The Hand of Christ (6 page)

“
Damn it, Scott! You had better be right. If I have to come down there only to find out that this is an EDRE, I will have one of your bars. Confirm it again; don’t call me until you do!”

The Colonel harshly disconnected himself from the line. Captain Scott turned his attention back to his CORe team. “Give me some on ground intelligence, are those satellites in position?”

“
Sir, yes, sir – in position,” replied York.

“
Lieutenant Williams, call the Commander back. Confirm with the Colonel the Level-3 attack in Damascus.” CPT Scott didn’t need to run diagnostics to confirm the disturbance, “Get him here ASAP!”

Swearing silently to herself, she hit redial on the phone.

At the same time a secured laser printer – used only for classified data – hummed to life, the first sheet of paper coming through was labeled: TOP SECRET – EYES ONLY.

Chapter Four

La Stanza di Michelangelo

The Vatican

The previous three months for Leo had been particularly troubling. He had spent much of his time receiving and visiting the requisite heads of state and dignitaries that had arrived to congratulate his ascendancy to the Papal throne, but his busy schedule could not distract him from what he had found. He was as preoccupied as he had ever been.

Much of his close staff, including a number of the visiting Cardinals, had noticed this change in his demeanor as well. Some gossiped privately amongst one another that Leo’s health appeared frail, that the job must already be getting the best of him. He hadn’t even published his first Encyclical.

Some had even cruelly joked that the Conclave would soon be back in session.

Whenever possible, Leo would steal away to la stanza di Michelangelo – Michelangelo’s room – to read and re-read the parchment. The room has been the unspoken but rumored location of each Pope’s secret archives: a repository of personal letters, unpublished writings, Papal documents, and diaries. The room sits on the upper floor of the left wing of St. Peter’s Basilica and is reached only by climbing an impressive, but overbearingly cold, winding marble staircase.

To enter the room requires the use of an inordinately large and heavy key that was forged in the early 16
^th
century. According to Vatican records, the blacksmith that made the key was paid the equivalent of one month’s salary, a tremendous and curious amount for such a simple device. The key could not be duplicated nor the lock picked.

Leo climbed the stairs once more, and was breathing a bit heavy as he reached its top. A slight shiver ran through him, he didn’t know if it was from the cold and damp air, or from what had been weighing so heavily on his mind. Leo sighed weakly and then reached into his robes and pulled out the key. Unlocking the door, he stepped into Michelangelo’s room.

It was amidst the frescoed walls and next to the fireplace that Leo hoped he would find something contrary to what he had already concluded from the ancient document. He hoped for something that would cause him to change his mind.

The letter that had fallen from the parchment had been written by “PPX,” which were the initials of Pope Pius X. The new Pope didn’t have to open the letter to recognize that those letters underneath the stamped Holy Seal of the Papal Tiara referred to the leader of the Roman Church, one of his predecessors, from 1903 to 1914. Leo had spent many years studying his Roman brethren and their Encyclicals; Pius X and his encyclical
Ad Diem Illum
were not unknown to Leo.

The deceased Pontiff – PPX – had initially refused his nomination as Pope, not completely unheard of, but rare in modern times. He had been a man deeply troubled by the inordinate feeling that he was not worthy of such a position. What bothered Pius X even more was that his close friend, Cardinal Rampolla, the late Pope’s Secretary of State had already been elected in the Conclave as the true new and next Pope.

Elected by the requisite number of Cardinals locked into the Sistine Chapel after the Pope’s death, Cardinal Rampolla’s dramatic rise to the Papal throne had been tremendously short lived. In a shocking twist, Cardinal Puzyna from Cracow had vetoed Rampolla’s election in the name of the Franz Joseph the Emperor of Austria-Hungary.

Further calls to ballot ultimately resulted in Pius’s election; after some days of deep introspection, Pius had decided to accept the papacy.

Leo now felt the same way the Pope Pius X had felt:

Not worthy.

With the light from the ancient brass chandelier that hung overhead turned on, Leo walked inside and was surprised at the shaking in his hands that occurred every time he entered the room, but it wasn’t the room that made his hands shake. The beauty of where he sat, in the room of one of the world’s greatest artists, architects, and engineers – the first true Renaissance man – had no effect on him.

Only the letter and parchment did.

It was just a simple correspondence by Pius, a bit pithy really when considering the magnitude of the knowledge Pius had possessed now having passed to Leo. At first, Leo brushed aside the validity of its contents; the Church is the never-ending victim of conjecture, conspiracy, and outright fallacies, but the parchment was an Apocryphal of Paul!

St. Paul had known the truth!
Leo thought.

Leo didn’t want to believe what he had read; it had to have been a clever forgery, but Leo soon learned that the Apocryphal was no forgery. There had been evidence. The Apocryphal of Paul and the letter from Pius both contained the stamp of the holy seal of each man, and validated their origins. The holy seals were not the only offerings of proof. Leo found others.

Every leader of the Church beginning with Peter and Paul had a holy seal designed specifically for him.

Only one seal was created for each holy leader. At their deaths, the seal was removed and secured in the Vatican’s secret archives. In modern times, the seal is supposedly removed from a deceased Pope and destroyed in order to avoid being misused. But Pius’s was still intact.

Leo visited the archives and the seals.

Paul’s seal was next to Peter’s; the two seals were side-by-side and in the top drawer. The remaining seals lined the multiple drawers of the box in the order of each Pope’s reign.

Tradition places Peter first, with less emphasis on Paul. A number of religious historians, however, argue the validity of such a statement and point to the third chapter of the third book
Against Heresies
written by St. Irenaeus of Lyons in AD 180: the Church was “…
founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul…”

Both men, by the actions of their lives and the consequences of their deaths, had created the necessary foundations that forged the Roman Catholic Church. Neither had been Pope, but both were the first leaders of the Church.

Leo carefully removed Paul’s seal from where it sat next to Peter’s in the case. He took a moment to hold it in his hands. It had been heavier than he thought it would be. Closing his eyes, Leo certainly enjoyed the moment. He caressed the stamp of the holy seal of St. Paul.

Leo felt small, humbled even. This ring, he was shocked to learn, was worn on a hand that had touched the body of Christ.

Leo opened his eyes and dipped the stamp carefully into a nearby small container of ink. When he pressed the stamp firmly onto a piece of paper, he compared it to the one on the parchment.

Leo held his breath whilst gazing at the sight before him. Studying them closely, he saw clearly that the two were a perfect match! There was even a slight, barely detectable, imperfection on the seal that could clearly be seen in the stamp made by Paul on his Apocryphal; an imperfection that matched the stamp that Leo had just made.

A small tear lined the lower lid of his right eye. Leo removed the holy seal of Pius and repeated the process. He had hoped that this time neither would match; he hoped that he would find that one bit of evidence that had evaded him over the last three months, the evidence that would prove him wrong. Leo lost track of how many times that he had repeated this process, one that always ended with the same result. Over and over again, he had hoped that the seals wouldn’t match. Unfortunately, they matched – again.

After months of conducting his own private research, Leo was finally beginning to understand, finally beginning to believe.

Leo returned the two seals to their resting place and then carefully opened the weathered and time-browned document. The letter written by Pius was in black ink that was still surprisingly stark and began with the words: “August 18, 1914. To my Papal Brother, I am still not worthy as your Pope. I am near my death and write this letter from where I lay. My heart no longer wills to live. My actions, taken by writing this letter, offer a final confirmation with respects to the veracity of the solemn burden I carry.”

Leo raised the letter, looking for something more, something that he may have missed. By now, he knew that it would not be found. Leo continued reading: “In my possession is the most troubling Apocryphal of our history. A parchment found innocently. Words at first I could not believe, but those I now know within my heart are true. I have always believed in the holy trinity, and the affirmation of Jesus’ divinity by the Filoque inserted in the Nicene Creed, and never to be questioned. I have always believed in the Eucharist, in the Host. In an instant, these beliefs changed.”

“
Changed,” Leo whispered out loud, now fully understanding.

The letter continued: “The Papacy has been witness to numerous and permanent separations between the Eastern and Western halves of our Church and that of the Church and States: the Crusades, the Schism, the Church of England, the Protestant Reformation, and the Monroe Doctrine. These travesties amongst other movements have weakened us. To these ends I have been most distressed; the Church would appear powerless in the reversal of this cause.

I fear that the suppression of our venerated St. Paul’s Apocryphal has laid a permanently divided path between the histories of the Church of Rome and that of Constantinople, and now between that of the Church and State. We have created our own demise through this lie: this is our shame to carry. This parchment would seem to prove this so. It has weakened the Church and the world along with it. I have struggled with its disposition. Do I destroy it? Or, do I share it with the world? What should I do?

I have become immensely consumed by these questions, but as I approach death, I have concluded that the power to decide either choice shall not rest with me.

Instead, in my cowardice, I choose to do nothing. I hope that I may be forgiven. What sort of Pope sits powerless, unable to act?

Perhaps you will know what to do. Or, perhaps this parchment will last another two thousand years; by then it may have faded beyond recognition ridding any of us the burden it brings. I certainly have not the fortitude to rid the world of it, or to take any action. I am a coward.”

“
Two thousand years,” Leo whispered. Every time he read that sentence he could hardly believe it to be true. So difficult it had been to believe, Leo had cut a small piece from the corner of the parchment for carbon dating testing.

Leo had always marveled at how progressive the Vatican is, unbeknownst to most. To the rest of the world, the Roman Church appears affixed in doctrine and tradition of a time long forgotten. A number of Popes, including John Paul II, had opened up to the pragmatic use of technology, believing that if it had come from man that it must have been from god and should be embraced, albeit carefully and not without caution.

The test results had been handled quietly by Geoffrey, and initially the priest had been without question or suspicion. Within a few short weeks, however, Geoffrey had returned the results with a furrowed brow and been full of brewing interrogatives.

“
Your Holiness, the results of the test show that the item dates approximately to the time of Christ. Where did this piece of parchment come from? How did his holiness find this in his possession? Is there more?” So many questions he had.

Leo was a careful man and quick when cornered; he had easily replied to the barrage of questions, “Geoffrey, I found it stuck in between some pages of the Papal Bible in the Apostolic Apartment, I was simply curious.” Leo had lied again. At the time he had felt it was for good reason.

Reading through the parchment, Leo clearly saw that was written by two men. The second half was written with a markedly different penmanship than the first half and was slightly darker black ink.

Regardless of these differences, what made it more obvious that there were two authors was that the document clearly stated so. In the lower right corner of the second half of the document was the signature of Valentinus, next to a faded, red handprint.

Slowly, Leo caressed the red handprint with his index finger and then placed his own over it. With his hand resting atop the handprint, he closed his eyes and felt its warmth.
Could it really be?
Leo thought.

Removing his hand, he looked at the name written underneath the faded print: Yeshua – the Hebrew name for Jesus.

Letting out a long, uneven breath, Leo moved his eyes to the name of the second author scribed onto the vellum and further proof of its age. The man whose name was written on the parchment was a seldom-mentioned heresiarch and one time potential leader of the Church at the turn of the first century. Many heresiarchs did not believe in the validity of Jesus’ divinity; that being born of a man and woman, He had a beginning whereas god does not. To them, Jesus and god were not consubstantial – not of one being.