Rita Monaldi - Secretum

Constantia, 14th February 2041

To His Excellency Msgr AlessioTanari

Secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Vatican City

Dearest Alessio,

A year has passed since I last wrote to you. You never replied.

A few months ago, I was suddenly transferred (but that you perhaps already know) to Romania. I am one of a handful of priests to be found in Constantia, a small town on the Black Sea.

Here, the word "poverty" takes on that relentless, irrevocable character that it once had in our part of the world. Dreary, decrepit houses; ragged children playing in dirty, nameless streets; women with tired faces blankly staring from the windows of horrendous blocks of flats; the legacy of real socialism, bare and dilapidated: wherever one turns, greyness and wretchedness.

This is the city, this is the land to which I was sent a few months ago. I am called here to carry out my pastoral mission, nor shall I fail in my duties. The misery of this country will not distract me from them, nor will the sadness which pervades every inch of it.

As you well know, the place from which I came was very different. Until a few months ago, I was Bishop of Como, the gay lakeside city which inspired the immortal prose of Manzoni; that ancient pearl of opulent Lombardy, laden with noble memories, with its characteristic old town, its businessmen, its captains of the fashion industry, its footballers and its prosperous silk manufacturers.

I shall not, however, be deterred from my mission by this sudden, unexpected change. I have been told that I am needed here in Constantia, that my vocation can, more than any other, respond to the spiritual needs of this land, that the transfer from Italy (with only two weeks' notice) should not be taken as a demotion, let alone a punishment.

When first I was apprised of the news, I expressed no few doubts (and, let me add, no little surprise), for never in the past had I exercised my pastoral duties outside Italy, apart from a few months of training in France, in the now far-off years of my youth.

While I considered my position as Bishop of Como to be the best possible crowning of my career, and despite my advanced age, I would gladly have accepted a transfer to a new, distant, diocese: in France, in Spain (countries where the language is not unfamiliar to me) or even in Latin America.

It would still, of course, have been an anomaly, for bishops are rarely transferred to distant lands from one day to the next, unless there are grave stains on their career. This was, as you know, certainly not the case with me, and yet precisely because of the abrupt and unprecedented character of my removal many good Catholics in Como were understandably misled into feeling themselves entitled to suspect such a thing.

I would nevertheless have welcomed such a decision as one welcomes the will of God, unreservedly and uncomplainingly. Instead, it was decided to send me here to Romania, a land of which I know nothing, neither the language nor the traditions, neither the history nor the current needs. I find myself here straining my old limbs in vain attempts to play football with the local lads in the church precincts and to grasp some meaning from their loquacious speech.

My soul is beset pardon the confession by a subtle yet incessant torment. This derives, not from my destiny (which the Lord has so willed and which I gratefully and willingly accept) but from the mysterious circumstances which determined it: circumstances which I now want to clarify with you.

1 last wrote to you a year ago, to bring an unusually delicate affair to your attention. At the time, the process of canonisation of the Blessed Innocent XI Odescalchi was forging ahead. Reigning from 1676 until 1689, this pontiff of glorious memory promoted and sustained the Christian armies in their battle against the Turks at Vienna in 1683, when the followers of Mahomet were at last driven from Europe. Since Pope Innocent XI came from Como, the honour fell to me of instructing the cause of canonisation, one which was close to the Holy Father's heart; the clamorous and historic defeat of Islam had in fact taken place on 12th September 1683 when, taking account of the time lag, it was still 11th September in New York. Now, some forty years after the tragic assault by Islamic terrorists on the Twin Towers in New York on 11th September 2001, the coincidence between the two dates had not escaped the attention of our well-beloved pontiff, who therefore wished to proclaim Innocent XI the anti-Islamic pope a saint, on a date to coincide precisely with the two anniversaries, as a gesture of reaffirmation of Christian values and of the abyss that separates Europe and the West as a whole from the ideals of the Koran.

It was, then, on completion of my assignment that I sent you that text do you remember? It had been typed by two old friends of mine, Rita and Francesco, with whom I had lost touch years previously. It revealed a long series of circumstances which blacken the record of the Blessed Innocent. The latter had during his pontificate acted in pursuit of crass personal interests. While he had unquestionably made himself the Lord's instrument when inciting the Christian princes to take up arms against the Turk, his covetousness had on other occasions led him to commit grave offences against Christian morality and to cause irreparable damage to the Catholic religion in Europe.

At that juncture, I asked you (as you will recall) to submit the matter to His Holiness, so that he personally could decide whether to pass over the matter in silence or as I hoped to give the imprimatur and order its publication, thus making the truth available to all.

I did honestly expect at least a note of acknowledgment. I thought that, quite apart from the grave matters of which it was my duty to apprise you, you would, when all was said and done, be glad to hear from your old tutor at the seminary. I was well aware that the reply would take time, perhaps a very long time, given the gravity of the revelations which I was bringing to the attention of His Holiness. I did, however, imagine that you would, as is normal practice, at least respond with a card.

Instead, not a word. For months, I received neither a written communication nor a telephone call, despite the fact that the outcome of the process depended upon the reply which I awaited. I was mindful of His Holiness's need to reflect, to evaluate, to weigh up all the issues and perhaps, in all confidentiality, to consult expert opinion. I was resigned to waiting patiently; also because, being sworn to secrecy and to protecting the honour of the Blessed, I could reveal what I had discovered to no one but yourself and the Holy Father.

Then, one day I saw it in a Milan bookshop, among a thousand others: the book which bore the names of my two friends.

When at last I opened it, my fears were confirmed: it was that very book. How was this possible? Whoever could have arranged its publication? Soon I said to myself that publication could only have been ordered by our pontiff in person. Perhaps the imprimatur which I had hoped the Pope would deliver had at length been handed down, definitively and authoritatively requiring publication of Rita and Francesco's text.

Clearly, the process of Pope Innocent XI's canonisation was now blocked once and for all. Only, why had I not been informed? Why had I received no word of this, not even after publication, and in particular why had I heard nothing from you, Alessio?

I was on the point of writing to you again when one day, in the early morning, I received a communication.