RECENTLY, I SPOKE with the executive assistant to the Archbishop of the Vatican who met with the indigenous delegation in Rome in 2016. Alessio is a nice fellow, lawyer in his own right, and clearly someone, like me, who is structuring all the policy while the Archbishop presides over meetings although Alessio would be the first to deny this, and is meticulous in his observation of protocol and deference to his “superiors.” Alessio informs me that the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has been dissolved, as have several other “organs” of the Vatican, and are now reborn, as it were, as the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development. Alessio assures me both that he is not jesting about the reorganisation and that he and his superiors still care very much about the indigenous, but that they have been very busy with nuclear disarmament and the migrant issue. They are also quite busy in the Curia with another issue which they fear far more than a few aboriginals decrying some ancient practices of individual priests — the charges of sexual abuse, seemingly multiplying in number, a virus hitting them from every corner, and being exposed by the diabolical medium of social media. Their office has the same phone number and even emails, but apparently, they no longer exist.
Because Alessio and I have an implied understanding, he does not reprimand me when I say that the Archbishop was displaying less fear from the prospect of a nuclear holocaust than from the prospect of having to sit at the same table again with some of the Apaches he’d had the privilege to encounter through the Long March to Rome. Alessio and I don’t discuss; we engage in commiseration by proxy, and we both sympathize with the Archbishop, despite the millennial sins of the church and its seeming inability to admit them and tarnish the ensign of Papal infallibility.
Sometimes I gently remind Alessio that it might be useful for the former Papal Nuncio to recall that the indigenous confederacy is the world’s oldest democracy, two-row Wampum treaty oblige ... “and no Alessio, the Papal Bulls were not revoked by Sublimus Deus, haven’t you read the enforcement bull, Pastorale Officium, and please, as a courtesy, remember to exempt the delegation from the presentation of letters of credence,” etc., etc.
Another delegation has since travelled to Rome in 2018 — a youth delegation from the Minneapolis area, in addition to the Haudenosaunee who are keeping the contact alive. From what I heard, it went well. It must be a bit strange, everybody in their historical costumes — priests, nuns and aboriginals.
As for us, we are left with our own small lives, and now that we have placed ourselves somewhat outside the perimeter of risk, my reflections and readings remind me that maybe the Creator has his own way of dealing with things. The whole African slave trade took wing in 1455 with the issuance of Romanus Pontifex by Pope Nicholas V, that authorized the Portuguese monarchy — Henry the Navigator — to engage in the lucrative African slave trade. 400,000 African slaves arrived in Lisbon between 1444 and 1761. The only Portuguese who didn’t have slaves in the 16th century were the beggars. Then you have the estimated 5.8 million Africans shipped to Brazil between 1501 and 18571. A seemingly limitless treasure chest of riches, all diverted towards the greater glory of the Portugese monarchy.
But then, at the height of this, on the 300th anniversary of Romanus Pontifex, on All Saints Day, 1755, the gods visited a carnage upon Lisbon described by Goethe as “diabolic terror.” “In seven minutes one of the most powerful earthquakes to hit Europe obliterated one tenth of Lisbon’s population, two thirds of its houses, 36 churches, the world’s most sumptuous opera house, and a royal palace containing priceless archives from Portugal’s golden Age of Discovery. All that was left after the tsunami, the fires and 250 aftershocks was ‘a vast heap of ruins.’ Lisbon never altogether recovered.”2
The fate of Lisbon turned my mind back to that of another man set to conquer the world — Emperor Zhu Di, he of the Forbidden City. On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet ever seen in the world, some of the 26,000 boats up to more than 150 metres long, all of them under the command of Zheng He and the emperor’s other eunuch admirals, set sail “to proceed all the way to the end of the earth” and to subject all peoples to kowtow and pay tribute to the heavenly-mandated Emperor.
On the night of 9 May, two months later, lightning struck the newly constructed palace of the Emperor. The fire that ensued could not be contained and the inferno raged across the city:
Balls of fire appeared to travel down the Imperial Way itself, long the very axis of the Forbidden City, destroying what now is called the Hall of Great Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony — the magnificent palaces where Zhu Di had received leaders of the world three months earlier. The emperor’s throne was burned to cinders ... the shock killed the emperor’s favourite concubine.1
And his concubines, even upon pain of death, mocked him as having lost his “yang power.” The razing of his empire in a single stroke had also excised his manhood. It was more than a tragedy. It was a divine rape. A violation of the vain aspirations of man. And a warning. A halt was placed on voyages of future treasure fleets and foreign travel was prohibited. China turned in upon itself, and truly only re-emerged in the years following the cultural revolution, 550 years later. As Chinese emperors believed they ruled with the mandate of heaven, the destruction of the Forbidden City had unequivocally signalled their displeasure and the end of the Emperor’s reign, and even his lineage.
It’s passing strange that as I wrote the previous passage, I noticed a Times of London leader, titled: “Vatican bows to Beijing over Bishops.” The Chinese government has just announced a historic agreement with the Catholic Church, whereby future bishops will be approved by Beijing and mandated by the Pope. The deal calls for two bishops nominated by the Pope to step aside in the dioceses of Shantou and Mindong and certain excommunication, but Beijingsponsored bishops to be reinstated. So, five hundred years after both the Catholic Church and the Forbidden City were last involved in an attempt to go to the ends of the earth, the Holy See is cutting a deal with Xi Jinping, bartering for the souls of the world’s most populous country.
Even as this deal is being closed, in the far western region of Xinjiang, up to one million Uighurs and other Muslims are thought to be held for political indoctrination, in the biggest re-education programme since the Cultural Revolution. Business has never been better. The Muslims are suppressed. The Church is in a partnership with a rising global power. It’s back to the good old days. Mandarinus Pontifex.
I shared this with Hannah, who didn’t react, as if I were weaning myself off opiates.
“Well, looking back at the Long March, I would have enjoyed being a fly-on-the-wall when Bob Rae was talking to Tomasi.”
“Why? I think his letter is pretty clear.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. Men secretly drawing immaculately straight lines across maps of places from a far-off capital. Spheres of influence. It’s basically the way the French and Brits chopped up Arab regions in 1916 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. With a ruler. Drawing straight lines across the region, with no account taken of ethnic or sectarian groupings.”
“Like the Papal Bulls of Discovery. Queen Isabella and Pope Alexander VI carving up the world with the cleanest stroke of a pen in history. Dividing the world into believers and non-believers.”
“Now, where have I heard that one before?”
“Actually, here’s one for you. The Spanish conquistadores used to read out a document called the Requerimiento to indigenous populations, ordering submission and adherence to the Catholic faith upon pain of excommunication, enslavement and death.”
“Goes to show, evil doesn’t have to be banal.”
“They borrowed the idea from an 8th century Daesh practice.”
“It’s interesting, but none of this has anything to do with us anymore, really. It’s time for others to shout it from the rooftops.”
“So, there’s one thing I don’t get. Why wouldn’t either the Vatican or the Canadian government just opt for the simple, straightforward truth? An admission of the wrong would do so much to turn the page. Call me naïve again, but the truth will set you free.”
“In Madagascar, in the end, the truth is only of secondary importance. You have to presume certain things true to understand the Malagasy.”
“...so long as people believe them to be true. A modus vivendi.”
“Oh,” she laughed, “some things they believe true, others not. The important thing is to get people to say it’s true, and then to act on the premise that it is true. That is what fomba gasy is. Tradition. Customs.”
“Didn’t Sister Maria once say ‘tradition kills’?”
“Of course.”
“So, it’s irrelevant whether anyone has any core beliefs? It’s all realpolitiek?”
“It’s not about core beliefs. It’s a tactic each of them learned somewhere. The tactic works in the short term.”
She paused, considering her remark.”
“You said he was a Rhodes Scholar?”
“Yes.”
“It comes down to entitlement, David. Men drawing straight lines over maps with rulers, and men carving up the globe when they don’t even know whether lands exist or not. It keeps us anthropologists in business.”
“So, where does that leave us?”
“Us? We just get on with it, mister ex-Director.”
“Just like that.”
“Correct. Just like that. We, actually you, David, get on with it. None of these people want to change. The saviours don’t want to save and the victims don’t want to be saved. So, let’s just get on with it, all right? Let’s save ourselves, for once.”