The Accidental Pope (50 page)

Astounded, the pope was at a loss for words. Motupu, though equally surprised, quickly formed a rebuttal. “We appreciate any medical help you can offer us, Dr. Mainovic, but this is a Catholic mission and in no way affiliated with the Orthodox Church.”

“Our purpose here is constructive, Doctor,” the pope replied. “I am sorry you see fit to attach the blame for your government's ethnic genocide of the Muslim minority in your country to people other than your own.”

In the intensity of her diatribe she virtually spit her words out in heavily accented English. “I worked hard to save the lives of my people badly injured by your bombs. Only the patriarch and his Russian Church come to our defense against your lies. It was you who killed and dispersed the Muslims of Kosovo when we tried to protect them from your air attacks.”

Such blatant distortion of the truth shook Bill Kelly. He was reminded of the Serbian officials on television who had ranted and raved, eyes wild and flashing, mouths drawn, displaying the front teeth of their lower jaws, denying their depredations upon a defenseless population in Kosovo. This invective invariably flowed immediately after positive proof had just appeared on TV screens throughout the world showing refugees in the thousands escaping Serbian genocide. Now here in Africa, a year later, was the living proof of the warning John Paul II had left for the next pope, whose reign would indeed be short if these maniacal zealots had their way.

The pope watched, dumbstruck, as the Serbian doctor approached a boy of indeterminate age squirming on a chair directly in front of him. The doctor, wearing rubber gloves, pulled the child from a crumpled fetal sprawl to an upright position, momentarily halting a coughing fit. The doctor flashed a challenging stare at the pope. Bill Kelly immediately gave way to his natural instinct and knelt beside the pitifully thin boy, cradling his head in his arms. The child, gasping for air, mouth open, teeth chattering, turned into the strong, comforting hands holding him.

In horror, the nuns and Motupu snatched the boy away from the pope, and two African attendants, closely followed by the Serbian doctor, carried him out of the room.

“Where are you taking him?” Bill asked.

“To the ward for observation,” the sister replied. Then she noticed that the skin on the back of the pope's hand was broken where the child had bitten him.

“Your Holiness,” a worried Sister Kaitlin said hoarsely, “come into the dispensary with me and let me cauterize the spot where your skin is broken.”

The pope and Shanahan, with Motupu worriedly following, walked across the dusty square of ground between the schoolroom and the building that served as an office and residence for the nuns and the medical technicians.

“Your Holiness, this will be uncomfortable for a minute, but the skin on the back of your hand was broken by the boy's teeth and we must try to kill any possibility of infection.” As the Serbian doctor watched, the pope held his right hand out, and the sister took a bottle from the medicine cabinet and with a piece of cotton swabbed disinfectant acid over the broken skin, where a few drops of blood had appeared.

“There, that should do it.”

“I am sorry I pulled the boy to his feet, but I had to stop his cough,” the doctor said insincerely. Motupu and Kaitlin stared after her with ill-concealed hostility as she left the sick boy in the care of an African assistant.

“I want to see the town, talk to the people a little,” the pope said. “Do they understand how viruses are transmitted?”

“We try to explain STD, but it is taking their basic human rights away to suggest continence. By now most men in this part of Africa are carriers. Sometimes they pass it on, sometimes not. We don't possess much medicine. There isn't much we can do.”

“And,” a second nun added, “if the international community had been more concerned about Africa even a year ago, and we had halfway decent medical supplies, we might have prevented the worst of this scourge. The world closed its eyes to our crisis even though reports have recently been widespread.”

“Not, apparently, a fanatical Serb doctor,” the pope replied. “Anyway, let me walk around this town and talk to the people.”

“Your Holiness,” Shanahan interjected, “we don't have much time. Besides, the longer you stay here, the greater the possibility of any of us picking up a virus.”

This gave the pope pause. “If I can learn from these people, it is worth it to take that chance. But I don't want to subject you to it, Tim. Let me visit one or two homes alone and then we will go. I need to see for myself, so I can try and convince the world about the AIDS crisis,” said Pope Bill.

“We must all stick together,” Motupu said decisively. “Come, Your Holiness, let's call on one family together.” He turned to Sister Kaitlin. “Whom can His Holiness talk to?”

“The headman lives nearby. He is a good Catholic who knows what we're doing and comes to the service every Sunday when the priest from Kampala says Mass.”

“Yes, a good man, Father Umtali,” Motupu said. “He does the best he can. He has several young priests to assist him but he needs resources as well.” He gave the pope a speculative glance. “It would shock the curia to see what we have to do here to keep the people's faith. But we manage in our own way.”

“Many changes will be made when I return to the Vatican,” the pope said grimly. “So let's visit the headman. He speaks English?”

“Indeed. The British did a fine job here and in Kenya and Tanzania. The natives have English first names. The school system still works, and it is the one thing the independent governments have tried to maintain. Project Concern has taken on some of the teaching burden. The government was so fractured, first with Idi Amin and then his imitators, that without us the schools would have collapsed.”

The nun led them down the dusty pathway between thatched houses to a wooden structure.

“Like everyone here he has AIDS, or one of the mystery viruses,” Sister Kaitlin said. “But he still functions well, and keeps order inside the village.”

At the half-open door Motupu knocked, and a man's frail voice called out “Come.” Motupu pushed the door open, and the others followed him into a dark room with one window in the board walls. A spare black man pulled himself out of a chair, his height emphasizing his emaciation. He was wearing a shirt and long pants held up by a thick pair of black leather suspenders that looked as though they had once been part of a uniform.

“Your Eminence.” The voice shook as he greeted Motupu, maintaining a respectful distance.

“Andrew, I have brought a visitor to see you.” Motupu stood aside and the pope approached the old man, who squinted in the dim light within the fragile structure. “Andrew, this is the Holy Father himself, come from Rome to try to help us better help ourselves.”

Andrew tried to kneel and reach out for the pope's hand. “Your Holiness” he said hoarsely, “my home, our village, is forever blessed because you came.” The pope caught his hand and held him upright before the old African could actually bend his frail limbs.

“Andrew, we will be here henceforward in every way. A cure for your ills will be discovered and we will get it to all of you.”

“Thank you, Holiness. I wish God had found a way to help us stay healthy to begin with. Our land is beautiful, but usually now we have no clean water or any way to produce food.” The old man's eyes were fixed on the two partially filled bottles of water Monsignor Shanahan was carrying. “When I was a boy none of this happened to us,” Andrew wheezed through his dry throat.

The pope reached for the bottle Shanahan was carrying for him and, taking it out of his hand, thrust it toward the village headman.

“Here, Andrew. Drink.”

Andrew gratefully reached out for the bottle, immediately swallowing from it.

“Keep it,” the pope said. “We will leave what water we brought with us for the children. We pray to God the affliction will soon be gone.” He was stung by the subtle reminder that there was something that might have been done, could still be done, to diminish the spread of the virus threatening an entire population.

Later Motupu wished Andrew well and assured him that Concern and its doctors, when called, would continue to care for Rakai. Then he led the pope away after a last blessing. The sisters had chosen half a dozen of the virus-infected children, those who might be saved with the advanced drugs available at Concern in Kigali, to return with Motupu and the pope.

The drive to the Entebbe airport was fraught with silent contemplation of what each had seen. And once aboard the plane there was little conversation on the flight.

By midafternoon they had landed once again in the capital of Rwanda and left the sick children with the sisters. After a blessing by the pope they picked up Cardinal Bellotti, Monsignor Shanahan, and the other Vatican group members who had started out that morning from Luanda.

Later that night in the hotel the pope met with Motupu and his delegation to discuss the next day's itinerary. There was considerable disagreement between Bellotti and Motupu regarding the big event planned for the visit to Kinshasa, capital of the Congo Republic. It was here that the Russian Church was making its steadiest gains, picking up where Orthodoxy had left off in 1991 with the fall of Soviet Communism.

“We are committed to a meeting with the patriarch and Bishop Yussotov in Kinshasa before the pope leaves Africa,” Motupu reminded the Vatican group gathered in the Luanda hotel suite.

“Not necessarily,” Tim Shanahan reminded them. “It was left open to us to decide and notify them.”

“We are finding it difficult to operate in Congo,” Motupu complained, “ever since our bishop and the Europeans, including all Catholic Relief organizations, were forced to leave in late 1998. That was the third time the rebels attacked key cities in the Congo and put in a new ruler. We have been unable to reconsolidate our infrastructure in that state.”

“Why is it we can be the dominant influence everywhere else?” Bellotti asked.

“Eminenza,”
Shanahan began to explain again, “when the third replacement in the power structure in the Congo started in late summer 1998, the foreign ministers of the African countries in the central region were invited in to help shape the new leadership. Almost every one of these ministers represented African countries that had been ‘liberated' by Communist terrorists and were ruled by Communist-empowered dictatorships.

“The most powerful influences exerted on the third Congo government came from Zimbabwe, still ruled by Communist dictator Robert Mugabe. With Russian backing and a warped and emotional view in America of black democracy, Mugabe overthrew the moderate black African Rhodesian leadership, replacing it with a dictatorship which has lasted twenty-one years. The same, to a greater or lesser extent, is true of the other African states, which sent their representatives to the Congo. In short, a third new dictatorship is now established in Congo and the whites who fled will not be warmly accepted back. It was then that the patriarch and his Orthodox Church were made welcome. After all—bear this in mind—Alexis II had proved his loyalty to Communism by refusing to attend the funeral ceremonies in 1998, sponsored by Boris Yeltsin and his new government, for the czar and his family, executed by the Communists eighty years before.”

Motupu nodded agreement with Shanahan's historical account. “So, with all these Communist-oriented ministers influencing the Congo of late 1998, the old Russian Bolsheviks turned crypto-capitalist themselves—brought their church in with them. Now we find it almost impossible to reestablish what had been the Roman Catholic Church of the old Belgian Congo. You will see for yourself. The Russians are gaining a new foothold in Africa, their church growing dominant. The areas of the diamond mines and the oil reserves are fast changing to a Russian Orthodox orientation.”

“Do we really have the resources and people willing to devote their lifetimes to the struggle for Africa?” Bellotti questioned. “From what I've seen in these two days, I have to ask if this continent is going to be worth it.” The Vatican cardinal shook his head in disgust. “It appears to be one big disease center, which gets worse because the people procreate out of wedlock and spread their deadly viruses. Why not leave it to the Russian Orthodox? Africa will keep them tied down for generations.”

“Unfortunately, your argument, on the surface, has merit. I'm sure Robitelli would agree,” Motupu replied. “However, this continent is too large and important to be written off by the world's largest religious sector. I believe we should meet with the patriarch as proposed by both sides in Rome. We, after all, are the only force between him and eventual religious control south of the Sahara. And nothing short of a nuclear holy war will shake off the Islamic fundamentalism of the Arab world. Do you agree, Bill?”

All eyes turned to the pope, who was the authoritative figure that ultimately decided all questions one way or the other. “We must not allow the Orthodox Church to destroy our work here in Africa. John Paul II has warned that the Orthodox pose one of the greatest dangers to the future of the Roman Catholic Church. If we lay down in Africa, where will we not lay down? Let us meet with the patriarch and his bishop,” Bill Kelly answered decisively. Then to Motupu, “Confirm the arrangements, Gus.”

*   *   *

Upon landing at the large modern airport in Kinshasa, it was difficult for the pope and his cardinals and advisers to visualize the strife that had plagued Congo's last five years. Three dictators had been ousted by military alliances between the rebels and the leaders of neighboring and nearby countries, most notably Rwanda and Zimbabwe.

The pope and his advisers realized that United States influence had waned seriously. The diamond cartel, led by former smugglers now known as “New York financiers,” could no longer count on American or South African power to back up their regulating the flow of diamonds to world markets from the Congo.