After leaving Bishop Cronin with Dennis, Matthew Mahan took a quick shower and shaved. Freshened, though a little lightheaded, he stepped into the hall and headed for the elevator. He was looking forward to saying mass at the Church of St. Peter in Chains. He wanted to combine what he had experienced there two nights ago with the words of the consecration. Out of this might come stronger, clearer insight.

He had not taken more than ten steps when a woman appeared in the hall about 100 feet ahead of him. She had high, delicate cheekbones, a sensual, rather arrogant mouth, and dark hair elaborately done in Empire style. A white evening dress fell from beneath her maroon cloak to the tops of her high-heeled silver sandals. She stared coolly down the hall at him for a moment, and her hand went instinctively to her hair, which was in some disarray. A mocking smile played across her lips. She turned and walked ahead of him to the elevators.

Well before he reached the door, Matthew Mahan knew that she had come from Mike Furia’s room. He was shaken by a strange combination of emotions. First anger, then a kind of fear. Was there anyone he could trust, anyone who did not betray him in one way or another? A new brutal loneliness assailed him. But now there was nothing, not even the faintest touch of the sweetness he had felt with Mary Shea. It was the bitter isolation that Jesus must have felt alone in the High Priest’s dungeon exposed to the whips and rods and insults of the temple police. All through his mass, Matthew Mahan struggled to accept the pain as Jesus had accepted it.

After mass, he met the somber gaze of Moses with a new, more anguished understanding of his sadness. He said a silent prayer to Pope John, asking him for guidance. Slowly he became convinced that he must do something. He could not look the other way as he had done more than once during the war in France and Germany. Then he had told himself that men who faced death every day had to be forgiven a great deal. When he saw lines of G.I.s outside a local whorehouse, he had always turned down a side street before he got close enough to recognize anyone. Maybe Mike Furia had been in one of those lines. Maybe Father Mahan should have descended on the customers in the style of a few chaplains he had known and lectured them angrily, ordered them to disperse. But for every convert that technique made, there were a dozen enemies. Besides, all that was long ago in a different world.

Mike Furia was more than a face in the congregation, a soul he was ordained to shepherd. He was a personal friend, a man with whom he had shared his life, who had often sought his advice, his help. To be silent now would be more than cowardice; it would be betrayal of Mike’s soul.

Pressing another 1,000-lira note into the sacristan’s hand, Matthew Mahan left the Church of St. Peter in Chains and walked down through the tunnel to the Via Cavour. The streets were beginning to fill with people. The explosion of motor scooters and motorcycles, the roar of accelerating autos, filled the air around him. He walked on past pawnshops and palazzos. At one point he found himself staring dully at the Fountain of Trevi, practically deserted except for a quartet of determined young Americans who looked ready to pass out from lack of sleep or too much marijuana, yet did their best to raise their voices above the splash of the water. They were singing a kind of lament. The only words Matthew Mahan could catch were “goin’ home, goin’ home.” It suited his mood, but he declined their invitation to join them.

By the time he reached the Hotel Hassler it was almost eight o’clock. Mournfully, with nothing to reassure him but a kind of grim determination, he knew what he was going to do. He would have to risk his friendship, his episcopal dignity - yes, even his self-esteem - without the slightest confidence of success. His stomach twinged. It was well past time for his breakfast mush, but that would have to wait. Up to the fifth floor in the elevator he went and down the hall to knock on Mike Furia’s door.

“Hey,” Mike said as he opened the door, “I just had breakfast delivered. Do you want to join me? I’ll call for another order.”

“Thanks, Mike,” he answered, “I’ll just drink your leftover milk.”

“Okay,” said Mike, returning to the dresser where his bread was already broken and his coffee steaming in his cup. Matthew Mahan took a glass from the bathroom and poured a few ounces of warm milk into it. He sipped it, while Mike munched on the roll and washed it down with coffee. The intense concentration he gave to swallowing the hot liquid made it seem a kind of primitive rite. He gasped with pain and pleasure. The massive body, the big dark face with the somewhat hooded eyes, was strangely threatening.

“What’s up?” Mike said. “How’s Dennis?”

“Fine, thank God. Listen, Mike, you’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but I’ve got to say it. I couldn’t face myself in the mirror or consider myself a priest if I didn’t say it.”

Mike Furia put down his coffee cup and stared at him, completely baffled. Two furrows appeared on his wide, tan forehead. He hunched his huge shoulders and leaned forward in his chair, so that he looked even bigger than he already was. “I’m listening,” he said.

“On my way out to say mass, I almost bumped into a woman coming out of this room. She - she obviously spent the night here.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.” Mike jumped to his feet and strode across the room, turned and walked back half the distance. “Matt,” he said, “it’s none of your goddamn business.”

Matthew Mahan shook his head. “Mike, it is my business. What kind of a friend would I be, what kind of a priest would I be if I let you lose your soul in front of my eyes without saying a word?”

Mike’s eyes could not have been more icy, more contemptuous.

“What possible - value - what good can a woman like that do you? Do you even know her name?”

“Of course I know her name. She’s a dress designer. One of the best in Rome. She’s separated like I am, and she can’t get married again because Holy Mother Church will put her in jail here in Italy.”

“I’m sorry,” Matthew Mahan said humbly. “I thought - I thought she looked a little like a call girl.”

“I have them, too, when she’s not available. I haven’t taken a vow of celibacy like you, Matt. I thought you understood that.”

“Mike, you’ve got a wife, a son. This sort of thing - only takes you further away from them. Spiritually, psychologically. There is the possibility of one of these women - what would Betty, Tony, say?”

Mike Furia threw back his head and laughed. Never before had Matthew Mahan heard such a cold, bitter sound. “They’d say, ‘Look, the Animal is at it again. Isn’t he disgusting?’”

The Animal. Matthew Mahan remembered the conversation with Dennis McLaughlin about Betty Furia being a monster. He had sat at a dozen dinners with this simpering woman who oohed and aahed over his every word. In her home, she had shown him her “grottoes” - the one to the Little Flower on the landing of the stairs, to the Blessed Virgin in her dressing room. He had beamed his approval of them all, and at her relic of the True Cross, her devotion to St. Blaise, who cured her of her sore throats, and St. Anne, who had saved her from death when she gave birth to her son, and St. Teresa of Avila, who always cured her headaches.

“You want to know the last time I had sex with my wife, Matt? That’s all I ever did with her, have sex. I’ve never made love to her. At least, not after the kid was born. The last time was May 5, 1959, ten years ago next week. Before that, we used to go two, three months without touching each other. We were separated a long time before we made it legal.”

“Mike,” said Matthew Mahan, “how could we be friends for so many years, close friends, and you never told me this?”

“I hinted about it often enough, Matt. But what did we usually talk about when we were together? Business. How to get another gymnasium built, another million raised. You didn’t want to hear my sad story. What the hell, you’re no parish priest.”

Nothing could compared to the pain of those words, not the pain of the ulcer, nor the humiliations inflicted on him by old Hogan. “I was a priest first, Mike. I still am.”

“Well, if you expect me to get down on my knees and beg your pardon - or God’s - forget it.”

“I didn’t - I don’t. I only came here to say I’m your friend - what can I do to help?”

For a moment, Mike Furia seemed to sway in the middle of the room. At first, Matthew Mahan thought the sway was inside his own head, a product of his weariness and humiliation. The big hands opened and closed, and he wondered what he would do if his friend drove one of those massive fists into his face. Then Mike spun away and sat down in a chair on the other side of the room. It was a gesture that seemed to say - I want to get as far away from you as possible. “I guess it’s about time we’ve had it out, Matt. I don’t believe any of it, the whole schmeer.”

“You mean the Church - being a Catholic?”

“You got it.”

“And this has been going on - for a long time?”

“A hell of a long time.”

“You had women even when we traveled together?”

“Sure. Every time. I need a woman every second or third night, Matt, and I usually get one.”

“But how do you explain - our friendship? The help you’ve given me? You’ve raised millions of dollars for the Church.”

“I raised millions of dollars for you. For our friendship. I believe in that - even if it’s in the past tense now.”

“Why?”

“Because you saved my goddamn life. What the hell, do you think that just because you talked me out of being a hit man, a boom-boom guy, I’d drop the whole code? No, Matt, you have a hand on me, as we used to say in the Family. You’ve got it for the rest of your life whether I like it or not.”

Instinctively, Matthew Mahan felt himself withdrawing his hand, as if it really was outstretched to clutch the prize he had won that day in Germany. And all the time you thought it had been sanctifying grace, a triumph of your priesthood. Instead, it was the pagan code of the Mafiosi. Swallow the humiliation, he told himself, swallow it, and remember there was still a soul here, a soul in torment.

“In a way, you blame me, don’t you, Mike? You blame me for almost everything that’s happened to you - the marriage, the boy.”

For a moment, the hard mask on Mike’s face wavered. The question hit very close to the truth.

“You picked out St. Francis Xavier University for me. That made it practically inevitable for me to meet that frozen Irish bitch from our sister school, Mount St. Monica’s.”

“Mike,” said Matthew Mahan, “there’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying. I took a tremendous amount of satisfaction from your career. You were one of my saved souls. The fact that you were also a personal friend and an enormous help to me as a fundraiser - well, I just assumed that was God’s way of patting me on the back, giving me a little reward for my rescue work. But now I see how much I let my self-satisfaction deceive me. It’s my worst fault. A form of pride - arrogance. I’m sorry, Mike.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For failing you - as a priest.”

“You didn’t fail me. I never gave you a chance to fail me.”

“I never looked for the opportunity, either.”

He got up and walked leadenly to the door. Mike Furia let him go without another word.

At the end of the hall, a check on Dennis McLaughlin found him, Bishop Cronin, and a young Jesuit named Goggin discussing a trip to Isolotto, a town outside Florence. Dennis looked remarkably healthy.

In his own room, Matthew Mahan threw himself down on the bed and instantly fell asleep. Hours later, so it seemed, a phone rang in his ear. Jim McAvoy said hesitantly, “Your Eminence - the bus has been waiting.” He leaped to his feet and saw with chagrin that it was nine-thirty. He had slept about forty-five minutes. Splashing cold water on his face, he descended and resumed his role as tour guide. They spent most of the day at St. Peter’s, the Vatican Museum, and, thanks to some advance preparation he had made by mail, an exclusive visit to the Vatican gardens, where the Pope strolled when he wanted some outdoor exercise. They then made a dash to the catacombs of St. Priscilla near the Church of St. Agnes. After descending into the darkness and listening to lectures by a very amusing Irish brother at various points in the winding tunnels, they surfaced and visited the mausoleum of Costanza, the daughter of Constantine, one of the most beautiful Roman-Christian survivals in the city. The mosaics were not particularly religious. The dominant theme was the joy of wine and food. Later painters added some religious inserts. Matthew Mahan’s favorite was Christ portrayed as a beardless young man standing with St. Peter and St. Paul and their lambs at the four rivers of Paradise. The calm, serene confidence on their faces aroused a wistful sensation in him. Would there ever again be a time when the faith was as simple and as heartfelt?

That night, after the reception at the American embassy, Matthew Mahan gave a small dinner party for the closest members of his official family and his intimate friends in a private room at the hotel. Monsignors George Petrie, Terry Malone, Father Dennis McLaughlin, and Bishop David Cronin represented the clergy, and Mary Shea, Mike Furia, the McAvoys, and Bill Reed represented the laity. There was a great deal of kidding about Bill Reed’s stubborn unaffiliation with any church. Bishop Cronin, to Terry Malone’s humorless outrage, maintained that this proved Bill had more sense than anyone else at the table. To confuse matters, Bishop Cronin defended himself by quoting Pope John. “I do not fear the habits, the politics, or the religion of any man anywhere in the world as long as he lives with an awe of God.” Bill Reed declared himself ready to subscribe to that article of faith. Without it, anyone who practiced medicine would soon lose his mind, he said.

Monsignors Malone and Petrie left early, as if they sensed that they were outsiders, compared to the rest of the party. This troubled Matthew Mahan a little - but not as much as Mike Furia’s obviously hostile mood. Throughout dinner, they had scarcely exchanged a word. Mike had persisted in talking to Dennis McLaughlin and Mary Shea, and from what Matthew Mahan could hear, it was largely a cynical diatribe against the Church in Italy. He had been pained, at one point, to hear Mary nod and say: “Il Vaticano riceve - manon da a nessuno.” (The Vatican gets but never gives.) It was one of the oldest clichés in Europe, and it was very upsetting to hear Mary repeating it and Dennis McLaughlin smiling in approval. Jim McAvoy with his stubborn, if not always intelligent, loyalty had been the only one within earshot to disagree with Mike, and poor Jim had promptly been buried by a barrage of negative statistics.

At a signal from Matthew Mahan, the waiter poured another round of Asti Spumante, the best Italian champagne. Bill Reed eyed him ominously as he took a swallow of it. Avoiding his glare, Matthew Mahan smiled at Mike Furia and asked: “What did I hear you saying about the Church in Italy?”

“Oho,” crowed Davey Cronin. “I told him he was talking too loud.”

“Listen,” said Mike, trying to sound offhand, even jocular, in response to his challenge. “If this kid is any good with a pen, I’m the one he ought to talk to. Nobody gives a damn about old Pio Nono and the Vatican Council of 1870. They’re interested in today’s scandals - and I’m the guy that’s sitting right in the middle of them.”

“Much as it pains me to admit an Eyetalian can be right on anything,” said Bishop Cronin, “this builder of Towers of Babel may have a point.”

“Have you ever heard of the Societa Generale Immobiliare?”

Mike was not even looking at Matthew Mahan. He was talking to Mary, clearly challenging His Eminence, deliberately preaching a contrary gospel.

“I’ve heard it mentioned by one or two friends at the Vatican.”

“It’s the biggest construction company in Italy. In fact, one of the biggest real estate and building companies in the world. It’s capitalized at 67 billion lire. In 1967, they spent 30 billion lire on projects in Italy alone. I’ve made joint bids with them on a couple of dozen jobs. The Vatican owns 25 percent of the shares and about 98 percent of the control. When you go into a deal with those guys, you need the best lawyers in the world behind you.”

“You mean they’re crooked?”

“Oh no. They just press the contract to the outer limits.”

They’re working for the Pope. It’s their duty to get everything they can in every deal - and a little extra.”

“What sort of things do they build?”

“Well, let’s see. We’re just finishing up the final stages of the Watergate Apartments down in Washington, D.C. It’s running about 67 million. Seventy percent of the common stock and 50 percent of the preferred is owned by Immobiliare. Then there’s Immobiliare Canada. They own the Stock Exchange Tower in Montreal. That came in for about 50 mill. Have you ever seen it? It’s the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. Immobiliare owns about 85 percent of a Montreal outfit called Red-Brooke Estates. They just finished a huge thirty-three story apartment building up there. It has a big piece of Lomas Verdes, which is building a satellite town outside Mexico City and a connecting superhighway, the Superavenida.”

“But Italy, that’s the real story, from what you told us at dinner the other night,” said Davey Cronin.

Mike Furia grinned. “We’d be here until dawn if I started listing what SGI has built since the war. In 1966, in Rome alone, they put up three apartment houses, two or three office buildings, a dozen or so luxury homes, and a couple of suburban developments. In Milan, they did even better - eighteen offices, a shopping center, a seven-building apartment complex. In sixty-seven, they showed a profit of 6.2 million. Not bad when you consider that they only paid 1.5 million to get operating control in 1949. Around the same time, they also bought Italcimenti, which happens to be the biggest cement and construction material maker in Italy. And then there’s Pantanella, just about the biggest pasta manufacturer - assets of more than 15 million. And about twenty other companies, not all of them winners.”

“What’s the one that’s a real loser?” Cronin asked. “The toilet bowl outfit?”

“Manifattura Ceramica Pozzi. They’ve lost about 14 million in the last six years, but they’ll come around. Last year the Vatican put Count Galeazzi, one of their toughest boys, on the board.”

“And the banks. What about the banks?” said Cronin.

“Well, they own one bank outright, the Banco Santo Spirito. They’re tied into three other big banks - Banca CommercialeItalians, Credito Italiana, and Banco di Roma. Those four account for about 20 percent of all the bank deposits in Italy, and they handle about 50 percent of all the foreign trade transactions. Only last year Italcimenti bought eight new banks through a financial holding company, Italmobiliare. Then there’s at least a couple of thousand small banks all over Italy that either the Vatican or the local parish or church owns outright.”

“And they all charge interest, do they not?” asked Bishop Cronin.

“Sure.”

“Which ignores the clear teaching of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, a half-dozen Greek fathers, the Second Council of the Lateran, and numerous other councils, all of which specifically condemned charging interest on money - usury, they called it - as a serious sin. A half-dozen popes speaking ex cathedra made the same pronouncement, citing scripture from both the Old and New Testaments. But when it became clear that all Europe was ignoring them, their successors forgot about it to the point of getting into the business themselves. These are the same heroes - I mean Pius XI and XII - who refused to allow the Catholic couple with eleven children to touch a contraceptive, even though there’s not a single line of scripture to support them, and only two vague pronouncements by previous popes before 1930.”

All eyes in the room had turned to Matthew Mahan. For a moment, he felt only outrage. Why did they expect him to answer every charge that anyone - even an obviously crazy old Irishman - made against the Church? But then he saw something else on Mary Shea’s face. Not the desire for an answer but the assumption that no real answer was possible.

He sighed and sipped his champagne. “Before we all form up and march out of here to burn down St. Peter’s,” he said, “remember that the Church is more than an investment company - and a lot more than an enemy of contraception. No matter how wrong or right she is on any of these things, each day she brings into the world enormous amounts of God’s grace.”

“But if the vessel in which the grace comes is polluted, the grace itself may be of no avail,” Bishop Cronin said.

“I don’t believe that,” Matthew Mahan said. “I don’t think you do, either.”

“What else explains the gigantic failure of this grace in the world around us?”

The anguish on Cronin’s contorted face, in his trembling voice, was unavoidable. The conversation was off the rails.

“Let’s not judge by appearances. Let’s not be stampeded by panic,” Matthew Mahan said. “That’s - that’s almost a loss of faith you’re describing, Davey.”

“Call it what you will,” said the old man, slumping back in his chair. “Call it what you will.”

“Is it you or Asti Spumante talking? No matter how much we disagree - I can’t believe we’d ever part company on this point.”

“No, no, of course not, Matt.”

His automatic answer was more painful than defiance. Wasn’t he saying, You’re not worth the time it takes to argue with you, Your Eminence?

“Dennis, why don’t you go upstairs with Bishop Cronin? We’ll take his word for the Asti Spumante, but I do think he’s overtired.”

“I am not in the least overtired. But I do think it’s time for me to shut up and go to bed.”

He got up and strode out of the room. Bill Reed glanced at his watch and announced that he was joining him.

“Well, I’m a bottle finisher myself,” said Mike Furia, holding up his glass for the waiter to fill.

“Likewise,” said Mary with defiant gaiety. Dennis McLaughlin said nothing, but he also raised his glass. Matthew Mahan waved the waiter aside and wondered if he should try to explain what had just happened between him and Davey Cronin. He tried, but from the expressions on the faces of his listeners, he was not very successful. “It’s a little like a father who can’t realize his son has grown up. I just can’t take his opinions and spout them anymore. I’ve got to think for myself. It’s part of my responsibility -”

“From what I’ve heard,” Jim McAvoy said angrily, “he’s practically a Protestant.”

“Not really, Jim. Underneath that scathing language, there’s a tremendous faith, a tremendous love for the Church.”

“I sense it,” Madeline McAvoy said softly. “I sense it very much.”

Matthew Mahan felt a surge of concern and affection for the McAvoys. These were the kind of people he was trying to save from the rising waters of chaos. The reasonably intelligent, the reasonably loyal. He turned to Mike Furia with new determination. “That stuff about the Church in business, Mike. There are two ways of looking at it. It costs about $20 million a year to run the Vatican. That means you’ve got to generate a lot of income from somewhere. You can’t just depend on contributions.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t cost 20 million, Matt,” Mary said, “if they didn’t have apostolic delegates all over the world and the Curia with its perpetually growing bureaucracy.”

“Or the Vatican radio,” Mike Furia said. “What the hell do they need a radio station for?”

“John told me the Vatican Council was costing $30 million. Osservatore Romano, the Vatican paper, loses 2 million a year.”

“Why do they need a newspaper? The Italian Government doesn’t publish a newspaper. No free world government does,” Mary said.

It was incredible, the defiance in her voice, in her eyes. Mary, of all people. Was he losing her as he had already lost Mike? Through no fault of his own but because of what they had seen and heard and felt about the Church here in the land of her leaders. What did it mean for him, for them all?

For another twenty minutes, he tried to explain the origin of the Vatican’s involvement with the business world. It had begun only in 1929, when Mussolini and Pius XI had signed the Lateran Treaty, ending the Church’s sixty-year argument with the Italian Government over the loss of the papal states. Mussolini had paid an indemnity of some $90 million, and with this money, the Pope had set up a special department, administered by a shrewd financier, Bernardo Nogara. It was Nogara and his successors who had multiplied this capital into a worldwide network of investments and business enterprises. Under Pius XII, the involvement of the Pacellis had led to scandalous nepotism. But now Paul was doing his best to retreat from this way of doing things. The Pacellis had largely been eased out. So had most of the other laymen.

His audience was clearly unimpressed. Not even the McAvoys responded to this historical approach. Matthew Mahan had to admit to himself that it was pretty uninspiring. The party broke up with lackluster good nights. It was an off-key ending to what should have been a very happy evening. Mary Shea sensed his emotion and with her good night said softly: “Don’t let it upset you so much, Matt. You can’t change the facts.”

Alone in his room, Matthew Mahan gulped a half-dozen Titrilac tablets to defend his stomach against the Asti Spumanti and decided Mary had given him good advice. He tried to turn his mind to tomorrow, Sunday. He had reserved it, thank God, as a day to relax, think, pray. He needed time to ponder the spiritual significance of this major event in his life as a priest. He thought of tomorrow as a mini-retreat that would, he hoped, recall memories of the five-day retreat he made before his consecration as bishop. Pope John had sent his own personal confessor, Bishop Alfred Cavagna, to see him each day to give him subjects for meditation.

The fragile old man had led him through the labyrinthine passageways of the human soul, with his eyes fixed on the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew Mahan had asked for and received profound advice in dealing with his chief failing, the sin of pride. With beautiful simplicity, the old priest had spoken to him of the necessity of letting go of every wish, every personal desire, of the importance of handing them over to God, so that whenever one was fulfilled, the victory belonged to God, and if it was unfulfilled, it was God’s will, as well as an opportunity to be embraced, a chance to learn through suffering God’s true intentions.

How hard it was to keep this wisdom in mind while sitting on an archdiocesan powder keg. Matthew Mahan took out the wrinkled list of maxims Pope John had given him. He had compiled them when he was a seminarist. It was ominously symbolic, the way they had drifted to the back of his dresser drawer, he thought, fingering the faded paper ruefully.

The emphasis, the recurring word throughout the list, was love.

I will love thee as I am loved by thee.

Love is the fulfilling of the law.

The aim of our charge is love.

A sweet word multiplyeth friends and appeaseth enemies.

Some of them made discouraging reading for Matthew Mahan. Number 34, for instance. “The best remedy I know against sudden fits of impatience is a silence that is gentle and without malice. However little one says, pride always comes into it, and one says things that plunge the heart into grief for a whole day after.”

Or 47. “The things that thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shalt thou find them in thy old age?”

Fortunately, to console him, Matthew Mahan also now had Pope John’s book, The Journal of a Soul. This, too, had come to Rome with the Cardinal-designate. In it there were more than a few sentences underlined. He turned now to one that lifted his spirits a little, the entry for January 24, 1904. “My pride in particular has given me a great deal of trouble because of my unsatisfactory examination results. This, I must admit, was a real humiliation; I have yet to learn my ABCs in the practice of true humility and scorn of self. I feel a restless longing for I know not what - it is as if I were trying to fill a bottomless bag.” The extraordinary resemblance to his own feelings as a seminarist and young priest had inspired Matthew Mahan to jot an exclamation point in the margin of the book.

He had paid even closer attention to notes Pope John had made at the Villa Carpegna, March 13-17, 1925, when he was preparing for his consecration as a bishop. The first words of John’s meditation troubled Matthew Mahan when he read them. “I have not sought or desired this new ministry.” He had desired his elevation, desired it intensely because he saw the appalling things that Archbishop Hogan was doing to the Church in the diocese, the almost desperate need for a new approach. But he had given up all hope of achieving it by the time it came to him in such extraordinary fashion. So he could join heartily in the next words: “The Lord has chosen me, making it so clear that it is His will ... so it will be for Him to cover up my failings and supply my insufficiencies. This comforts me and gives me tranquility and confidence.”

From the window of his hotel, Matthew Mahan could see the illuminated dome of St. Peter’s. Suddenly, with the words of the book on his lap before him, he remembered sitting in the papal library, the day before his consecration, and listening as the bulky old man recited with amazing power of memory his favorite passage from the Pontificale Romanum, the ritual for the consecration of bishops. “Let him be tireless in well doing, fervent in spirit; let him hate pride; let him love humility and truth and never forsake them under the influence of flattery or fear. Let him not consider light to be darkness or darkness light: Let him not call evil good or good evil. Let him learn from wise men and from fools, so that he may profit from all.” With a flash of humor in his brown eyes, John had added, “That last sentence is perhaps the most important, when it comes to running a diocese.”

Now, Matthew Mahan’s eyes moved down the passages from the Pontificale that John had noted in his retreat at the Villa Carpegna in 1925. Two immediately caused him pain.

“Always to be engaged in the work of God and free from worldly affairs and the love of filthy lucre.”

 “To cherish humility and patience in myself and teach those virtues to others.”

How often he had failed to live up to the highest levels of these ideals. Where, how, had he lost touch with them? Perhaps the truth was in another sentence he had underlined, from Pope John’s meditations during his first retreat as Patriarch of Venice. “I could never have imagined or desired such greatness. I am happy also because this meekness and humility do not go against the grain with me but come easily to my nature.” Yes, Matthew Mahan thought moodily, there was a fundamental point: Meekness and humility did not come easily to his nature. Not by accident was his nickname in high school “the Mouth.” On the playing field, in debates, in classroom discussions, he was always yakking away, monopolizing the limelight, and loving it. Was it a reaction against his father’s unnatural silence? Or an imitation of his mother’s constant loquacity?

The rapidity and intensity with which his mother could talk was a standing joke among her family and friends. Nobody could get the floor from Teresa Scaparelli Mahan once she started talking. Again he felt the curious experience of separation from his mother here in the city of her birth. The movement toward a new self. The progress had been slow and painful over the past ten years, but it was time, and past time, to complete the passage.

It was also time to let go once and for all those dreams of glory that had raced so tumultuously through his brain for the first year or two after his consecration as bishop. He had seen himself succeeding Cardinal Spellman as the kingmaker of the American Catholic Church. But reality had soon shriveled this wild expectation. John was too absorbed in his council to give much thought to episcopal appointments, so he let the Curia make the suggestions, and in America the Spellmanites, Romans all, continued to run the show. At the council, mingling with his fellow American bishops, listening to their North American College reminiscences, he had realized how isolated he was and had gravitated into the company of Europeans, particularly the Germans and Dutch with their call for an international Church less controlled by the Curia, reaching out to men of all faiths.

John’s death a year later had turned his pipe dreams into the petty ashes that they had always been destined - and deserved - to become. Reality had been the order of the day for the past six years. Not so much as a deliberately conceived policy but as a way of life with no visible alternative. Five months after cancer killed John XXIII, John Kennedy had died, and America had reeled off course like a rudderless ship in a midnight storm. Looking back, it was hard to say whether the Church had merely succumbed to the madness or had contributed to it. Perhaps that unanswered question was another reason why he had lost touch with the memory of John XXIII. Had he, like many other bishops he met at the national conferences, begun to make a deprecation out of the phrase “Good Pope John”? In his case, he did not say it aloud, but perhaps he had been saying it in his inner mind, which could be more destructive spiritually.

Yes, Matthew Mahan thought with a sigh, it would do him a great deal of good if he spent most of the following day reading The Journal of a Soul and meditating on those maxims.

The telephone rang. “Your Eminence, a cablegram. . . .” said the desk clerk. Five minutes later, it was handed to him by a bellboy. He opened it and read the brief message, then slowly folded it again and slipped it into his wallet. He sat down at the desk and wistfully fingered the pages of The Journal of a Soul. He would not be reading it tomorrow after all. The cable gave him one of those rare opportunities to reach out as a priest to a fellow priest. He could not pass it up for his own spiritual gratification. John would understand. Santo Padre, he prayed, forgive me for my neglect. Stand beside me now and in the years to come.