TO EVERYONE’S SURPRISE, O’TOOLE BOARDED THE BUS back to the casa along with the other cardinals, foregoing the customary limo. The papal apartments, sealed up after Pope Thomas died, remained sealed. The new pope’s toothbrush, medicines, and clothes were all back at the casa, so he returned with the boys on the bus.
In the dining room, all the cardinals were in high spirits. Cardinal Amiot was positively giddy. A few cardinals, notably Mendoza, were absent from dinner.
O’Toole found himself embarrassed as cardinal after cardinal rose to propose a toast to him during dinner. Pope Michael did not get back to his room until well past 11:00 p.m. He was emotionally and physically exhausted. He hooked up his CPAP machine and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning was a Saturday. The phone in Pope Michael’s room rang while he was shaving. It was Jim Kelleher.
“Good morning, Your Holiness,” he said.
O’Toole was taken aback for a second by the title of address. “I’m still Mike to you, Jim.”
“I have bad news, Mike. Jack is in the hospital. He had some kind of heart incident last night. They found him sitting in the easy chair in his room this morning. I called the desk at the casa when he didn’t answer his phone. Jack was always an early riser, so I knew something must be wrong.”
“Where is he?” asked O’Toole.
“The ambulance took him to Gemelli an hour ago,” said Kelleher. “I’m going up there now. It looks pretty bad, because Jack told the EMTs in the ambulance that he wanted last rites. Jack would never use that term unless he knew it was the end. I’m sure he wants to see you.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the new pope.
Kelleher was incredulous. “You can’t do that,” he said. “You’re the pope. You can’t just run off to the hospital. Besides, you have things to do, don’t you?”
“There are people here who will take care of all the planning,” said O’Toole. “If Jack thinks this is the end, then it is the end. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t see him. Come to the casa and pick me up. I’ll call the gate and tell them to let you through. What are you driving?”
Kelleher had to ask somebody what kind of car they had there at the Jesuit residence. “I’ll be driving a little Fiat 500, Mike. Hardly fit for the supreme pontiff.”
“Bullshit,” said O’Toole. “Pick me up! We’ll go together. Tell them at the gate that you have some important papers for me from America. Ciao.”
After they hung up the phone, O’Toole felt a little disoriented. He had known Jack McClendon since he was a teenager. Jack had always been there for him.
O’Toole still thought of Jack as the strong young priest who had arrived in Salem fresh out of the seminary. He was the curate who took the altar boys swimming in the cold ocean at Devereux Beach in Marblehead. Now Jack was dying. The pope called the gate to alert them for Kelleher and then got dressed.
Absentmindedly, O’Toole dressed himself in his ordinary black suit and clerical collar. He hung his pectoral cross around his neck and stuck it in his jacket pocket, just like any other bishop. Then he remembered the white cassock in the closet. Oh, crap, he thought, I’m pope now. I’ll wear what I want. It was a freeing thought.
Pope Michael went down to the lobby to wait for Kelleher. The porter was sitting at the front desk reading La Repubblica. He was so startled to see the pope that he spilled coffee all over his newspaper. Running over to O’Toole, he asked breathlessly in Italian, “Can I do anything for you, Holiness?”
“No,” said O’Toole. “I’m waiting for a car.”
The poor man was completely flustered. He didn’t know if he should stand there with the pope or keep a respectful distance. His anguish was relieved a moment later when a bright red Fiat 500 pulled up to the front door. Kelleher got out and stood by the driver’s door, looking over the car toward the main entrance of the casa. Pope Michael emerged from the building and ran down the stairs. “Let’s go,” he said to Kelleher.
“What, no white cassock?” asked the Jesuit.
“Oh, stuff it,” said O’Toole. “Not my style.”
“Do you want to call a police car to take you up to the hospital, Mike?” asked Kelleher. “I don’t think this is safe. You should probably have some sort of escort, or a bulletproof car, or something.” Kelleher was clearly worried.
“Who’s going to know I’m in this car?” asked O’Toole. “Let’s just go. This may be my only chance to see Jack. Drive. I’ll tell you how to get there.”
The official title of the hospital is the Hospital of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, but everyone calls it Gemelli Policlinico after the name of its founder, Agostino Gemelli, a Franciscan monk who was both priest and doctor.
The Gemelli Policlinico is only a couple of miles from the Vatican, but the winding road up Monte Mario makes it seem farther. Kelleher drove like a madman. Since it was still early on a Saturday morning, the streets were fairly deserted.
Gemelli is not the closest hospital to the Vatican. Just a few hundred meters from St. Peter’s Square is the ancient Ospedale di Santo Spirito. Parts of Holy Spirit Hospital were built in the twelfth century to house wounded crusaders returning from the Holy Land. Today, Roman wags insist that the hospital has not been substantially remodeled since the Middle Ages. Romans say, “If you want to die, go to Santo Spirito.”
When Pope John Paul II was shot in 1981, the ambulance carrying the pope roared right past Santo Spirito and went straight up to Gemelli. So did the ambulance that picked up Jack, squealing around the hairpin turns that lead to the top of Monte Mario.
O’Toole hung on to the sissy bar, the handle above the door in the Fiat, as Jim Kelleher careened around the curves and headed up the hill. Kelleher had to keep downshifting the Fiat to coax it up the slope.
Halfway to the hospital, Kelleher noticed that they were being followed by police cars. Evidently someone had seen the new pope leaving the casa and had alerted the vigili.
On the way up, Kelleher handed Mike a little metal case, called a pyx, containing one consecrated host. “This is for Jack,” he said.
When they reached the top of the hill, the car roared down the Via delle Pineta Sacchetti, weaving in and out between the cars, and shot through the hospital gate labeled Ingresso. As they pulled up to the main entrance, security guards came running from the guard booth at the gate, wondering why the car had not stopped.
The pope unfolded himself from the tiny car and headed for the hospital lobby, leaving the door open.
“Wait, Mike!” Kelleher shouted. “Take the oils!” The pope ran back.
Through the open passenger door he tossed the pope a little leather case containing a vial of blessed olive oil and a small purple stole. He also reached the glove compartment of the car and handed him a ritual book for the anointing of the sick, in English. Kelleher had thought to bring them from the Jesuit residence.
“Thanks, Jim,” said O’Toole. “I guess I’ve been a bureaucrat too long.”
By this time, the security guards were converging on Pope Michael. Kelleher yelled to O’Toole, “You go up to Jack’s room. I’ll deal with these guys.” O’Toole ran for the front door and disappeared into the hospital. Just as O’Toole passed through the hospital doors, the trailing police cars came squealing into the hospital driveway.
Inside, O’Toole had to ask directions. The lady at the hospital information desk did not recognize him. After all, popes don’t usually make sick calls at hospitals.
Jack was in the cardiac ICU, a glass-walled section at the end of a seemingly endless corridor on the fourth floor. It was the place where they brought the sickest heart patients. Jack’s cubicle was one of a dozen or so that opened out onto a central nurses’ station.
Once he found the proper cubicle, Pope Michael slid the glass door closed behind him and pulled the privacy curtain. The nurse at the desk said nothing. A priest visiting a Catholic hospital was commonplace.
Jack was hooked up to all the latest telemetry. A screen above his bed registered his heart rate, oxygenation, blood pressure, and temperature. Jack had an oxygen tube under his nose and an IV in his arm. His breathing was shallow. O’Toole pulled a chair next to the bed.
He touched his friend’s hand and said, “Hi, old man. Did you plan to leave without saying good-bye?”
Jack turned and smiled weakly. “Michael O’Toole, I’m surprised you could come. Aren’t you the pope now? That’s what I heard.”
“I guess I am,” said O’Toole. “Hard to believe that a boy from the North Shore could get elected pope.”
“Look what you did to me,” said Jack. “You gave me a heart attack.” Both men laughed a little, then both started crying.
“Can you anoint me?” asked Jack.
“Yeah,” said O’Toole. “Jim Kelleher gave me the oils when I got out of the car. I never would have remembered.”
“I can tell you’re not a parish priest,” said Jack with a smile. “But I guess the Bishop of Rome will have to do for now.”
O’Toole put on the purple stole and opened the green plastic-covered ritual book. He was unfamiliar with the prayers, and he fumbled a bit, crying.
“Oh, forget the book for now,” said Jack. “Just give me absolution first.”
“For what?” said O’Toole.
“For a lifetime of sin,” said Jack.
The Bishop of Rome raised his hand over his friend’s head and gave him absolution, ending with the words “I absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
They said the Lord’s Prayer together. The pope gave the priest Holy Communion from the little pyx that Kelleher had given him.
Then O’Toole found the right page in the ritual book and opened the vial of oil. He prayed, “God of mercy, ease the sufferings and comfort the weakness of Your servant, Jack, whom the Church now anoints with this holy oil, through Christ our Lord.”
Mike put a few drops of oil on his thumb and made the sign of the cross on Jack’s forehead, saying, “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
Then he turned Jack’s hands palms up, and anointed each of them with oil, saying, “May the Lord, who frees you from sin, save you and raise you up.”
Quiet descended on the room as they prayed silently. The only sound was the sound of the monitors beeping and the intravenous pump whirring away.
O’Toole recited the words of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.” He choked back tears when he got to the words “Even though I should walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
With the psalm complete, Jack looked at his spiritual son for a moment and struggled to speak. “Mike, you are the pope now. A lot of hopes and prayers are riding on you—especially mine. This is your opportunity to open the windows of the Church again, like John XXIII.”
“Don’t talk about all of that now,” said O’Toole.
“No,” said Jack with some force. “Now is the time. I’m dying. We won’t get another chance. God has called you. Don’t forget that.”
Jack paused and swallowed.
“Mike, what you do now matters. It matters to millions of people like your father who left the Church and your mother who kept going to daily Mass, despite all the scandals. For them, use this chance that God has given you.”
For a moment, both their thoughts were back in Salem. The tears started again.
Jack took a little sip from the cup of water on the tray table beside his bed. He continued, “Mike, they are going to call you Holy Father now. Be a father, a real father, not just to the Church, but to the world. Love the world, Mike. Love it like a father would. The world needs a father more than it needs a lecturing professor.”
Jack’s voice was becoming weaker and weaker. “The Church is in crisis. The wheels are coming off. We’ve known that for years. Think of your nieces and nephews. They don’t go to church. Why? Think of most of the Catholics you grew up with back in Boston. Most of them don’t go anymore either. We can’t go on like this. The Church back home is dying. Even in Africa there are problems. You know that better than anyone.”
O’Toole nodded. He had always pointed with pride to the growth of the Church in Africa, but he knew it was a mile wide and an inch deep. In another generation, all the problems that plagued Europe and North America would surface there. Human nature is the same everywhere. The problems are the same.
“I want to do something to bring things back,” said Mike.
“Not things,” said Jack. “People. Bring people back to the Church.
“You know,” continued Jack with considerable difficulty, “back home they have that Shaker village out near Pittsfield. It was once a living, breathing religious community, but now it’s just a museum. Don’t let the Church die like that. We are not some kind of museum, with saints under glass. We are a hospital for sinners. Our work is not about keeping traditions, it is about changing lives and saving souls.”
“What should I do?” asked O’Toole. He was so accustomed to asking advice from Jack that it did not seem strange to him that the pope should be asking an aged parish priest for answers.
“We’ve been talking about these things for years,” said Jack. “You know the problems. The Church has been in the deep freeze of winter for twenty years. If you bring the spring, people will start coming back to life when things thaw a bit. Just love people first. Then you can lead them.”
The new pope nodded. “I’ll do my best, Jack.”
“The Church has literally become a scandal. We stand in the way of people coming to the faith with our pompousness and our lavish wealth.”
“I know,” said O’Toole, thinking of his many trips to impoverished Africa.
“I love the Church,” said Jack between short breaths. “The Church has been my home all my life. I love her like my mother or a wife. But maybe we should have a church that loves us back. Try it, Mike. That’s what Jesus did. He told people good news. His harsh judgments were reserved for the Pharisees and the priests.”
Jack stopped and pointed to his tattered prayer book. The binding had been taped with duct tape. “I want you to have my breviary, Mike. Your name is in it, along with your mother’s and your father’s and that boy you buried in Charlestown.”
O’Toole took the worn breviary from the table beside the bed. Very few things in a priest’s life are more personal than his prayer book. It is full of cards of people they have buried, friends who have been ordained, and memories of the past.
“Just remember, Mike, you are not the ruler of God’s people. You are their servant. If you remember that, you’ll be OK. And so will the Church.”
Michael O’Toole looked at Father McClendon. Suddenly he was a student again, listening to the teacher. “I wish I was as good a priest as you are, Jack,” said Pope Michael.
“Stop that nonsense,” said Jack. “You are. You’re a great priest. Just have some faith. All the certitude of the hard-liners does not show faith. It shows their doubt. They are afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid of the Holy Spirit.”
Jack pointed to his breviary again. “Look in the back cover. I think I wrote something there by Reinhold Niebuhr. Read it.”
Mike fumbled with the fat book. Cards fell out. “Read it out loud,” said Jack.
O’Toole found the handwritten quote from Niebuhr: “Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.”
“Turn the page,” said Jack. “There is something else you need to read from two saints, Benedict and Francis de Sales.”
Mike found two typewritten quotes pasted into the index page. Under Benedict’s name the passage read:
Unity in necessary things,
Freedom in doubtful things,
And love in all things.
Under the name of St. Francis de Sales, there was another quote:
We must begin with love, continue with love, and end with love.
“That’s it, Mike. It’s all about love. It’s about relationships, not laws. Relationships to Christ and to each other.”
Jack’s sentences were getting shorter. His eyes closed for a while, then opened again.
“I don’t know for sure that heaven exists,” said Jack. “But I know that the ideal heaven will be a full place, full of people. I don’t need to imagine damned souls to make me happier in heaven. I hope we can all complete the circle of our lives and see the face of God.”
Jack looked at O’Toole and said, “I love you, Mike. I have since you were a kid.”
“I love you, too,” said O’Toole.
Just then Kelleher tapped on the glass wall and slid open the door. He stepped into the room.
“Hiya, Jack,” said Kelleher to the dying man in the bed.
Jack looked at him. That was all the greeting he could manage.
The pope was now at a loss for words. Tears dripped down his cheeks. Kelleher put a hand on O’Toole’s shoulder. Jack’s breathing was getting more and more shallow. He stopped trying to speak. Then, without any sigh or shudder, his breathing just stopped.
The lines on the monitor went flat. It let out a loud, continuous squeal. Responding to the alarm, the nurse came running in. She checked Jack’s pulse. Then she stepped outside the door and called the doctor.
Death is not very often dramatic. It is usually just a silent passage, like stepping through a doorway, from one room to the next. Jack stepped away from this world quietly to whatever world lies beyond.
“He’s gone,” said Kelleher, making the sign of the cross over Jack.
The Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Christ felt like a spiritual orphan.