TRILOGY: Bk I (Jackass for the Hour), Ch 24

Is that the way a priest should act?

“Do you remember my wedding pictures?” asked the commander.

“Sure,” Eliyahu replied. “The lesson was… Don’t trust anyone! But that’s old news.”

“We have a prisoner for you to guard, Eliyahu.”

“So, I’m being demoted?” asked the young soldier.

“Only if you fail,” came the quick reply. “He’s really very cunning.”

•••—•••—•••

Father Alexámenos and the old Rabbi walked off the plane together, with Father Alexámenos bringing the carry-on luggage for the Rabbi. They went through the passport control together. The passport officer looked for just a second at Father Alexámenos, and then at the computer screen in front of him. He then looked back at Father Alexámenos and flipped him his passport. Father Alexámenos went through and waited for the Rabbi, who was being delayed. The agent was making a phone call. Father Alexámenos had a sinking feeling in his stomach, like the drama was about to begin. The Rabbi’s passport was then checked without incident. Father Alexámenos went with the Rabbi to help collect his luggage, placing it on top of a push cart.

As they went through customs in area ‘A’, four military police took Father Alexámenos into custody. Though he didn’t resist, his arm was twisted behind his back, almost dislocating it, forcing him to fall to the ground, at which point he was hand-cuffed – arms behind his back – and dragged by the hand-cuffs, something which again almost dislocated both shoulders, for one of the officers was stepping on his legs as they dragged him. The manacles made deep cuts in his wrists. They were going out of their way to humiliate the priest since the media were there for the show. They had prejudged Father Alexámenos as guilty based on the reports they had heard about him. “All priests are paedophiles,” they shouted.

As soon as they were out of the view of the cameras, the police took off the hand-cuffs, had him sit in a chair, and bandaged the cuts they had just made. They didn’t like blood all over their offices. They put the cuffs on again over the bandages. They did not question him. That was not their duty. He was to be transferred to another location; they did not yet know where.

The Rabbi looked up and saw the television monitors in the airport. All that was being shown were the horrible images. He was now almost certain that the reports were a misrepresentation. He wanted to complain about the rough treatment he saw. He went to the Carabinieri and said that he was a Rabbi in Rome, and was a friend of Father Alexámenos, and would like to lodge a formal complaint about what he said was mistreatment. Normally, the Military Police would have treated him with utmost courtesy, but this time they were so astounded at this unexpected interference in a matter much bigger than all of them that the two officers he had been speaking with left him without saying anything. The Rabbi remained where he was outside the door. The officers knew the gravity of the complaints lodged by the Arab states against the Holy See and Italy, and the Rabbi’s complaint in favour of the priest in front of the television cameras was making for an impossible situation. Finally, after ten minutes, the officers came to tell the Rabbi that the priest would be treated well.

“Where is he going to be kept?” asked the Rabbi.

“It has been decided that he will be detained at an undisclosed location,” they said. “In fact, he’s already been taken away.”

This was televised live, not that the Rabbi intended this. He was speaking only for himself, not all Judaism. Yet, the reporters played this up, with Judaism on one side, Islam on the other, and, they guessed, both the Pope and Father Alexámenos in the middle. The media had just started to broadcast the conversation between himself and Father Alexámenos on the plane, which they had obtained from, of all places, the Iranian Embassy. The television screens ran subtitles for the modern Hebrew, while broadcasting pictures of the Rabbi standing at the door of the Carabinieri’s office where Father Alexámenos had been taken. The reporters were already assuming that many involved would find a trial put on by the Holy See to be expedient to their own interests.

Besides trumping up the political angle, the media were billing Father Alexámenos as the heretic of heretics, an idea being insisted upon by Cardinal Fidèle, who was holding a press conference in which he spoke of certain difficulties with the theology of Father Alexámenos. The connection between doctrine and morality was easy to accept in the circumstances.

As the military police awaited orders, they had a television turned on in the office where they were keeping Father Alexámenos. They were mocking him, the priesthood in general, as well as the Church. At one point, one officer, in seeing the images repeated beyond the limit of his endurance, shouted at Father Alexámenos, asking, “Is that the way a priest should act?” Father Alexámenos did not answer. “Is it?” the officer shouted again. When Father Alexámenos still would not answer, the officer slapped him so hard across the face that Father Alexámenos fell backwards in the chair to the floor. The Captain, with his back to them all, had been working on a report about the priest being apprehended, and, without turning around, quietly told them not to exaggerate.

They knew that Father Alexámenos could not be placed in a common prison or gaol, where he would be a disruption, even in solitary confinement. He could be killed by other prisoners or guards over the accusations of child abuse. Any Muslim prisoners might want to kill him due to the reports of what he said to the Rabbi. Reporters and various pressure groups would be causing endless difficulties. The military police waited until the middle of the night to bring Father Alexámenos from the Airport to Rome, to a place no one would suspect, transporting him in a small, nondescript Fiat Panda.

•••—•••—•••

That evening in Port-au-Prince, père Jacques was sitting in front of a television in the common room of the seminary, waiting for the seminarians to arrive. It was Cultural Night at the seminary, during which video highlights of père Jacques’s ‘missionary’ excursions were shown.

The seminarians, however, had left after lunch, when Leo had returned from the shantytown full of enthusiasm, inviting them to come with him. Some went out of pity, thinking that he needed some ‘affirmation’ after being thrown out of the seminary. Others suspected that he had the poor in mind and they did not want to pass up the opportunity. All of them went with him, and became so involved in transforming the neighbourhood of the old brothel that they forgot about any commitment to sit and watch videos with the Rector.

Père Jacques began to watch the videos alone, but soon went in search of the seminarians. Not finding them, he suspected what was only now forming in the minds of the seminarians as they walked back to the seminary, singing and laughing. A boycott of everything at the seminary was in the offing, lectures, prayers, meals. They would go to Mass at the Cathedral the next day.

•••—•••—•••

Two soldiers in plain clothes showed up to transport Father Alexámenos. They drove him to the junction of Via Leonina and Via Urbana, the lower entrance of the Metro stop on Via Cavour. The trains were not running at this time of night. Father Alexámenos had been blindfolded, but was listening carefully, trying to discern where they were taking him. They unlocked the gate and brought him in, locking it behind them. They went into the station and turned to the left, walking along the platform. There were no steps, no escalators. Father Alexámenos was counting the paces. Before they came to the end of the platform they simply pushed him off, blindfolded, onto the tracks, a four and a half foot drop. He landed hard on his back between the rails, on the rocks and cement ties. The momentum of the impact rolled him over onto his face, almost unconscious, against one of the rails. His hands were still hand-cuffed behind his back. He had landed on them. The soldiers jumped down next to him, spraying rocks into the back of his head. They dragged Father Alexámenos by the hand-cuffs for a short distance, but then lifted him to his feet, pushing him along the tracks, walking in a north-easterly direction toward Stazione Termini. Father Alexámenos was still counting. At exactly one hundred and forty paces, one of the soldiers put his foot out and shoved him hard, causing him to fall once again onto the rocks and cement ties between the rails. Because of the way he was tripped, he fell directly on his face, opening the cuts next to his eyes once again. He had instinctively tried to break his fall by holding out his hands, but since they were shackled, his violent pulling on the handcuffs only managed to cut his wrists more, right through the bandages. He was again almost knocked unconscious. He knew he was on subway tracks, and wondered if being run over by a subway train is how he would meet his end. He heard the two soldiers busy behind him, making metal on metal noises. They were opening a manhole cover. They rolled him onto his back and dragged him into the hole, letting him drop. They heard him hit the water below and started cursing at him loudly, trying to get a reaction out of him. When this didn’t work, they repeatedly kicked rocks into the hole. They heard him try to move out of the way, splashing in the shallow water. He wasn’t unconscious. He wouldn’t drown. They had done their work. They replaced the cover, bolting it down, hiding it again with the stones.

It was then so absolutely quiet that Father Alexámenos could hear his pulse in his ears. He was not a sewer he was in; a sewer would be full of noise. This water was stagnant, and there were no rats. He rubbed his head against the wall in an attempt to remove his blindfold. It took him five minutes of scraping, but he finally succeeded. He could feel blood trickling down his face once again. What he then saw disappointed him. He didn’t see anything. It was pitch black.

But then he heard the rocks being weakly scraped away from the cover, and then some feeble struggling with the bolts… to no avail. He then heard his name being called, “Don Alexámenos, Don Alexámenos…” He recognised the voice. It belonged to Signor Kondrat, an engineer from Sophia, Bulgaria. For the crime of believing in God, his Russian parents and his priest had been burnt alive in the local communist era gulag, in which even cannibalism was not an uncommon fate for many Jews, Muslims, Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Father Alexámenos had rescued him from the Roman street mafia, which had amputated his left foot and maimed his right hand, so that he had to make his way by hopping on one crutch. After his wounds healed, he lived in the subway tunnels at night – loving his independence – finding it easy to avoid detection by the security cameras at the ends of the subway platforms during the early morning and late afternoon rush. He would sleep in the adjacent storage areas under whatever material was there. During the day he volunteered for some religious Sisters as a greeter of visitors to their street hospice.

Father Alexámenos didn’t even try to respond to him, knowing that Signor Kondrat had been almost totally deaf for years. He concluded from this, however, that he must be close to the hospice, since Signor Kondrat could not walk very far without pain. Father Alexámenos then heard him start singing, entirely off key, “Holy Mary of the Way.” It was the trademark begging song of Signor Kondrat: “While life proceeds, you are never alone: Holy Mary of the Way will always be with you.” He was not singing it with his usual joy, but with the sense of the hour of death, as at the end of the Ave Maria. Father Alexámenos did not think so much of his own impending death, but of the death of Christ, in whose hour he thought he might now very well participate. “Come, O Mother, in our midst; come, Mary, down here: we will walk together with you toward liberty,” continued Signor Kondrat. Father Alexámenos was not surprised at the ‘coincidence’ of the old man’s presence. Such things often happened, as he knew from personal experience, for those who truly live the life of the family of God. He thought that, should he survive, it would not be the last time he would meet Signor Kondrat, the strength of whose voice was now fading: “When anyone says to you: ‘Nothing will ever change,’ fight for a new world, fight for the truth.”

Father Alexámenos now took stock of his situation. The hole he was in had about thirty centimetres of water in it, and was hardly larger than the manhole cover, but was fairly deep. He could feel with his head that there was a hole to his right, which rose about half a metre above the water level. There seemed to be a floor on the other side of the hole, and its level was above the water. “There should be enough room to squeeze through,” he thought. The risk was that he would be completely soaked with the freezing water if he did this, though he was almost entirely soaked already. There was no guarantee that there would be enough room for him on the other side of the hole, yet, it was a lost cause waiting for someone to rescue him there. Even Signor Kondrat could not leave the metro station until morning, though there was nothing he could have done anyway. After much effort, he finally pushed himself onto the dry dirt floor, though he was not completely soaked with the freezing water.

He was able to stand up, and wondered where he was. With his shackled hands, despite the injuries, he felt diamond-shaped rocks making up the lower part of the wall behind his back. He took a step to the left and hit his head on the low ceiling, almost causing him to pass out in pain. After waiting for some seconds, he again tried to ascertain where he was, moving along in the opposite direction, and immediately came to a spiral stone staircase. Taking a few steps up, he stopped. Both the ceiling and the staircase were sealed off. Coming down the steps, this time crouching down, he slowly went along, scraping his elbow along the wall as a guide. He seemed to be in a narrow passageway, the low ceiling of which – as he could feel with his head – was smooth concrete. As he cautiously used his feet to sense any change in direction in what seemed to be a catacomb, he noted that the floor suddenly fell away. It was a staircase. He walked down a half dozen steps, sitting down on the lowest step, having lost his balance on what he then realized were two wobbly planks having water on either side. The ceiling was very low once again. He now knew exactly where he was. The low concrete ceilings were the bottoms of the subway tunnels which cut through the historic site. He had been here a number of times on pilgrimage. The church entrance was one hundred paces from the Metro stop, which was the only one in Rome without an escalator or any steps, inside or outside the station, and whose platform was not on an incline. It was another forty paces down into the prison from the church to the point where he had been dropped into the water.

Father Alexámenos remembered don Hash having spent a day during the previous summer taking him around to all the churches dedicated to Saint Lawrence, who, don Hash said, was imprisoned here, in the cellar of the Centurion Hippolytus, just before he was burnt to death on the hill above, on Via Panisperna, in 258 A.D. Father Alexámenos remembered don Hash’s passion in recounting Lawrence’s ‘crime’ of having distributed the goods of the Church to the poor so that, when asked by the Emperor where the treasures of the Church were, Lawrence pointed to the poor, who were themselves the treasures of the Church. Father Alexámenos knew that, for a few days so long ago, that cellar, deep underground, witnessed great rejoicing in the Lord. Don Hash had said that Lawrence’s fellow prisoner, Lucillus, was blind, but, after being catechised and baptised by Lawrence, was cured. The Centurion, seeing this, also desired to be baptised by Lawrence. When the Centurion Hippolytus proclaimed his conversion to the Emperor Valerian, he was dragged to death behind horses along the Via Sacra just below the Palatine Hill. Father Alexámenos wondered if the first Alexámenos had witnessed the martyrdom.

The tiny church above the prison had been quite active, but when the old priest, its rector, an Oblate of Saint Joseph, died, the Oblates did not want to send a replacement. The church and its residence were closed against the protests of the new congregation of sisters, who also lived there. The Vicariate of Rome was not about to send a diocesan priest there, since they were trying to send more priests into the suburbs of Rome, where most of the people lived. The parish down the street, to which the small church belonged, did not want to be burdened with the responsibility of keeping this small church open. There were more than a dozen churches within a five minute walk. The city officials had taken over the property. They did not do this because they wanted it. They would soon return it. They just wanted to assert their authority, saying, however, that they would renovate all the buildings, including the adjacent apartments, making it all into more of a tourist attraction than it was. The residents were not happy, but the State simply claimed the right to do this. The civil officials were encouraging the Oblates to find someone to send, since these historic sites attracted tourists to Rome, which meant money. The Oblates knew this, and hadn’t removed anything from the residence.

Father Alexámenos knew that if he followed the passage up, he would only come to a metal gate. Yet, the air would be less humid higher up. Seeing that he was wet, that would be a plus. He crossed the wobbly planks, which required total concentration. All pilgrims would steady themselves with both hands on the walls to either side of the passage as they bent over. He, however, was handcuffed. Finally reaching the other side, he walked up the steps of the winding passage and pressed against the metal gate. It was locked. He couldn’t decide if it was colder there or colder further below.

He sat down on the steep steps and thought about this move of the Italian government, putting him in the prison of Saint Lawrence. Mulling over this, he thought that they must be keeping him out of the reach of the media, out of the way of causing trouble in public or military prisons, where he himself would be in danger because of the crimes of which he was being accused. This would certainly be the last place anyone would think to look for him, but there were a multitude of such unknown places. Why here? Were they sending a message to the Holy See as to the kind of punishment they expected for him? He thought of how Saint Lawrence had pointed to the poor when asked where the treasure of the Church was, and that he himself would not have the same opportunity, for he was accused of crimes against the poor themselves.

It was the coldest part of winter, and the coldest part of the night. He guessed that the temperature was below zero, but that his wet clothes were not freezing hard, perhaps because of the little body heat that he had left. He knew that he should keep moving in order to keep warm, but he was afraid that if he did so he would pass out on his feet from a combination of pain, lack of sleep and the confusion that comes with hypothermia. He could not afford to fall down the steps. Sitting crouched up to conserve body heat was a dangerous option, but was the only one he had. His hands, like his feet, were now completely numb. He could not even tell if his hands were touching the floor behind him as he sat with his back to the metal gate. Yet, some vertebrae and ribs were so painful that he could hardly breathe. Distracted by his pain, he didn’t remember that the gate opened inward.

After some minutes, he realised his mistake in sitting down; he began to shiver violently and uncontrollably. He perceptibly felt heat escape his body in successive waves, but he felt too weak to get up. He remembered don Hash telling him about some military exercises in the Italian Alps, when one of the soldiers came down with hypothermia. “To sleep is to die,” he said.

In order to keep himself awake, he began reciting the mysteries of the Rosary out loud, but soon found himself drifting into longer and longer periods of reciting the prayers only in his mind. The prayers he did manage to say out loud made him wonder if he had been drugged, for his words were unclear even to himself. He finished and said, “No gaoler yet.” He added two more mysteries, favourites of John Paul II, the slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem, and the exile of the Holy Family in Egypt, along with a decade in honour of the Immaculate Conception and then the Litany. He recited the end of the Salve Regina in earnest: “and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus, O Clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.”

When he finished these words, he was still shivering, though with much less vehemence. As the hours went by, his body was going through various stages of shutting down, becoming so cold that he could not move even with concerted effort. He was dying. He knew it. He couldn’t even open his eyes. He watched his own confusion, as if from a distance. He didn’t realise that, medically speaking, he was already slipping into a coma. He started to recite Psalm 22 in Hebrew, but only reached the first line, not remembering the rest. He repeated the first line in Aramaic, words which Christ Himself had quoted upon the Cross: “Eli! Eli! Lema sabachtani? My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?” He knew the cry spoke of an ongoing relationship, filled, like the rest of the Psalm, with filial love and praise of the Father… Jesus was speaking with the Father, who was listening. The abandonment – in the eyes of those on Calvary – confirmed the sign of the greatest love, that of the Son dying for us, as sent by the Father, taking on what we deserve in justice, the worst we have to give out, so that He would have, so to speak, the right in justice to have mercy on us. The abandonment manifested their unity, just how completely Jesus continued in obedience to the will of the Father. These thoughts swirled through his head. He was trying to stay awake…

•••—•••—•••

Don Hash was due to offer Mass in a half hour’s time at San Lorenzo in Panisperna, where Saint Lawrence was burnt to death. Before doing so, he stopped at San Lorenzo in Fonte, where Saint Lawrence had been imprisoned immediately prior to his death, and where, unbeknownst to don Hash, Father Alexámenos was imprisoned. Although the tiny church was closed, don Hash couldn’t resist stopping there, so close was it to Via Panisperna, and so important was it in the life and death of the one who, upon advice of his Confessor, was now his patron saint. Although the Blessed Sacrament was not present in the church, he leaned against its large doors for ten minutes, contemplating the Holy Trinity. He again ‘rested’ in the life of the Trinity, looking to the Father, so to speak, through, with and in Jesus. Yet, this ‘rest’ was being tested by the urgency of the passing circumstances. No one knew where Father Alexámenos was. This time, his prayer was, “Father… for the sake of Jesus’ sorrowful Passion, have mercy on Alexámenos and on the whole world.” The time flew by, and don Hash walked up the hill, through the winding streets, to San Lorenzo in Panisperna.

•••—•••—•••

Father Alexámenos suddenly became intensely aware, though not in mind or body, but in soul, as if he were detached from his body. He saw heaven in the far distance, but hell was directly below him, which he presently looked at… frozen in fear. Instead of looking to heaven, to Christ, and moving forward, he trusted in himself, and tried to take a step backward, away from the hell underneath himself, but could not do so. He was paralysed in his fear as he looked into the depths of hell. He was now falling as he looked, falling headlong into its cavernous abyss, tumbling deeper at ever increasing speed. The words of Christ on the Cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit…” would not come to his lips. He was looking at his own misery, the way he would be if he were to be without the grace of God. His soul, it seemed to him, was, in fear, precipitating ever downward… ever more quickly. “No redemption is possible” was the only thought that came to him.

•••—•••—•••

Don Hash was looking at the Father through, with and in the Eucharistic Christ as he held up the consecrated Host half way through the Mass he was offering for Father Alexámenos. He only saw the Host, but he ‘knew’, in Faith, that it was the very Body of Christ, risen, but still with the wounds of slaughter upon Him. As he held up the Chalice, adoring the Blood of Christ, a prayer spontaneously came to his mind: “Father, by these wounds of your Son, by His Blood, you save us from hell. Save us from hell now!”

•••—•••—•••

By an utterly gratuitous gift of grace, the words of his Confessor came rushing back to Father Alexámenos: “Never look to your own misery, only to the mercy of Christ.” Forgetting himself, he cried, out of the depths, “Abba, Father…” He soon felt himself lifted up, as if into the bosom of Abraham, but the arms he felt despite his coma did not belong to anyone already in heaven.

•••—•••—•••

The media networks which had correspondents resident in Haïti had already found the ex-brothel twelve hours before. They took images of the squalor to further condemn Father Alexámenos. They did not find or hear what they expected. People were happy, labouring to clean the neighbourhood. The brothel they expected to find had a small sign hung to the side of the entrance proclaiming “Missionary Sisters.” There was a large Cross and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Simon and Toma had already commandeered some culvert piping and a back-hoe, which was being operated by Simon. As they did the interviews, dump trucks were already filling in the open sewer. The reporters took down the real story, but did not use it, wanting to ride the wave of popularity which would come their way by accusing yet another priest of abuse. They would be especially heroic in that they had brought the story to the public from the squalor of the poorest area of Haïti, and the most dangerous, they said. They continuously aired the ‘abuse’ images alongside pictures of desperate poverty, pointing out the double tragedy that was being perpetrated. They knew that if they ever had to tell the real story, perhaps after some months, they would be prepared for that as well. Instead of any half-hearted apology, they thought, they would be able to return and find that at least some of the children had gone back to prostitution, with one or two having been injured or killed for not doing so, not calling it prostitution, but just a cultural expression of the local brand of voodoo, thus championing the people’s cultural rights against imperial, ‘missionary’ Catholicism. The priest would be blamed for death and destruction.

The media were also airing interviews done by their reporters in other parts of the world with a few faithless Catholic bishops who were saying that there would be a reduction in abuse if priests were married. Some of the Catholic reporters liked this, but others thought that throwing marriage at the priesthood would not cure anything, but would, instead, merely open up new families to abuse. Problem candidates for the priesthood were not to be married, but were to be removed. More orthodox bishops said that heresy spawned immorality, and called for the removal of heretics and those living disordered lives, but only with due process. They would not yet comment on the particular case of Father Alexámenos.

Al Jazeera made much of what they called the Haïtian affair, claiming the moral superiority of Islam and insisting that Father Alexámenos had blasphemed worse than any one ever had in the history of Islam, claiming that both Mohammad and Allah were sadistic, pleased as they were with the bribery of more children being offered in sacrifice. Al Jazeera aired interviews of Imams speaking of the great Satan who wanted the death of Muslims, the end of Islam. The priest had to die, and had to die now.

•••—•••—•••

Without the knowledge of père Jacques, the seminarians showed up at the Cathedral of Port-au-Prince for the Mass offered by Archbishop Pòv. Afterward, they asked him to come with them, which he was happy to do. They brought him to the ex-brothel, telling him the whole story on the way. He didn’t tell them that the Sisters had already met him before Mass, and that he had already given them permission for the new house and chapel. The Archbishop offered another Mass in the shantytown, and then stayed to eat. It was truly a banquet, for Simon brought the best food of his now closed tourist voodoo brothels to the new convent. This scene was to be repeated for many days to come. Archbishop Pòv was listening, putting pieces together, worried about what could be done with the seminary. In a quiet moment, Leo approached him and said, “Isn’t it wonderful how the Good Shepherd is so humbly with us here in the Blessed Sacrament, saving those held by so many to be unsavable.” These words had a deep effect on the Archbishop, who was sick of priests who would, from time to time, offer Mass in a local brothel so as to make a statement in support of the working rights of the so-called sex-workers. Leo ended up staying many weeks in the shantytown with Jozèf’s family after the Missionary Sisters had moved into the new convent. It was during this time that he came to know Archbishop Pòv as a close friend. The Archbishop put him in charge of organizing a Eucharistic procession that would wind its way through the shantytowns of Port-au-Prince.

==================

Chapter 25 is NOT coming soon… INSTEAD, I’ll hold off for a while in favour of receiving some (even anonymous) comments in the combox for the next post inviting your comments for this first half of Book 1 of this Trilogy on the deadly intrigue of interreligious politics.

Don’t hesitate to use the combox for this chapter for comments regarding this chapter alone.

© 2007-2008 Renzo di Lorenzo — All rights reserved

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