Years of dedicated service made the Cardinal Bishop feel older than he was, but when he watched the young boys playing in the Vatican grounds, he felt the years lift from his shoulders. He rested his hands on his cane and leant his weight against the wall of rock beside which Father Adansoni was standing watching. The acolytes were playing across the way from them in the full sun of the Rome spring.
“He looks very happy,” the Cardinal Bishop said, nodding towards the figure of Tacit darting about the group of boys. “You must be very pleased, Javier?”
The Father worked an eyelash out of his eye and drew his fingers through his slowly greying hair. He nodded and smiled benevolently.
“The laughter of children is one of the Lord’s greatest gifts,” the Cardinal continued, stamping the cane into the ground, as if to affirm his words, “and the laughter from a child once thought of as lost the most priceless gift of all.”
They perched against the stone and watched the children playing for a little time in silence until the Cardinal Bishop asked, “I hear they say he is a natural leader?”
Adansoni nodded. “People naturally gravitate to him, as if there is a power within him that you cannot see but which draws you. It is nothing that he knowingly does. It is just there, as if he is a magnet for souls, drawing you towards him. It is a gift. I have never known anything like it before with any of the acolytes.”
“And of what went before, there’s no issue, no mention?”
“He will not talk about it, Cardinal Bishop,” Adansoni cautioned.
“And the other boys, they don’t enquire or press for the truth?”
“If they do, he mentions nothing of it. He says he cannot remember the episode. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. Nor I am intending to press the question. It is not my place, nor is it right to pick at that wound any longer. He is recovered. He is happy. He blossoms. That is all that concerns me. I am pleased.”
“You should be. He will make a good Father, like his mentor.” the Cardinal Bishop added, reaching over and squeezing Adansoni’s wrist, as he pushed himself up from the wall.
“Father? Ha!” Adansoni chuckled, standing up himself and stretching his back after too long leant against the cold stone. “I am thinking more a Cardinal!”
Both men laughed and the Cardinal asked if Adansoni was returning indoors. He said that he was.
“The world needs warm good people like Tacit,” the Cardinal continued, drawing his hood up over his head to fend off the morning chill, “to help spread the message of restraint, to be more considerate of others, to help people recognise that their behaviour influences outwards.”
Father Adansoni looked across the grounds for a final time before turning indoors into the Apostolic Library. “He is a guide many could learn from,” he said. “A mirror into which we should all look.”