Crucified (14 page)

Jesus, John the Baptist, St. Peter, St. Paul, and the other apostles were inquisitors too, and from them, the Catholic popes inherited their inquisitorial powers. Before the sixteenth century, popes appointed individual priests as inquisitors. From then on, they empowered the Inquisition to stamp out heresy.

Today—when public relations requires inquisitors to hide—modern popes are back to appointing individual priests.

Secret cardinals protecting the faith.

That sacred duty would never wane.

And to the mind of this inquisitor, the threat posed by the Judas relics was greater even than the heresy of 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 97 Theses to the door of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg, Germany, touching off the Protestant Reformation.

Today, there are two billion Christians in the world.

Only half are Catholic.

It distressed the Secret Cardinal to think of all those souls lost to Christ and his Church because Satan had lured the blind away through Orthodox and Protestant heresy.

But never again.

Not on
his
Vatican watch.

So while it saddened him to read about the torturous death of Mick Balsdon in the tabloids spread across his desk, he couldn't help thinking that it wasn't a steep sacrifice in the larger scheme of things.

At least Balsdon got to equate his suffering with the love of God, as the Secret Cardinal had in the Philippines.

That—to the heart and soul of this inquisitor—was the greatest sin of the secular world.

It didn't
love
suffering.

Finished with the papers, the Secret Cardinal got up from his desk and crossed to the windows. As he gazed out from his sanctuary behind the Vatican walls, the inquisitor could hear billions of people wailing in despair, wondering why God allows brutality and injustice to overwhelm the earth. Has that not always been the vexing question of Christian life?

When Christ was crucified, who watched him suffer from the foot of the cross? His mother, the Virgin Mary. Imagine the torture! But what did she do?
The Lamentation,
that Christus painting, shows that she embraced his suffering as her own. "I am here, and I am suffering with you." Is that not what her presence said? All suffering is meant to be an expression of love, for true love takes on pain as its own.

The holy art of suffering isn't easy to learn. Christ didn't come to abolish the cross we bear. He came to lie down on the cross
for
us. Love is not only to suffer with but to suffer
for.

As he laid down his life for us, Christ was saying: "Come close to my heart that has bled
for
you; that has suffered
for
you; that was pierced by a lance/or you." He suffered for us so the gates of heaven could reopen for us. That's the meaning of Christianity. To suffer isn't a tragedy. It's a test of faith. That's why the earth is soaked to its core with tears. So we can equate our suffering with the love of God.

The Secret Cardinal had grasped that in the Philippines, and he'd be damned if he was going to allow the Judas relics to destroy it.

The priest thought back . . .

It was Easter in the Philippines, so the faithful were celebrating.
Semana Santa.
Holy week. In the village of San Pedro Cutud, a depressed little barrio on the outskirts of San Fernando City, forty-odd miles north of Manila, Lenten rites were under way. In the colonial era, Augustinian and Dominican friars had planted the faith, and the Philippines of today are predominantly Catholic. Nowhere in the Christian world—the Vatican included—do the faithful act out like this.

Tsssk! Tsssk! . . .

Tsssk! Tsssk! . . .

The Catholic priest and the boy with him acted like father and son. Surrounded by fresh green palms festooned with red ribbons, the two jostled for position to watch the parade.

Along both sides of the crowded road, the residents of Cutud stood at the windows of their cinder-block houses gawking like the tourists, or they did a brisk business selling chips, fried fish balls, water, and San Miguel beer at refreshment stands out front. The morning sun had hours to go before it reached its zenith, but already stifling heat radiated off the dusty landscape.

Tsssk! Tsssk! . . .

Tsssk! Tsssk! . . .

The parade of barefoot, shirtless, faceless men—their heads veiled with black hoods held in place by crowns of thorns that were in fact leaves—streamed along both sides of the narrow, two-lane road. Judging by their wobbling, some had fortified themselves with
gin bulag,
the kind of alcohol that can make you blind. Flagellation was an all-male ritual, and boys as young as ten marched with the men to learn how penance could wash away their sins. The whips they used to scourge their backs were made of braided thongs tipped with bamboo sticks.

Tsssk! Tsssk! . . .

Tsssk! Tsssk! . . .

The sound of wood flaying raw flesh, splattering blood left and right.

The push of the crowd blocked retreat.

Girls squealed as blood drops spattered their clothes.

Occasionally, the men would pause so an assistant could pound on their backs with a wooden mallet embedded with glass. At other times, they would stop and lie face down on the road, offering onlookers a chance to deliver blows.

Photographers would zoom in for money shots of shredded backs, then the procession would move on.

"That must hurt," said the boy.

"Yes," replied the priest.

"Why do they hurt themselves?"

"To live their faith. Self-mortification is how they get close to the suffering of Christ."

"Should I hurt myself?"

"No. There's no need. Jesus hurt himself for you and me.

He died so we can be forgiven for our sins."

"I'm hot," said the boy.

"Take off your shirt. I'll rub this lotion on your skin so you won't burn."

As the broiling sun rose toward noon, the Filipino penitent playing the role of Christ was sentenced to death in the village's dusty basketball court. From there, he began the two-mile trek to Cutud's Golgotha, a rice field with a mound holding three black crosses. The way to Calvary was led by a Roman centurion riding a white stallion and carrying a long spear. Legionaries in red robes and glinting helmets marched beside the
Kristo
shouldering his cross. Crying Filipina women shuffled behind, playing the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene. As Jesus fell to his knees from the weight of the cross, they grabbed the hem of his garment and begged the Romans to free him.

"Can we see Judas, too?" asked the boy.

"If you wish," replied the priest.

In Minalin, also in the province of Pampanga, people would stuff a life-size effigy of Judas Iscariot with firecrackers, then blast him into bits and pieces with shouts like "You deserve it, traitor!"

How could the priest deny a boy as beautiful as this one?

Surrogate father and son.

Never had the missionary felt as parched, burnt, and hot as he did amid this sweaty mob surging toward Golgotha. The heat, the horde, the hawkers, the din. Was this what it was like when they crucified Christ? A circus? A Coca-Cola van inched its way toward the mound, and in his mind, the priest could hear the commercial: "The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is brought to you by Coke. Coca-Cola. It's the real thing!" Overhead, stream-ers advertised Tang. That would taste better than vinegar on a sponge, thought the priest. A stall at the side of the road was stocked with toys. Plastic guns and hand grenades. What more did the faithful need to celebrate Good Friday? For entrepreneurs, this was like Christmas. Some would earn a year's income in a single day.

Water, thought the priest.

"I thirst!"

That's what Jesus had cried from the cross.

Ahead, beyond the wide-brimmed hats and sun umbrellas, the hill was ringed with barbed wire. Authorities parted the press of people to let the
Kristo
through. As the two Marys knelt on the slope of Golgotha and began to wail, the executioner stripped Jesus down to his loincloth. This year, Jesus was a housepainter who had fallen several stories from a ladder and survived, and so was offering his thanks to God. The men who would flank him on the other crosses hoped God would cure a sick child or restore wavering faith.

As attendants positioned Jesus on the middle cross, setting his feet on a shelf to support his weight and strapping his wrists to the horizontal beam, the executioner held up a fistful of nails. The boy broke away from the priest and ran to see.

Was it the insufferable heat?

Was Satan tempting him?

The priest watched the boy run to Jesus, and as he ran, the shorts covering his buttocks seemed to vanish, as if his nakedness belonged in Eden . . .

With a jolt, the Secret Cardinal was back in the Vatican, grinding a thumbnail into the scar filling the hole through his other palm.

Among the thousands of files on priests under investigation by the Palace of the Holy Office, two hundred concerned "sexual abusers" in the Philippines.

There was no file on the Secret Cardinal.

He had been saved from sin by the scourge and the cross.

Out there, beyond the walls of the Vatican, the boy, now grown into the Legionary, advanced the crusade.

The Secret Cardinal prayed he wouldn't wake up tomorrow to the words "Vatican Hit Man Arrested!"

    
 
GERMANY

It was Oktoberfest in Germany, and the beer hall was packed.

Had this been the Munich Hofbrauhaus tent, there would have been ten thousand inebriants drowning in a sea of suds. True, this wasn't Bavaria, but the local brewmaster was capitalizing on Oktoberfest all the same. In the far corner played an oompah band, leading the drinkers in a rousing version of "Beer Barrel Polka." The Ratskeller trapped the aromas of bratwurst,
spdtzle,
and sauerkraut. Brewmeisters in lederhosen tapped huge wooden kegs while strong Brunnhildes in dirndls hoisted trays of glass mugs. Their server was too buxom for the low-cut, tight confines of her lacy blouse and cross-stitched bodice, so when she bent over the table, she almost put out Lenny's eye.

Sweaty sighed.

"If only I were younger."

"I've heard stories about you and the WAAFs in the mess,"

teased Liz.

"Unfounded rumors."

"Not according to them."

"She likes you, Lenny," Sweaty said, nodding his head toward the retreating waitress.

"Lenny Jones!" Liz ragged. "I do believe you're
blushing."

"She's not my type," he replied.

"Not your type! She's female, ain't she?" Sweaty said.

"Youth really
is
wasted on the young."

They were almost shouting to be heard above the oompahing tuba and the arm-locked drunks singing at the top of their lungs. Thankfully, the band stopped to swill some hops, too, reducing the roar by a zillion decibels.

"Hear that sound?" Wyatt said, wiggling a finger in his ear as if to clear it of water. "That's me thinking."

Sweaty hoisted his beer mug. "To Ack-Ack!" he said.

They clinked glasses and downed gulps, leaving foamy mustaches on their upper lips.

"So who knows the tale of Sergeant Griffin?" Sweaty asked. He looked at each of his new friends in turn. "No one?

Then I'll tell you. It was 1939, about two months into the war. Five Whitley bombers went off to shower propaganda leaflets on Germany. While flying home, one ran into a snowstorm. The cylinder head of one engine blew and burst into flames. The other engine faltered, so the plane lost altitude. At two thousand feet, the pilot trimmed the bomber for gradual descent, told the crew to bail, and jumped himself.

"Unfortunately, the rear gunner didn't hear the order.

His intercom failed. So Griffin sat in the tail turret as the plane came down, hit with a belly flop, lurched, then bumped to a stop somewhere in France. Jarred by the landing, the gunner crawled up the fuselage tunnel to check on the rest of the crew. When he saw the cockpit was empty, he knew the plane had landed itself.

"Griffin stumbled, burned and battered, to a nearby village.

To his surprise, he found his chums had met up after bailing out and were enjoying a drink in the local cafe."

Sweaty quaffed a gulp himself and wiped his lips with the back of his palm.

"Poor Ack-Ack," Liz said, shaking her head. "If only the
Ace
had landed itself."

"He should have bailed," said Lenny.

"That, too, could be dicey. Who's heard the tale of Flight Sergeant Smith?"

Wyatt laughed. "
Which
Smith, Sweaty?"

"Smith was the rear gunner in a Halifax. On the flight home from attacking a German coastal base, he climbed out of the turret to stretch his legs. Just then, something went awry with the camera that snapped damage to the target, and it blew a four-foot-wide hole in the bottom of the plane.

As Smith ran back in the dark fuselage to get his parachute, he suddenly felt himself pitching downward. Just as suddenly, he found he was being slammed against the underside of the plane by the cold slipstream rushing past
outside
the fuselage. The hooks on his chute harness had caught on the jagged metal of the hole, and he was hanging upside down by a short length of webbing thousands of feet above the open sea."