’s probably true here in Europe and the rest of the world. This latest trend troubles me. If you study the history of the church over two thousand years, you find it has not only continued painstakingly defining its dogma, but has also allowed its dogma to evolve to some extent.”
“Yes, my friend. People tend to think that the church never changes but a good example of what you’re saying is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. If you recall, the idea of Mary’s Immaculate Conception first surfaced in the eighth century, and gradually grew more widespread through the centuries. And as we both know it became dogma—binding on Catholics by Pius IX in 1854. There has been a healthy evolution through past years, but in the years after Vatican II, new ideas have just about come to a standstill. It’s obvious the ultra-conservatives in the church have taken over in the years following Vatican II. So my friend, Steve, I don’t want to sound too pessimistic about the outcome of your case, but...well let’s wait and see. Remember the old saying: ‘The pendulum swings’.”
Rising from his seat with some effort due to his bulk, Angelo took Steve by the arm and led him into the small chapel beside his office where the two of them knelt in prayer.
Later, at Angelo’s urging, Steve agreed it would be wise to move in with his friend.
“Do you want to borrow my car to return to the pensione for your things?”
Steve was hesitant. “Honestly, Angelo, I appreciate the offer but the traffic has gotten so heavy and chaotic in Rome, I’m afraid I’d bring your car back with dented fenders.”
“Then that settles it,” Angelo replied with a big smile. “Take the car. You will see that the fenders are already dented. In Rome, we don’t pay attention to dented fenders. Almost every car on the road has had some unrepaired damage inflicted on it—a nick here, a gouge there. Even when people get paid for the damage, many of them pocket the money and don’t bother getting the car fixed. The reason is simple: why fix dents in a car that will soon be dented again?”
39
Steve found the days spent living at the catacombs peaceful and pleasant. He established a routine. After saying Mass in a small chapel in the early morning, he would be off for his morning run along the ancient Appian Way. The cobblestone road was hard on his feet and knees but the magic of running along the ancient Roman road—the former southern gateway to Rome, quickened his throbbing pulse as it uplifted his spirit. His nostrils widened to take in the clean fresh air that filled his lungs from the pines that lined the road. The joy, bordering on rapture, more than compensated for the stiffness he felt in his joints until he was warmed up. His cares were left behind like the bits of sweat that ran off his body evaporating as they hit the ground. After his run it was a cool shower and a big breakfast with Angelo.
“If I attempted to run like you, my friend,” Angelo commented
one morning, “I’m afraid my legs would collapse under my weight. No advice, please,” Angelo added when he saw Steve’s raised eyebrows and believed Steve was at the point of trying to convince him to take up running and ease up on eating. “God may have to widen the pearly gates to let me in, but I have faith He will do it.”
*****
One morning, about two weeks after settling in at the catacombs, Steve sent a postcard in an envelope to Jonathon that also included a short impersonal note to be forwarded to Janet. He found it painful writing to Janet. A bright cheery hello from Rome. He had to write as if he were no more than an acquaintance even though there were so many things he longed to say, but dared not. He wondered about her reconciled marriage. He loved her enough to want her to be happy but he almost couldn’t bear the thought of her in another man’s arms. Although he dared not write to any of his friends in the American clergy, he felt it was safe to tell Janet he was living in the San Callisto Catacombs, waiting for an answer from the Vatican. He never received an answer from Janet. He wasn’t sure why—perhaps a return letter was lost in the overseas mail. When he communicated with Jonathon it was always by phone or e-mail because they each wondered about the reliability of overseas mail.
After a few weeks, Steve found that days spent in running, taking meals with Angelo, saying Mass and reading his Holy Office, although relaxing and rejuvenating, were not active enough. He felt he should be accomplishing something more. He decided to help out with the tourist visits to the catacombs. In black cassock, with Roman collar and flashlight, he found he could give quite satisfactory tours in English and reasonably satisfactory tours in French—the latter a language learned in college, and soon forgotten due to disuse, but which after considerable study, had begun to come back to him. Father Angelo gave occasional tours in his native Italian. Several seminarian assistants conducted the tours in German, Greek, and Spanish.
*****
Steve would not soon forget one tour in the catacombs with a group of grade school children.