An American Pope

By Doug Walker

A young American man named Justin is on holiday in Rome where he attends a mass at the Vatican. He picks up a crippled woman who has fallen in the aisle near his pew, and she seems to undergo a miraculous cure. Is it a sign from above? With the help of a powerful cardinal, Justin is elected pope. Renamed Pope Leo XIV, he sets out to liberalize the church -- a dangerous course of action considering that cardinals, bishops, tradition and even murderers are arrayed against him and his helpmate, an attractive nun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Walker
• Release date: May 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476166483

Doug Walker

Doug Walker is an Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, journalism graduate. He served on metropolitan newspapers, mostly in Ohio, for twenty years, as political reporter, both local and statehouse, along with stints as city editor and Washington correspondent. Teaching English in Japan, China and Eastern Europe were retirement activities. His first novel was “Murder on the French Broad,” published in 2010. Now occupying an old house in Asheville, NC, with his wife, he enjoys reading, tennis, short walks, TV and writing.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Pope was dead. No question about that. The Cardinal Camerlengo had verified this by calling the Pope three times by his name. With a nod to modern times, the medical staff double-checked, issued a death certificate and made the event public by notifying the Cardinal Vicar for the Diocese of Rome.

The Camerlengo then sealed the Pope's apartments, saw to it that the ring of the fisherman and the Papal seal were both broken, which is always done when a pope goes to heaven, then prepared for the novemdieles, the nine days of mourning. During the so-called interregnum, the Camerlengo is responsible for the government of the Church plus directing the election of a new pope.

This considerable power was in the hands of one Cardinal John Black, who happened to be an American. After twenty days of mourning and talking about what kind of a pope would fit the Church’s current needs, the College of Cardinals turned to the task of electing a new pope, usually one of their own.

About that same time a train was traveling south through France, making its way to Rome, carrying a thirty-two-year-old American student, Justin Scott, on a week-long holiday from studies of French and Italian. Scott hoped to enter the U.S. Foreign Service.

Fixing his gaze out the window, farms, woodlots, cows, assorted farm animals, the occasional village, Justin attempted to ignore the five companions in his compartment. The young Italian couple, writhing and clutching, almost in a sexual mode. The prim schoolmarm type with round glasses, owlish eyes, pointed nose and suspicious look. The old bearded man, immaculately dressed in an out-of-fashion suit and wide tie. One could almost smell the mothballs, but in Europe any attempt at elegance is welcome.

Then there was the sweet young thing across from him with an English accent and beaming good health. She had told him her name was Jane and she intended to see the sites in Rome, with an almost lascivious emphasis on seeing the sites. Obviously she didn’t want to see the sites alone, and if the opportunity for a head start on romance cropped up, so be it.

Where will you be staying? she asked, tapping him on the knee to break his concentrated stare out the window.

Justin considered his options. He had a girl in the States and he had attempted to be faithful. But a Roman holiday, what the heck. Probably a B&B, or maybe a hostel. Nothing too elaborate.

Me too, Jane bubbled. Maybe we could look together. Two heads are better than one.

Do you have a guidebook, or anything like that?

I do, she replied. It’s in my bag and we can get it out at the station. It’s a bit close in here for reading and sharing. She made a sidelong glance toward the young Italians who continually nudged into her space with their contortions. Then she added, ‘Roma, non basta una vita,’ that means, Rome, a lifetime is not enough. She giggled. I read it in the guidebook. It had been a long ride, but they would soon be in Rome.

CHAPTER TWO

Cardinal John Black as Camerlengo wielded considerable power, but he was unable to break the deadlock between the wrangling cardinals. More than a hundred of them (those over 80 were excluded) filed into the Sistine Chapel, took seats around the wall, each taking a paper ballot on which was written Eligo in summum pontificem – I elect a supreme Pontiff – but they didn’t.

Cardinal Giovanni Piovanelli was the most popular among the lot. During early balloting it seemed many cardinals were voting for themselves. Rules of secrecy were strictly adhered to, but the old rule that Cardinals had to remain in the Sistine Chapel under uncomfortable circumstances had been overturned. They were now housed in comfortable hotel lodgings, reducing the urgency for a rapid conclusion.

As the balloting advanced, Piovanelli was becoming the standout favorite. He was a hail-fellow-well-met type, always with a good word for his fellows, a joke or an original remark. The life of the party type, certainly the material for a popular pope.

At this point Cardinal Black as Camerlengo felt it his duty to speak out. We all know and admire Giovanni, he began. But as a bishop many of you will remember he shielded many child molesters. He moved pedophiles around his territory as if they were chessmen, shielding them from the public and from the law.

Cardinal Giovanni Piovanelli jumped to his feet in outrage and insisted he had done nothing wrong.

I understand that, Black asserted, The good cardinal sees nothing wrong with a sexual relationship between a man and a boy. He has often said that he was in such a relationship as a choirboy and is none the worse for it. Maybe so, but the good cardinal has an unusual mental toughness and outlook on life, possibly with the help of our Savior, that carries him through these situations. But if we should elect a person who condones and has actually condoned child molestation as pope, God help us.

A ripple of assent passed through the gathering, and because the cardinals weren’t confined to the Sistine Chapel as they would have been in bygone days, a motion for a two-week recess in balloting was carried.

The hiatus would give Piovanelli an opportunity to convince other cardinals that he was a reformed man begging forgiveness. On the other hand, Black, in charge of the transformation from dead to live pope, was hoping for a religious miracle while banging his head against the reality of Vatican politics, no different from any other rough and tumble political scrap. His task was not unlike herding cats.

CHAPTER THREE

Meanwhile Justin Scott and Jane had been tearing up the Roman scenic scene, a good part of their time spent in violent encounters on a double bed in a cheap hotel, occasionally glancing out the gritty window or laying on their backs in exhaustion and listening to the melody of street traffic blended with the almost constant blaring of horns. They were in the pulsating heart of life and loving it.

Then one morning toward the end of their stay and after an exhilarating sexual romp, Jane said she would carry out her plan to visit a friend enrolled in a convent on the fringe of town. Please give her my regards and tell her about our adventurous activities, Scott said.

Shooting him a cheerful glance, Jane replied. What a pity it would be to let Fiona in on our secret life. The poor girl might resign her nun’s commission and join us.

We’d need a larger bed.

No matter, I’m off. What’s your plan, my sweet?

The Vatican. No Roman sojourn is complete without it.

Ta.

Already showered and buffed, Jane was off to visit her friend.

Justin lolled in bed, stared at the ceiling and was tempted to spend the morning napping. As a former altar boy, his better angels tugged him from the bed and into the shower stall. Thoughts of strong Italian coffee and flaky pastries danced in his head as the water rained down upon him. Jane’s lithe unclad body was also foremost in his thoughts, along with flashbacks to his girlfriend in the States.

The Vatican was only a few blocks from his tacky hotel, with a number of small coffee shops along the way. Fortified with a four-euro repast, he plodded on, his thoughts now turning to all he had heard of that famed small city-state during his Catholic youth. Perhaps a backslider, Justin yet considered himself a stalwart of that True Church.

He knew well that Nero built a circus in the Ager Vaticanus in the first century AD, and it was likely in this stadium that St. Peter and other Christians were martyred during the next seventy years, their bodies buried anonymously along the circus wall. In the year 315, Emperor Constantine, the first Christian ruler of Rome, ordered the construction of a basilica on the site and the first St. Peter’s was consecrated in 326.

From that date forward, a series of popes, now numbering near 270, made addition after addition, improvement piled upon improvement, and that tradition continues today with each new pope adding his personal touch to resound through the ages yet to come.

For all his knowledge gained from the good nuns and various priests of his school years, Justin was filled with awe and a profound sense of spirituality as he stepped into the Piazza San Pietro, the immense square designed by Bernini for Christians of the world to gather. There were the two semicircular colonnades, each with its four rows of Doric columns.

In the center of the piazza was the obelisk sacked by Caligula from Heliopolis in ancient Egypt. In some areas Justin’s memory was almost photographic for things he had heard and read over the years. For the moment that he stood savoring his first encounter with the Vatican, the flood of history was almost overwhelming. Details that flashed through his mind were unexpected and startling.

The faith was something he was born into and he took for granted. Never in his lifetime had he felt a strong call to serve the church in any capacity, but he felt something here, on this sacred ground. It was almost as if produced in Hollywood where angels would hum, bells might ring and shafts of light would strike through the clouds.

A deep breath and the feeling evaporated, a feeling he imagined every Catholic might experience upon entering this storied city.

CHAPTER FOUR

After making the rounds, Justin stood before St. Peter’s Basilica. He had acquired a guidebook and read what he had heard was true, that despite 150 years of work on the new basilica, despite thousands of dedicated and talented workers, St. Peter’s owes the most to Michelangelo, who took over the project in 1547 at the age of 72 and was responsible for the design of the dome.

With soft music filtering through the massive doors and pilgrims slowly entering the cathedral, Justin moved with the crowd, caught in a babble of languages, marching solemnly as supplicants, many of them in religious attire, quite a number of nuns, possibly on their one and only trip to the Vatican. What a waste, Justin thought, to be a nun and not enjoy the wonders of sex, the joy of motherhood. He speculated whether many were lesbians, caught up in their own culture. Then he snapped back to his altar boy days, and he wondered if his very thoughts constituted sin. It had been years since he had been to confession. At this time, in this setting, he felt he should remedy that soon. How many other pilgrims were of the same mind?

Justin moved with the thinning crowd halfway down the aisle, genuflected and slipped into one end of a pew.

The mass just beginning was one of a series Cardinal John Black had ordered to pray for divine guidance in search of a new pope. He was a man of the people, welcoming the involvement of the masses. Black and quite a few nobles of the church were in attendance, seated on throne-like seats facing the congregation.

Black looked out over the gathering crowd and his heart was buoyed up despite the petty politics and friction at play in naming a new pontiff. There had been sleepless nights, but the sight of this