THE NEXT THREE YEARS were for Stephen a time of tempering and growth. He weathered that critical period in the mid-thirties when a man discovers that either he must generate new energies or lie down in the living grave of mediocrity. He reorganized his life on a basis of rigid economy. Attitudes and activities that did not buttress the temple of his priesthood were ruthlessly lopped off. He refused all social invitations, smiled less often, lost some of his fresh coloring; for impact he depended not so much on personal charm as on his basic deposit of character. In spite of an ascetic way of life (his only indulgence was an occasional after-dinner cigar), he became heavier about the neck and shoulders: at thirty-eight his hair began to show rafters of gray. Three years in Rome transformed Stephen into a stern, unglittering administrator of the Universal Church.
Gradually, the wisdom of Ghislana Falerni’s proverb began to come true. “Time makes love pass.” Under the rasp of day-to-day duties, Roberto’s faunlike profile became less sharply etched. Occasionally Stephen would turn to share a transport of happiness, only to find a fading ghost where once a living friend had stood. He added Roberto’s name to the list of people for whom he prayed. Ghislana Falerni’s name was on the list also, but he saw or heard from her no more.
Stephen’s relations with his Vatican colleagues and superiors had long ago passed through the apprentice phase. He was firmly entrenched now in the confidence—and confidences—of Quarenghi and Guardiano. Even Giacobbi changed his matador tactics in dealing with the American Monsignor. The Cardinal Secretary’s brusque manner could never entirely disappear, but, after Stephen had completed several difficult assignments, Giacobbi began to put brakes on his peevishness. In its place, a twitting humor emerged. It pleased the Sicilian to rally Stephen on the subject of American dollar diplomacy. When, in 1924, the United States lent Germany two billions under the Dawes Plan—hailed at the time as a great marvel of finance—Giacobbi burst into guffaws:
“The Vatican’s monetary troubles are over,” he roared. “This very day I shall advise His Holiness to declare war on the United States. Then, after our Household Guard takes its trouncing, we shall apply to our conquerors for a fat loan. How much do you advise us to ask for, Monsignor Fermoyle?”
“As much as the traffic will bear. Don’t hold back on my account, Your Eminence.” Two years ago Stephen would have flushed with anger; now he could let the barb bounce off harmlessly. Giacobbi noted the difference and murmured something about a thick skin being one of the ultimate gifts of the Holy Ghost.
From his tiny cubicle Stephen was summoned with increasing frequency into the presence of Pius XI, either to brief the Holy Father on some aspect of the American scene or to act as interpreter for distinguished English-speaking visitors. The Pope was actively seeking to strengthen the ties between Rome and the United States; as an earnest of his purpose, he bestowed red hats on Archbishop Mundelein of Chicago and Patrick Hayes of New York, thus increasing to four the number of American cardinals in the Sacred College. His Holiness laid himself out to be particularly gracious when bishops from the United States made their ad limina journeys to Rome. In long, cordial audiences Pius XI would question the visitor about his administrative problems and American affairs generally. What was the seating capacity of the parochial schools in the bishop’s jurisdiction—the number of beds in his hospitals? Were the seminaries and religious orders thriving? Had the bishop noticed any falling off in the number or quality of candidates for the priesthood? Consulting a memorandum, His Holiness might inquire: “Do the foreign-language minorities in your diocese appear to be contented with their English-speaking pastors?”
At the end of the audience the visiting prelate would be deeply impressed by the pontiff’s precise and specific information. “How does the Holy Father know so much about my diocese?” was a question the bishop would inevitably ask when he found himself alone with Stephen after the interview.
“His Holiness has many sources of information,” Stephen would say, tactfully omitting to add that he himself had drawn up the memorandum for the pontiff’s guidance.
Increasingly close contacts with the Holy Father’s person and office gave Stephen a profounder insight into the organization of the Universal Church. He was amazed by the volume and variety of business that flowed across Vatican desks; by every instrument of communication—telegraph, telephone, air post, and wireless (not to mention dog sled, dory, kayak, shank’s mare, and word of mouth)—reports flowed in from every part of the world. The baptism of an obscure African tribe by Dominican missionaries, the laying of a convent cornerstone in Wales, or a squabble between an Australian bishop and his cathedral chapter, were reported as soon as they occurred. Twelve major congregations, each governed by a Cardinal Prefect, acted as nerve ganglia relaying impulses from all parts of the mystical body to the visible head of the Church. Each congregation sent voluminous reports to the Holy Father; no matter how carefully the chaff was sifted out, or how fine the good grain was milled, a huge stack of documents—involving delicate matters of faith, diplomacy, and finance—always lay awaiting the final disposition that only the Pope could give. Merely to read the material was a crushing labor that kept a light burning till long past midnight in the Pope’s private apartment on the third floor of the Vatican.
The core of the pontiff’s character, Stephen discovered, was his unyielding stubbornness in matters affecting the spiritual prerogatives of the Holy See. He regarded as basic and inalienable the right of the Church to teach, extend, and conserve the faith. In bull after bull he proclaimed this position; by means of concordats with Germany, France, and Poland, he secured spiritual rights for Roman Catholics in those countries. And with Mussolini, Pius XI arrived at a modus vivendi guaranteeing freedom of worship and religious education to Roman Catholics in Italy.
Under the robes and ritual of his office, Pius XI emerged clearly as a human being. Stephen found him to be wonderfully patient about long-range objectives but apt to be flash-tempered on the short haul. Stupidity, slowness of speech, or carrying water on both shoulders irked the Holy Father. He liked men who could crack the nut of a problem quickly and serve up its meat without shells. Stephen once heard him exclaim irritably: “Must we spend our life listening to things we already know!” Yet he made no claim to omniscience and could be on occasion quite humorous about the gaps in his knowledge. Once during an audience with Bishop John T. Spraker of Indiana, His Holiness became expansive on the physical grandeur of the United States. “Your snow-spiked Rockies—how I should love to see them! What a challenge for climbing! And those enormous stretches on which you grow your wheat”—he turned to Stephen—“how do you call them—pampas, savannas?”
“We call them prairies, Your Holiness.”
“Prairies, of course. ‘Pampas schooner’ wouldn’t sound quite right, would it?” The pontiff beamed myopically on Bishop Spraker. “You see, dear Brother, how geography limits our infallibility.”
In his strictly mortal aspects Achille Ratti was a man who ate sparingly of fruits, cheese, and vegetable soup, drank nothing stronger than cocoa (which he liked), and slept about five hours a day. His schedule began with daily Mass in his private chapel at six-thirty A.M., followed by breakfast consisting of a buttered roll and a bowl of cocoa. From eight to ten he handled his enormous correspondence. Then followed a series of conferences with his chief cardinal advisers; later came audiences with bishops, abbots, and distinguished personages lay or clerical. At two P.M. the Pope lunched alone (by tradition he was never permitted to break bread at the same table with others). Then came a short siesta and more official business till five. After a solitary walk in the Vatican gardens, he took a supper of consommé Romana—a broth enriched with eggs—followed by pears, cheese, and more cocoa. He then picked up the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, and read every word in its pages. Around nine P.M. he entered his private study and began on the pile of documents and reports on his desk. Feast days added a tremendous weight of religious ceremonial and public blessings to this man-killing schedule. Under the burden of his office, Pius XI developed the gnarly strength found in lone firs that have plunged their roots into some rocky cleft at the edge of the snow line. No man could have been higher in personal asceticism, deeper in devotion to his Vicarate, lonelier, more isolated as a human being.
EASTER MONDAY, 1924. The Paschal feast had been marked with services of extraordinary beauty at St. Peter’s; now in green vestments both Church and nature entered upon the joyous cycle of resurrection. Stephen sat at his inlaid desk, examining a petition of certain French-Canadian fishing parishes—alleging invasion of their lobster-trapping rights by an American syndicate. The matter was complicated: a dozen international treaties had been broken, and Stephen was preparing to study the law covering the subject when his telephone rang.
It was Gaetano Orselli; the Captain’s voice gurgled with excitement. “I must see you, Stefano. There is news of the first importance—news that can be related only over a bottle of wine. Meet me for dinner tonight at the Café Sorrento on the Via delle Botteghe Oscure. You’ll recognize me by the flower in my mouth!”
The flower in Orselli’s mouth was a blossoming grin that spread uncontrollably over his face as he greeted Stephen. They sat down to a tureen of excellent soup, and a cutlet parmigiana. The first bottle of Falerno had disappeared before Stephen had a chance to ask:
“What’s your news? Political? Have you been offered the Navy portfolio in II Duce’s government?”
“Portfolio? Il Duce? Trivia! Stephen, my news is of the heart. I am Romeo, and you are Friar Lawrence.” Orselli lifted a glass, struck his breast in a mock mea culpa. “Shrive me, Father, that I may be worthy to touch the hem of an angel become woman.”
“Riddling confession gets but riddling shrift. What’s this Romeo business? The last time we talked, you were off women for life.”
“Women in the plural, yes. You now behold a man who thinks and speaks only of the Woman—singular and unique. Stephen, I’ve found her!”
“Not the ‘impossible she’ with the town house, the country house, the title, the income, and—oh yes, I almost forgot—the star dust in her hair?”
Orselli was dead sober. “You have every right to be skeptical, Stefano. I admit I’ve sailed a zigzag course; my love log is full of lying entries written in a careless hand. But now I know how the compass needle feels when the polestar grips it. Compulsion, surrender, peace. And not the peace of passivity!” Orselli chose a marine simile: “It is like the dreaming quietness at the center of a turbine whirling at full speed.”
“You’re in sad shape, Captain. Where did you meet this female turbine?”
“At Capri, barely a month ago. At the first exchange of glances I felt my soul slipping out of me. At the next exchange, it was returned to me doubly charged. I was almost prostrated. Until I met Ghislana Falerni I could not believe that such intensity of emotion existed. You stare? You doubt me?”
“Am I staring? I … I happen to know the Contessa Falerni.”
“How you clerical rogues get about! Then you can understand what I’m trying to say. Don’t you agree that she resembles a Corneille heroine—Phèdre, perhaps?”
“She is a woman of unusual charm.”
“Come, this is lukewarm, Stefano. Speak freely; you have taste and judgment in these matters. Did you ever hear such a voice? A brook, silver-pebbled. And where but on an Attic frieze could one find such a torso? Forgive me, my friend, for mentioning such matters—but she is mortal flesh, this promised bride of mine. Do you wonder at my happiness? Congratulate me, Stefano.”
An inward agony was beginning in Stephen as he clasped Orselli’s hand. “Has the marriage date been fixed?”
“We are to be wed early in June. I would ask you to perform the ceremony, but Cardinal Merry del Val is an old friend of the family. You understand how these things are?”
“Quite.”
“But you’ll come to the nuptials, of course? The privilege of kissing the bride is being limited to a few trusted friends.”
Stephen’s agony was mounting. Am I still not free of her? Must I go bound forever? He felt cornered as Orselli went into lyrical transports about Ghislana Falerni’s person and accomplishments. How can I get out of here without exposing myself? If this gloating libertine continues to smack his fat lips …
Orselli nipped an after-dinner Havana between his fine square teeth, lighted it leisurely. Its oily fragrance drifting across the table suggested a plan of escape.
“I’ve acquired a new vice,” Stephen heard himself saying. “If your cigars are very mild, I’ll celebrate the occasion by smoking one with you.”
“Forgive me, dear friend.” The Captain extended his case. “Try this Vuelta. I recommend it for body and aroma. Ah, the solace of tobacco. As your Kipling says—‘A woman is only a woman. …’”
Stephen lighted up, simulated the appreciative puff of the connoisseur. “Tell me your plans, Captain. Will you give up the sea?”
“Yes, my sailing days are over. My bride is a land creature; hereafter, her element will be mine. Fortunately, I have been offered a shore berth, the post of Examiner-General for the Italian Line.”
“I suppose you’ll entertain a great deal.” (Keep the talk impersonal.)
“I dare say. Ghislana is a born hostess. Her services should be valuable in bringing Quirinal and Vatican closer together. How do you like that cigar?”
“Excellent. It seems a trifle strong.”
“You are burning the tobacco too fast. Most Americans smoke that way. Of course we shall manage to steal away for a summer of honeymooning at Capri. Ghislana has an estate there. An estate—what am I saying?—an Eden, rather.” Orselli’s tongue caressed the Vuelta. “Doesn’t it seem a miracle to you, Stefano, that after my lifelong furrowing of the sea, I should find this perfect haven in marriage?”
“Miraculous, as you say.” Drops of sweat began to form on Stephen’s forehead. He wiped them away ostentatiously with his handkerchief. “Am I imagining, or is it warm in here?”
“No, it’s rather cool.”
Stephen took an enormous drag at the Vuelta. “Perhaps it’s this cigar.”
“Relish it more slowly. Your ash is an inch longer than mine already. Here, drop it in this tray.” Orselli picked up the ash tray at his elbow, and slid it across the table. It was a common enough piece of native Roman pottery—pink clay, cheaply kilned and bordered with an egg-and-dart design. Dizzied by the fumes of his cigar, Stephen leaned forward to flick its ash when his eye caught the motto painted on the tray.
L’AMORE
FA PASSARE
IL TEMPO;
IL TEMPO
FA PASSARE
L’AMORE
Love makes time pass; time makes love pass!
“Tell me now,” Orselli was saying, “when and where did you meet my Ghislana?”
Napkin to his lips, Stephen rose limply. “Sorry, Gaetano, I’ll have to get out of here. Your cigar has made me feel greenish.” Unsteadily he started for the door. Outside, in the Street of Dark Shops, he leaned against a brick wall and was wretchedly sick.
Orselli, all solicitude, hovered near by. “Shall I take you home, Stefano?”
“No, no. Just call a cab. I’ll be all right soon as I can lie down quietly.” He attempted a sickly grin. “I guess I’m not the cigar smoker I thought I was.”
Convulsions of nausea racked Stephen all the way home. Between seizures, the egg-and-dart design on the ash tray whirled like a pinwheel pivoting on a cruel nail:
Il tempo fa passare l’amore. …
BY IMMEMORIAL custom and papal decree, the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica is opened every twenty-five years. The origins of this ancient tradition go back to the times of Boniface VIII, who, in 1300, caused a section of St. Peter’s wall to be broken open as a token of sanctuary to men of all faiths. The custom persists. At quarter-century intervals the reigning pontiff taps a certain brick (previously loosened by stonemasons), and the brick tumbles to the ground. Other bricks are removed; the door remains open all during the Holy Year, and through its portals a multitude of the faithful—shawled, kilted, hooded, caped, sandaled, and veiled—pours into the great basilica.
During the Holy Year 1925, one million two hundred thousand pilgrims journeyed to Rome for the festivities, solemn and joyous, that mark the opening and closing of the Holy Door. They came to obtain the Jubilee indulgence granted to all who fulfilled the prescribed conditions. Rather mild conditions they were. The pilgrim was required only to visit each of the four major basilicas in Rome: St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s Without the Walls, St. John Lateran, and St. Mary’s Major, reciting in each three Our Father’s, three Hail Mary’s, and three Glory Be’s. Then having made a good confession and received Communion, he received a plenary indulgence.
In 1925 the streets of Rome were thronged with pilgrims bearing flowers and statues to their favorite shrine. Among them was Celia Fermoyle. Five years of scrimping on her “house money,” together with a few sundry oddments wheedled out of Florrie, plus a hundred dollars sent by Stephen, had enabled her to buy a round-trip ticket from Boston to the Eternal City. She wanted to see, particularly, the building in which her priest-son worked, and to hear the Sistine Choir singing High Mass. Celia’s other ideas concerning Rome bordered on the shadowy side—as Stephen discovered when calling upon his mother at the Cenacle of the Blue Sisters, where he had made a reservation for her two weeks’ sojourn in the Holy City.
At sixty, Celia still had much of the birdlike quickness of movement that Stephen remembered from childhood. Her once-black hair was ivory white, but her eyes still sparkled with shoe-button brightness, and the tonic of the sea voyage had renewed her lightness of foot and spirit. Stephen had expected to find her exhausted; instead, she was so excited that she could scarcely sit still in the little parlor of the Cenacle. Stephen finally quieted her down to the point where she could bring him abreast of family history.
“The old house at 47 Woodlawn isn’t the busy place it used to be, Son,” said Celia. “Sometimes I sit alone in the kitchen of an afternoon, remembering the times when school got out and you’d all come rushing in the back door for your bats or skates or footballs, then rush out again till supper. What a commotion! The evenings are quieter too, now that Florrie and A1 have moved out. They’ve got a nice place of their own in Roslindale. A baby or two would blend them together, but I don’t see any coming.”
“How’s Ellen?”
“Happier than I’ve ever seen her. It was God’s blessing that sent Father Ireton to Medford with work for her. Ah, the goodness of Father Paul! In three years he’s won everyone’s heart. He’s started a new church—it’s only a basement yet, but he’s planning to build on top of it.”
“He’ll make it. And Bernie? I hear he’s on what they call ‘radio.’”
Celia bobbed a puzzled head. “He sings the same songs they wouldn’t pay a dime to hear in the cafés. The ‘Irish Thrush’ they call him now. Would you believe it, Bernie’s been making fifty a week—come Murphy, go Murphy—for the past six months?”
It was hard to believe. Then came the question that Stephen had been longing to ask. “What’s little Regina like?”
“She’s an angel. Pretty—like Mona was. A little darker-complected maybe. Rita and Dr. John take wonderful care of her.” Celia rummaged in her bag for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “I never get over the goodness that God puts into people’s hearts. But tell me now, Son, is it true, like you said in your letter, that you work in the Vatican on the same floor with the Pope?”
“Yes … except that he’s in another wing.”
“Are there many others that come as near to him as that?”
Stephen laughed. “Quite a few. It’s a big place, you know—over a thousand rooms.”
“Will you have time to point it out to me?”
“Point it out to you? I’m going to take you all through it. You’re going to see everything—the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s great frescoes, the Clementine Hall—and if I can arrange it, you’re going to have a private audience with the Holy Father himself.”
Stephen arranged it. Dressed in black, veiled, with her son at her elbow, Celia slowly climbed the great staircase, waited tremulously in the papal antechamber, then knelt to the Fisherman’s ring on the pontiff’s finger. Six hundred thousand people had already kissed the ring that year. Buffeted as he was by the tidal wave of pilgrims, Achille Ratti, fourth son of a silk weaver, was still able to give an individual touch to the audience. And that touch was a surprise to Stephen. His Holiness spoke to Celia in English!
“God has blessed you with other children, my daughter?”
“Yes, Your Holiness. I am the mother of three boys and four girls.”
“Has your heart a favorite among them?” asked the pontiff teasingly.
Celia’s eyes rested on her first-born standing violet-cassocked beside her. “I am very proud of my oldest son, Your Holiness. He has brought me great joy and never caused me a moment’s sorrow.” She started to check a mother’s garrulity, then let it slip again. “When Stephen was a little boy, he used to beg me to say that I loved him more than the others. I wanted to tell him then, and I wish I could tell Your Holiness now, that he always was first in my heart. But I can’t say something that wouldn’t be fair to the others. A mother must make all her children feel that she loves them equally. Anything else would be displeasing to God.”
Of the many words Pius XI heard that year, Celia’s moved him more poignantly than most. The pontiff recalled his own childhood plea: “Mama, say you love me best. Whisper it, Mama, so that the others won’t hear.” That plea had never been requited. His Holiness gazed curiously at Stephen, linked with him in the common fellowship of rejection. Would it really be displeasing to God, he wondered, if mothers should murmur: “Dear son [dear Achille, dear Stephen], it is you that I love beyond all others.” Yes, doubtless it would be unwise, for if such words were uttered, the sons of women would perish in too much earthly bliss.
A chamberlain’s signal reminded the harried pontiff that others were waiting in his antechamber. From a rosewood box Pius XI took a medal of the Virgin and presented it to Celia.
“This Mother, too, loves all her children equally,” he said, lifting his hand in papal benediction. It was the pinnacle of Celia Fermoyle’s life; the gold bar of heaven seemed very near as Stephen led her out of the pontifical chamber.
IN SEPTEMBER of the Holy Year, Lawrence Cardinal Glennon sailed from Boston on the Canopic with a band of pious New Englanders, six hundred strong, and landed at Naples on the feast day commemorating the Jesuit saints of North America. The delegation was officially greeted by Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle arrayed in mantelletta, ring, and cross befitting the Pope’s personal representative. What a troop of dignitaries streamed off the Canopic! First came the Cardinal in full ecclesiastic regalia, followed by three venerable bishops, one of them so infirm that he had to be carried down the gangplank in a chair. Then debarked a purple squadron of monsignors, followed by a regiment of pastors and curates—the infantry of the Church. The laity was nobly represented by His Excellency the Governor of Rhode Island, four Catholic Congressmen, seven mayors, a spate of aldermen, and a generous sprinkling of lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and contractors. Among the latter was Cornelius J. Deegan, who came—gilt chain, velvet cape, and all—to assume his duties as honorary chamberlain to the Pope.
The staff work for this huge expedition had been handled by Right Reverend Michael J. Speed, the rapidly rising Chancellor of the Archdiocese, on whom Cardinal Glennon leaned with increasing dependence in administrative affairs. The Cardinal knew well enough that his monopoly on Mike Speed’s services was drawing to an end. By seniority and deserts, the Chancellor was first in line for the next vacant bishopric. And the diocese that got him (everyone said) would be lucky indeed.
Glennon embraced Stephen with a frank hug; Mike Speed’s greeting was kind speaking to kind. After an hour of introductions to the Catholic nobility and gentry of New England, Stephen began to look around for a certain high-marbling forehead.
“Where’s Dick Clarahan?” he asked the Chancellor.
Mike Speed laughed. “Someone had to run the Diocese. It’s Dicky’s big chance to practice up. Say, Steve, here’s an old friend of yours. Claims he knew you when.”
The claimant was Dollar Bill Monaghan, Stephen’s first pastor. Ten years had not taken the steely curl out of Monaghan’s hair; at sixty-six he still had the shoulders of a champion mortgage lifter, and the appraising squint of a rector on the lookout for a serviceable assistant.
“Welcome to Rome, Father,” said Stephen, gripping Dollar Bill’s hand. “How’s the milk route in Maiden?”
“We’re still making house-to-house deliveries, Stephen. Curates aren’t what they used to be, though. Rome skims off the cream.” Monaghan fumbled with paternal admiration at the ribbony knot of Stephen’s cape. “Handsome rig you’re wearing, Monsignor.”
“I’d swap it this minute for a parish somewhere north of Boston,” said Stephen. “Can’t you use your pull with His Eminence to get me transferred?” In the milling throng on the pier, they talked of St. Margaret’s and its old parishioners. What was Jeremy Splaine doing? Why, Jeremy was in his final year at the Brighton Seminary. Head of his class. Had the makings of a fine priest.
And whatever became of Milky Lyons, Stephen wanted to know. “Ah, poor Milky,” said Monaghan, “he went melancholy on us.”
In strength they stood who stood. In weakness they fell who fell.
The Cardinal’s descent on Rome was the progress of an ecclesiastical lord accompanied by his retinue. Bishops, Congressmen, and a crush of distinguished pilgrims drifted in and out of Glennon’s compartment as they sped northward on a special train. Stephen was unexpectedly homesick; the sight of so many American faces and the sound of his native tongue hit him with all the subtlety of a brass band playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
“Send me home,” he prayed secretly, as the train whirled toward the Holy City. “Not my will but Thine. Only send me home.”
Stephen’s work really began when the delegation reached Rome. Acting as liaison officer between the Vatican and his countrymen, he arranged group visits to the four principal basilicas and side trips to venerated shrines. The Holy Father graciously consented to say a special Mass for the Americans and—rarest of honors—gave them Holy Communion with his own hands. In the audience following the communion breakfast, Pius XI referred to Cardinal Glennon as “our noble, valiant brother.” Speaking in Italian, with Stephen standing beside and slightly behind him as interpreter, His Holiness praised the New Englanders for their stanch piety and hailed them as the largest, most loyal, and certainly the most generous band of New World Catholics ever to visit Rome.
The pilgrimage was a roseate triumph for everyone concerned. The Governor of Rhode Island was made a Knight of Malta, and eleven other New Englanders received the insignia of papal nobility. Meanwhile Cornelius Deegan was taking his chamberlain service most gravely. Every morning, attired in cloak and sword, he presented himself for assignment to the Vatican Major-Domo. And because there was always need for a certain number of gentlemen in waiting, the Knight of St. Sylvester walked in many processions or stood ornamentally about whenever he was bidden. His tour of duty over, he gave an enormous dinner party at the Ritz-Reggia to a hundred guests lay and clerical. An emblazoned invitation was propped beside the plate of each diner. “You are most cordially invited,” the invitation ran, “to be the guest of Cornelius J. Deegan on his specially chartered yacht, the Santa Croce, on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. R.S.V.P.”
Acceptances were heavy. On All Souls’ Day a merry company of American Catholic gentlemen sailed out of Naples Harbor on the largest yacht that Corny could charter. Old Glory fluttered from the main truck of the Santa Croce, and just below it rippled the pennon of the Order of St. Sylvester. Corny’s orders to the captain were: “Proceed northward with dignity and dispatch to Marseille.” An Italian man of war, mistaking the Santa Croce for a royal barge of some kind, fired a twenty-one-gun salute as she cleared the harbor.
Standing on the dock, waving his countrymen off, Stephen could have wept with loneliness and longing for America.
ON CHRISTMAS DAY the Holy Door was bricked up for another twenty-five years. After the elaborate ceremonies were over, and the last pilgrim had departed, life in the Vatican settled down to its normal tempo. Stephen was gathering up the scattered threads of office routine when, during the Octave of Epiphany, Alfeo Quarenghi dropped in one him. Visits from Quarenghi were rare; he had little time for chatty calls. The Secretary for the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs took a chair and plunged immediately into the subject of his visit.
“The Holy Father,” he began, “is deeply concerned about the Apostolic Delegate at Washington. The present incumbent, Archbishop Rienzi, is an extremely learned and able man, but according to advices from Cardinal Glennon and others”—Quarenghi was phrasing the matter with a diplomat’s tact—“it appears that Rienzi is somewhat out of touch with the American temper.”
What’s he getting at? Stephen wondered.
“For some time now,” continued Quarenghi, “the Holy See has felt the need of a fresh approach to the relationships between the Vatican and the United States. Rienzi is to be recalled and will of course be elevated to the cardinalate. Meanwhile His Holiness has honored me with the Washington assignment.” Modesty lowered Quarenghi’s eyes. “The post carries the title of archbishop.”
Stephen was on his feet. “Congratulations, Alfeo. Apostolic Delegate to the United States! What an honor! Think of the tremendous job you can do there.”
“There’s certainly a job to be done. The task carries almost frightening responsibilities.” Quarenghi’s quite unfrightened gaze met Stephen’s at level range. “The Holy Father has granted me the privilege of choosing my own staff. Will you come to Washington with me, Stephen, as my assistant and special adviser in American affairs?”
Choked with joy at the prospect of returning to America, awed by the dimensions of the task ahead, Stephen could not speak. Like a man touching the haft of a sword in pledge of liege devotion, he laid his hand on Quarenghi’s shoulder.
A week later Pius XI invested Alfeo Quarenghi as Archbishop of Mytilene and embraced him affectionately as he sailed for the United States. The pontiff’s parting words to his delegate were: “It is our most prayerful wish that you show all men how perfectly an embassy of the spirit may be carried into a country of mixed religious faiths and free political opinions.”
STEPHEN’S FIRST VIEW of his homeland was the battlements of Manhattan emerging through gray flurries of snow as the Cunarder zoomed hoarsely into the North River. Headed by Patrick Cardinal Hayes, a detachment of overcoated American prelates met the papal delegate at the pier. During the formalities of introduction, Quarenghi’s teeth began chattering with unaccustomed cold. Cardinal Hayes whispered to a mufflered aide, “The dear man will freeze entirely in another minute. Let’s get him up to the house.” In three black limousines, preceded and flanked by police motorcycles, the little procession whirled to the Cardinal’s residence on Madison Avenue, colloquially known as “the Powerhouse.”
While Quarenghi was resting in his room before dinner, a curly-haired Monsignor named Fergus Carroll took Stephen in tow. Monsignor Carroll was a former Holy Cross boy now attached to the Cathedral chapter. “Is there anything particular you’d like to do in the next hour or two?” he asked.
“That’s a fine question to ask a man who’s never been in New York before,” said Stephen. “What I’d really like to do is stretch my legs—walk around the city a bit.”
“I’ll borrow a pair of overshoes for you,” said Fergus. “There’s a lot of snow outside.”
The air was tingling at seven or eight degrees above zero as they crunched along the still uncleared pavement of Fifth Avenue. Late-afternoon traffic was in a typical New York snarl. While snow swirled like a dotted muslin curtain in a stiff wind, a crawling paralysis seemed to grip busses and taxis. Horns, the roar of motors, and the whistles of traffic cops made a strident confusion as Stephen and Fergus dodged in and out along the crowded sidewalk. Yet it was exhilarating too, this New York tempo so markedly different from the languid Roman beat. Snow nipping his cheeks, Stephen was glad to breathe the air of his native north-temperate climate.
A specific craving for something he had dreamed about a long time broke out in Stephen now. “Are there any drugstores around here?” he asked Fergus Carroll as they neared Forty-second Street.
“Sure. The Grand Central district is full of them. What do you want?”
“Don’t laugh,” said Stephen, “but I want a strawberry ice-cream soda. And bad. It’s been coming on for years.”
“Will you take it in a booth or on a stool?”
Stephen had his strawberry ice-cream soda on a stool. When Fergus Carroll handed him two straws, he knew that the heart of the country was sound.
They walked up Madison Avenue to Fiftieth Street. “How’d you like to make a little visit before dinner?” asked Fergus.
Stephen knew what his companion meant. Together they entered a side door of the Cathedral, stood for a moment in the candlelighted shadows of the south aisle. Kneeling at the epistle side of the main altar, he said a short prayer of thanksgiving, then made his wish. A simple one: that Alfeo Quarenghi’s mission would succeed.
Shortly after seven, Quarenghi and Stephen were escorted to the dining room by their Cardinal-host himself. The classic protocol (which decrees that twelve is the proper number for a bachelor dinner, or some unconscious observance of an even older tradition) had led to the seating of an even dozen guests. All ranks of the hierarchy were present: the Cardinal sat at the head of the table, with Archbishop Quarenghi on his right and the Auxiliary Bishop of New York at his left. Simple hospitality rather than high ceremony was the note. His Eminence murmured grace, then picked up a spoon and began operations on a thick vegetable soup. Afterwards there was roast lamb, gravy, and plenty of pan-browned potatoes, but no salad. For dessert, apple pie and coffee; cigars for those who smoked them.
The table talk was neither exalted nor commonplace. No philosophic observations were offered and only one clerical story was told. The company discussed the approaching Eucharistic Congress in Chicago, the grave troubles of the Church in Mexico, and the overemphasis on football in certain Catholic colleges. Quarenghi made inquiries regarding the health of Cardinal Dougherty, and praised the remarkable work the Philadelphia prelate had done in the Philippines.
Knowing the range of Quarenghi’s mind, Stephen thought that his friend might have talked more brilliantly. Yet as the dinner progressed he began to realize that the Apostolic Delegate was purposely letting his host set the conversational pace. Since Cardinal Hayes neither was a great intellect nor pretended to be one, Quarenghi accommodated himself to the prevailing gait. It was no part of the papal legate’s plan to overwhelm the Americans either with personal charm or his knowledge of Roman affairs. Frankness and courtesy marked his answers to whatever questions were asked, but he initiated no topics and disclosed nothing that could not have been gleaned by any thoughtful reader of L’Osservatore Romano. Long before the dinner ended, Stephen could see that Quarenghi’s modesty and reserve were creating a quietly soothing effect on the diners. Yet they were waiting for something, too. When the party moved into the Cardinal’s library for coffee, Stephen whispered to his friend: “I think they’re expecting you to open up a little.”
A glance from the Apostolic Delegate’s brilliant brown eyes said: “I’ll try not to disappoint them.”
The book-lined shelves, open fire, and deep leather chairs of the library made a perfect setting for the performance that followed. In the relaxed mesmeric voice that Stephen remembered from classroom days, Quarenghi began drawing the American prelates into the field of his personality. He spoke of the Holy Father’s grief at the melancholy posture of human affairs. Then, as was his habit when developing a line of thought, Quarenghi arose and paced quietly before the open hearth. A huge global map of the world flanked one side of the fireplace. As Quarenghi talked, he spun the globe gently, then braking its motion with his hand, brought it to a stop with Italy under his palm.
“Italia,” he said, “progenitrix of law, womb of culture, mother of the arts, awakener of Europe! That awakening, my friends, has had unforeseeable results. For today Europe is a grid of contesting races, so riddled by anxieties, military and economic, so cluttered with nationalist debris, that the stanchest soul can scarcely find kneeling space.” Alfeo Quarenghi shook his head sadly. “I am a European. I love the cultures of Italy, Germany, France. They are the priceless yeast that will leaven new loaves. But I cannot honestly say that the future of civilization dwells in the fatigued and battered continent of Europe.”
Quarenghi’s hand moved north, eastward. “And here is Russia—‘All the Russias,’ as we used to say. A vast expanse in which the light of God’s word has been officially extinguished. Last year His Holiness sent fifty missionary priests into this area—candle flames in the darkness. Their tongues of light were discovered, snuffed out. Not a man of that heroic company now lives. A hundred more will be sent this year. They, too, will suffer martyrdom.” The Roman legate put a question in the Latin form that expects a negative answer: “Can the world look hopefully to Russia as a champion of religion while the atheism of Lenin endures?”
He gave the globe a fresh spin. “Here is the New World. Concerning South America, what can be said? Though the dominant faith is strongly Catholic and most ardent, these loyal children of the Church are plagued by economic and political problems. They will be fortunate if they can preserve their pristine faith—a good fortune that has not been permitted their Mexican brethren.”
The Apostolic Delegate now laid his open palm on the shield-shaped curvature of the United States; seemingly he experienced the tactile pleasure of a man rubbing a ruddy apple. “This is the land I have so often envisioned in fancy. What may we not expect from a country so boundlessly blessed by God? I speak not of the iron in your hills, the carbon in your mines, the torrential power generated by your rivers and machines. I speak rather of the spirit generated by your people—the spirit of American fortitude and resourcefulness, tinged by an almost mystical trust in its own destiny.”
The arch of Quarenghi’s discourse became a bridge between present and future. His hearers saw nations and religions crossing that bridge in a vast migration toward a divine goal. Quarenghi made the toiling progress seem possible, real. And in closing he revealed both the nature of his mission to American Catholics and their responsibility to the future.
“The Holy Father has sent me to your country not in the spirit of authoritarian conquest. I come as neither a meddler nor an overseer, but merely to remind you that the world looks to the Catholics of the United States for a rekindling of the spiritual flame that is now almost extinguished in the world. If your light fails, there is danger of universal darkness.”
No one in that room had ever heard such a declaration of faith and hope. During a long silence each man sat before the council fire of his private thought; then Patrick Hayes voiced with characteristic simplicity the hesitation and fears of all:
“You lay a heavy burden upon us, Archbishop. Our strength may falter, our light may fail.”
Quarenghi was too realistic to deny the truth of the Cardinal’s statement. “That is possible,” he replied. “But as Socrates pointed out long ago: ‘No one can come to harm in contemplating ideals of love, government, or education.’”
THOUGH PHYSICALLY TIRED, Stephen slept poorly that night. The excitement of being home again, the stimulus of Quarenghi’s eloquence, and the knowledge that a new chapter of relationship was opening between Rome and America made him restless, eager for the new day to begin. Around three o’clock he rose to gaze out his window at the great metropolis silently receiving its sacrament of snow. From the window sill he picked up a handful of the precious substance that gave rigor to the American climate, fortitude to the American character. A gleam of light from a street lamp made the snow sparkle with crystalline fire. Stephen praised the glinting flakes—frozen sparks of the flame that Quarenghi had invoked against darkness.
He made a snowball with his bare hands and sponged his forehead with its grateful cold. Then, moved by some overhang from boyhood, he felt the need of heaving the snowball at something. At what? The lamppost stood at a too-difficult angle of fire. No chance of hitting it. Peering through the gauze transparency of snow, Stephen saw the apse of St. Patrick’s looming to the west. For a moment he enjoyed the boyish fantasy of having an arm strong enough to hit one of its pinnacles. What a wing that would be!
The fantasy vanished like a grace note in a song. Stephen tossed his snowball out the open window, watched the arc of its flight as it fell harmlessly to the sidewalk. He threw two more snowballs, drank in a lungful of the frosty air, then, tensions released, he leapt back into bed and fell asleep.
IT WAS February 17, 1926. Not a date to be remembered in history—but typical perhaps of the era in which it fell. Mayor James J. Walker, ill with a cold, was snatching a vacation in Atlantic City. Senator Fernald of Maine had pledged a last-ditch fight against American entry into the League of Nations. President Coolidge was opposing an outlay of half a million dollars for repairs on the White House roof. A certain Reverend Mr. Empringham, having made a tour of New York speakeasies, was declaring Prohibition a bleary failure. The “Spanish trunk” fraud was being revived; a bill limiting the working hours of women and children to forty-eight hours a week had just been introduced in the New York State legislature. Samuel Insull was buying control of the Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin Railroad; two obscure gentlemen named Hoffman had taken out a six-million-dollar insurance policy on their collective brains. A seat on the New York Stock Exchange would sell that day for $148,000, and real estate in Miami was being snapped up at a hundred dollars per running foot. In the sovereign state of Delaware the whipping post had just been revived to check the mounting wave of burglary; and in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Seventh Day Adventists were predicting the end of the world.