“That’s horrible. Was this because of my visit?”
Zach forced a smile.
“Don’t know.”
“Why does the pope want to see me?”
“Don’t know that, either. But, whether he wants to or not, he’ll like you. Even if he’s made of marble, he’ll like you.”
Zach looked at me for a moment too long.
I cleared my throat, refilled his wineglass.
“I want you to take this seriously. Look at me, Brigid. It’s not safe for you here. This is Rome. It’s Easter week. You’re a woman priest going against the Catholic Church. These are unsettling times. You know what I mean?”
Of course I knew. The deepening planetary crisis—rampant terrorism, mutating disease, dramatic weather patterns every year…none of these patterns were good. Science-fiction fantasies of a self-driving car in every garage and a top doctor on the other end of every phone had not come true on this ravaged planet, which was one downed airplane away from an apocalyptic war.
Even clean air and water and food, basics that people had once taken for granted, were in short supply. People asked why. Some answered that this was because of lack of faith in God.
Lifelong believers and the newly faithful were coming back to religion, and some saw JMJ as an attempt to overthrow the two-thousand-year reign of the Roman Catholic Church.
That had never been our goal. Never. We only offered an alternative to those who felt excluded by canon law.
“I hear you, Zach. I understand. But I couldn’t refuse an audience with the pope, could I? He’s assigned bodyguards to us. I’ll be back in Cambridge before you know it.”
Gilly brought me my sweater, and after a barely tasted chocolate-and-peanut “exotic passion” dessert, Zach said he had to go. Cheek kisses were exchanged all around, and then, with a tight smile, he left our room.
Gilly asked, “Is Zach okay?”
“Yes, of course. You don’t think so?”
“I think he loves you, Mommy.”
“He loves you, too, Gilly. Hey. Let’s unpack. Hang up our clothes and go to bed. Tomorrow we have an audience with the pope.”
For once, she didn’t argue with me.
Chapter 111
I WOKE up four or five times that night.
Each time I looked at the bedside clock, it was an hour closer to my private audience with His Holiness Pope Gregory XVII.
I tried on worst-case scenarios: he would say that I wasn’t a priest. He would tell me that none of the sacraments I had performed were valid: not marriages, Communion, last rites. He would tell me I was endangering mortal souls.
Was I doing that?
I groaned and shifted in the bed that I shared with Gilly. Along with having concerns about meeting with the pope, I was shocked at the anger we’d touched off with our breakaway church.
Zach was right. It was dangerous here. I should never have taken Gilly with me to Rome.
Gilly poked me with her elbow and told me to stop flopping around on the bed, to stop sighing. “Just think of fluffy clouds or something and calm down.”
“Thanks, peanut.”
“If Daddy were here, he would say exactly the same.”
We slept, and in the morning, we dressed in black, which was definitely a new look for my little girl and me. Thanks to my father, from whom I’d heard it, I remembered what Henry David Thoreau had written: Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Still, black dresses and headscarves were proper protocol for women meeting with the pope.
Giuseppe and Alberto, our dedicated gendarmes, picked us up outside the hotel without incident, and soon our sleek car, flying triangular, yellow-and-white Vatican flags from a pole on the hood, was speeding toward Vatican City.
During the time I’d lived in Rome, I’d learned the city, but to Gilly, this was all new, and it was grand.
Our car took us on Viale della Trinità dei Monti, passing the Villa Borghese gardens on the right. From there, we crossed the Tiber on the Ponte Regina Margherita, and not long after that, we turned onto Via della Conciliazione toward St. Peter’s Square, where preparations were being made for the expected millions on Easter Sunday.
And that was when my apprehension vanished, leaving behind something like sunny optimism.
I realized that I had been imagining the pope as another version of my supercritical father. But the pope had invited me to the Vatican. He had made me very comfortable and welcome and safe. Meeting with him was an honor, a privilege, and an extraordinary opportunity to tell him about my experience as a priest. I would tell him about my overwhelming acceptance and could cite examples of other woman priests in the many breakaway churches who were having a positive effect on their congregations.
The air was crisp and the temperature fair when we arrived at the Apostolic Palace, where Pope Gregory spent his days.
This was it.
Gilly and I were going to meet the head of the Catholic Church, the man who represented Christ on earth to more than a billion Catholics.
I was ready.
Chapter 112
FATHER RAPHAEL met us at the car and took us into the Apostolic Palace through the Portone di Bronzo. It was a true palace of enormous scale and breathtaking grandeur. I knew that it had a thousand rooms—fish ponds, conservatories, museums and chapels, including the glorious Sistine Chapel, and other rooms that were not open to the public.
But the priest didn’t give us a guided tour. Rather, he led us without comment through frescoed rooms and long, gilded corridors hung with ancient religious paintings and, from there, up three tall stories of marble staircase, the most direct route to the pope’s office.
As we climbed, I became aware of a tingling sensation across my cheeks, as if water were drying on my skin. A slight breeze ruffled my hair.
I held tight to Gilly’s hand as Father Raphael showed us into the office where Pope Gregory worked. The walls were ecru patterned with gold. Gold damask hung at the windows, and the pope, wearing white vestments, sat at his desk facing the door.
Pope Gregory looked in real life as he did on screen. He was white haired and a bit stooped, with genial features and an exceptionally warm smile.
When we entered the room, he rose to his feet, stepped out from behind his desk, and came toward us, extending his hand. I dropped a practiced curtsy and kissed his ring. Gilly stared up at Pope Gregory and said, “You’re so—radiant.”
He smiled widely and said, “Thank you, Gillian. You’re also very radiant, and so pretty.”
Father Raphael stepped forward and asked Gilly if she would help him feed the fish.
“We have big fish that you can feed by hand, signorina, and conservatories where very tall trees grow under glass.”
“May I go, Mom? Please?”
When Gilly had skipped off with Father Raphael, the pontiff directed me to a seating area across the room from his desk. After he took a seat in an ornate white upholstered armchair, I dropped into a similar but simpler chair across from him, with a low, wooden table between us.
He said, “I’ve been told that you speak Italian.”
“Yes.”
That sparkling sensation on my cheeks and forehead seemed to intensify. It reminded me of the dusting of snow on my face when James and I sat with Bishop Reedy in his horse-drawn carriage on our way to our wedding reception.
God. Are You here?
I accepted coffee and tried to be just normal Brigid while sitting opposite the Supreme Pontiff. He made small talk, and as he asked about the flight and accommodations, the tingling on my face extended to my folded hands and my crossed ankles, and I felt that special warmth inside my chest. The breeze circled the white furnishings, riffling the skirts on the pontiff’s chair.
Could the pope feel the breeze? I couldn’t tell.
He was saying in Italian, “I wanted to meet you, Brigid, because so many people are drawn to your church. Tell me, please, about what I think you call your ‘communi
cations’ with our heavenly Father.”
When he said “il nostro Padre celeste,” present reality cleaved in the same way it had for me before, during enormous stress and in the presence of God.
I was looking directly at Pope Gregory and also looking down on the two of us from overhead. I saw the particles that I had only felt before. They were like flecks of gold floating away from me, swirling within a vortex around the pope and me like the fallen autumn leaves eddying around the feet of Bishop Reedy’s dappled horses.
God, are You here?
The resonance, almost like a voice, came to me.
Be with Gregory.
I was with the pope, seeing myself through his eyes. I saw my long, curling hair, my hazel eyes, and my mother’s heart-shaped face. I saw the details of my dress: the darts, the tucks, the stitches in the hem, the cutouts in the lace of my scarf.
My view swiped to the left and flowed past the centuries-old gold-framed painting of Jesus’s resurrection on the wall behind the pontiff. And then my view locked in.
I was back in my own body, looking at the pope in minute detail. But the most striking thing was, I saw that Pope Gregory was seeing me. He saw what I looked like, but also, I felt that he was reading my heart.
He asked, “Sei in presenza di Dio in questo momento?” Are you in God’s presence now?
I said, “Yes. I feel Him here.”
“Please describe this feeling.”
I had to tell him. At least, I had to try. I started out haltingly, but as I spoke, the words came out simply and truthfully.
“It is a feeling that I must call exalted, Your Holiness. I feel that God is with me and I am being directed by Him. I remain in place, and, simultaneously, I leave my body and can see things that don’t exist in stationary reality. I have an expanded awareness of myself, and of the moment, and of other people who are with me. Sometimes I am powerfully aware of people who have died, and I feel that they are aware of me—as if they were living.
“Right now, Your Holiness, I have an expanded awareness of you.”
“Do you feel a slight breeze?”
He waggled the fingers of his ring hand beside his face.
I swallowed hard and said, “Yes.”
He placed his hand over his heart. “Do you feel warm inside?”
“Yes, I do.”
The pope nodded and said, “I too. I see a very soft light around you. And I hear an intonation in here.” He touched his temple. “Be with Brigid.”
I gasped. I had never told anyone about the directives: Be with Colin. Be with James. Be with Gilly. I had told no one at all. And now Pope Gregory had said, “Be with Brigid.”
He was also with God, both of us were, together. I felt almost consumed with love for him.
I said, “Be with Gregory.”
His face crumpled with emotion. He crossed himself and kissed the plain cross he wore on a heavy chain around his neck. As I struggled to stay with Gregory, His Holiness said, “Will you pray with me?”
We prayed, the pope in his ornate armchair and flowing vestments, I in the more austere seat and black clothing, across from him. I folded my hands and kept my feet flat on the ground as the pope asked God for peace and unity in the world. A breath of air whispered through my clothes and hair and whirled around my ankles.
We said “amen” in unison, and just then, Gilly ran into the room, her shoes clattering on the polished floor, her face flushed with excitement.
The pope stood and reached out to her, and Gilly went directly to him and threw her arms around his waist. He gave her a hug she would never forget for the rest of her life.
She said, “Thank you for letting me see your wonderful home.”
The pope looked down at her fondly and said, “I love having you and your mother as my guests. God’s blessings on you both.”
Father Raphael took photos, and then the pope kissed the top of Gilly’s head and put his hand on my arm.
“Please keep me in your prayers,” he said. “Go safely with God.”
Chapter 113
THE CHURCH of the Sacred Heart was at the juncture of two narrow, winding cobblestoned streets. The street was choked by protesters and some who supported JMJ.
I was torn. I didn’t want to bring Gilly into this chaos, but, at the same time, it was Maundy Thursday. I felt compelled to go to this church that had received an unspecified but still credible threat.
“Gilly, stay in the car with Alberto, okay?”
“Not okay,” she said. “Mom. I’m coming, too. No one is going to hurt us. I’m sure of it. Besides, the pope has given us his protection.”
“Gilly, stay.”
“No.”
Giuseppe and Alberto, big men with guns, were still with us. They cleared the way as we waded into the constricted, crowd-filled Via di Santa Maria Maggiore. I was recognized immediately. There was just nothing subtle about my tall frame, my flame-red hair, and my mini-me, tripping along beside me. People gathered around us.
I squeezed outstretched hands and said “Buongiorno” and “God bless you” as our bodyguards urged us forward.
We entered the church, an architecturally perfect ninth-century basilica with Byzantine mosaics in the apse and granite columns forming the side aisles. Behind the high altar was a magnificent oil painting of the Crucifixion.
Gilly and I genuflected before the altar, and then Sacred Heart’s priest, Father Vincenzo Mastronicola, introduced himself.
I said, “Father, I only heard about the threat last night. I am so sorry.”
“Thank you for coming here to say Mass. So many people have come to receive Communion from you.”
Within a few minutes, the crowd on the street filled the church out to the walls. After I was introduced, I spoke to the congregation about how much it meant to me to be with them during Easter week.
I had just begun Mass when a cracking boom reverberated throughout the church. People screamed and hit the floor. I ran down to where Gilly sat in a front pew and covered her body as I had done at JMJ Millbrook when Lawrence House had pulled his gun.
As I crouched on the floor, waiting for bullets to puncture flesh and ricochet off stone, I feared for Gilly and for myself. Had we lived the full extent of our lives? Was this the meaning of the visions I had experienced in the presence of the pope and of God? Was I ready to die?
I felt no breeze, no vortex, no shifting of place or time. The creaking of rusted door hinges cut through the moans and frightened sobs. Giuseppe had come through the sacristy doorway into the transept.
He shouted, “Everyone! A bomb exploded on Via San Giovanni Gualberto. This exit is the safest way to leave the church.”
Giuseppe helped Gilly and me up from the floor and out the side door, saying, “A car will pick us up on the next street. We have to get you out of here before all traffic is detained.”
As the big man led us out, people touched me, kissed my scarf. Tears wet their cheeks.
I said, “God protect you,” but I thought, I’m Brigid. Just Brigid.
“Vai con Dio, Brigid,” Father Mastronicola called out to me. “Go with God.”
Chapter 114
ZACH WAS pacing near the curbside check-in at Alitalia. Once I was out of the car, he hugged me, hard, and he picked Gilly up into his arms. Zach and Giuseppe accompanied the two of us to the flight lounge, where we sat with our backs to the wall until our flight was called.
Both men walked us to the check-in desk, Zach saying, “I’m glad to say good-bye to you, Red. Do you hear me? I’m happy. Keep your head down, will you, please? Call me when you get home.”
The flight to Boston was scheduled to leave on time.
We stowed our luggage overhead and buckled in, and I noticed that my normally energetic Gilly was quiet and thoughtful.
“What are you thinking, peanut?”
“About the pope, Mommy. See if Father Raphael sent the pictures.”
I turned on my phone and saw that, yes, he had.
> Actually, it was a little video of the pope hugging Gilly and putting his hand on my arm, asking me to pray for him.
“We should do that now,” Gilly said.
We prayed for Pope Gregory, and moments later, the plane sailed down the runway and lifted smoothly into the air. Once we’d reached cruising altitude, Gilly fell asleep. I pulled down the window shade and tipped my seat back. There was some chance I could sleep. If only.
But I couldn’t stop examining and replaying the remarkable events of the past thirty-six hours. We had slept in a hotel suite fit for royalty. We had survived an attack that may have been directed at the JMJ church.
Between those events, I had spent the most precious time with Pope Gregory XVII, who had astounded me with his—how else can I say it?—his holiness.
Be with Brigid.
I dropped off to sleep with the hum of engines in my ears, thoughts of Pope Gregory in my mind, and my beloved child sleeping peacefully beside me.
When I awoke, we had landed. Dawn was backlighting the wing tips, and my cell phone was buzzing in my pocket.
I had a text from Zach.
Brigid, he wrote. I’m sorry to tell you. Pope Gregory died in his sleep.
Chapter 115
THE PRESS was waiting for us when Gilly and I went through customs at Boston’s Logan Airport. Even from fifty yards away, I could see that the reporters were charged up, bordering on frenzied, and there were a lot of them.
I had a hope that they were on our side. I knew so many of these people from the morning press meetings I’d held on the front steps of the rectory at JMJ Millbrook.
But, still, the sight of the mass-media scrum was daunting.
I needed time to absorb that Pope Gregory had died in his sleep as memories of being with him just two days ago flashed through my mind. I had even more questions than before.
Why had the pope summoned me to the Vatican? To learn if I had a genuine connection to God? Did he know that he was going to die? Was he giving me a message when he asked me to pray with him and for him?