The Abomination (22 page)

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I can't answer for the others. But all Christians believe that receiving the Sacrament of Holy Orders changes a person – it leaves an indelible mark on their soul. That means it's something you feel at the very deepest level of your being. If you're called to the priesthood, as I was, then you don't feel complete without it
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And the Church's position?

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Is simply wrong. Yes, canon law says that only a validly ordained man can administer the sacraments. But it's long been accepted in legal circles that a phrase specifying the male gender can include the female. A “manmade disaster” is a disaster caused by the whole human race, not just the male half. When Christ said “No man is without sin”, he didn't mean to imply that women are. The ban on women is simply misogyny and semantics. The whim of man, dressed up as the will of God
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In your last email you mentioned “catacomb ordinations”. What are they?

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A catacomb priest is one ordained in secret, without Vatican approval. The term was used mainly of priests in communist Eastern Europe. Things were much more flexible there – it was accepted, for example, that a catacomb priest might be married, in order to deflect suspicion. There were a small number of female priests, too, before the Vatican woke up to the controversy they might cause. Some of those women eventually became bishops, and in turn ordained other women. It's from them that the present “line” of women priests receives its Apostolic Succession
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“Eastern Europe again,” Kat commented. “Everything leads back behind the iron curtain.”

“Ask her about Poveglia,” Piola said.

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Do you know anything about a Venetian island called Poveglia?

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Yes. It's a place of historic significance for our movement
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Surprised, Kat typed:

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Why's that?

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Because of Martina Duvnjak
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Who's she?

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Martina Duvnjak was a catacomb priest in the 1950s in what was then communist Yugoslavia. So far as we know, she was one of the very first women priests to be ordained. Martina ran great risks, deliberately getting herself arrested so she could minister to women in the communist regime's prisons – lawless places where it was all too easy to disappear without trace. She heard confessions, celebrated Mass, gave Extreme Unction – all the duties any priest might administer to her flock
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What happened to her?

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To begin with, the Vatican turned a blind eye to her work. But then it sent word via her bishop that she had to stop. Duvnjak questioned the decision, and in the 1960s the Vatican invited her to Rome to discuss her case. The journey, of course, was fraught with difficulty, since it involved crossing into the West. As a convicted criminal, she could never hope to get a visa, so she was smuggled into Italy via Croatia
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And?

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Forgive me, I'm typing this in an internet café and occasionally I have to stop if someone passes too close. She got as far as one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon – Poveglia – where she was met by a delegation of clerics. When she refused to recant, they took her to a nearby mental hospital, where she remained locked up for the rest of her life
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That was the old hospital on Poveglia? She was imprisoned there?

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Effectively. She had no rights, no passport . . . hardly anyone in the West even knew she existed. She was just an inconvenience. It suited them all to pretend she was mad. Eventually she died there, completely forgotten by the outside world. But to us she is a martyr; even one day perhaps, a saint
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Can you explain why a female priest might want to celebrate Mass there today?

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Of course. For us, the place where she was incarcerated has become a place of pilgrimage. The priest was almost certainly saying a Missa Pro Defunctis, a Mass for the repose of Martina Duvnjak's soul
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“And Carnivia?” Piola said quietly.

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Another woman, an associate of the female priest I mentioned, frequently visited Carnivia. Do you know why she might have done that?

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Perhaps she was also part of our community
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Community?

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We are very few in number, and spread all over the world. Most of us, of course, are active in the global movement to persuade the Vatican to legitimise female ordinations, but even amongst our fellow activists we have to be circumspect. To the outside world, therefore, we are altar servers, lay workers . . . But here in Carnivia, we can lay down the burden of our secrecy
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Do you mean that this is how you communicate with each other? Privately, as we're doing now?

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I mean much more than that. This is how we communicate with God
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I'm sorry, you're going to have to explain
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Come with me. I'll show you
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Domino67980 turned and led Kat into the church adjacent to the Carabinieri headquarters, the Chiesa di San Zaccaria. A fifteenth-century fusion of Gothic and Renaissance styles, it was, to Kat's mind, one of the finest churches in Venice. And yet such was the surfeit of beautiful buildings in the city, it rarely attracted even a single tourist into its dark, echoing interior.

The replica in Carnivia was identical, except for one thing. The church she stepped into was full. Masked figures stood facing the altar, where a figure in priest's robes was holding aloft a golden chalice. The air was filled with the sound of singing – an all-female choir, as if the massed rows of avatars had themselves broken into song.

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This is how we worship
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“Of course,” Kat breathed. Her fingers danced over the keys.

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And this is valid? Theologically, I mean?

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Indeed. Amongst our number we have some of the most respected theologians in the world. They're agreed that since the Holy Spirit is universal, a Mass held here is just as “real” as any other. So long as, somewhere, one of the participants is holding a physical host and physical wine that become the body and blood of Christ
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That's ingenious
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The Vatican won't be happy when they find out
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Why?

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Think about it. In here, you only know someone's gender if they choose to reveal it to you. If a woman inhabits a male avatar, does that mean she can celebrate a virtual Mass legitimately? It makes a nonsense of all their rules
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Do you think you might be in danger from them?

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Physically? I doubt it, not from the Vatican. But bear in mind that in the old days of the Inquisition, it was never the Vatican itself that burnt witches at the stake. It was the civil authorities, to whom they were handed over. Indeed, it was customary for the Church to make a formal, hypocritical request for mercy, knowing it would be refused. Women priests who reveal themselves have been spat on, burnt out of their homes, ostracised from their communities and congregations, you name it. It wouldn't surprise me if we were at risk of even greater physical harm from those who thought they were doing God's work
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I'm sorry to have to tell you that the two women I've been asking about were both killed – murdered, that is
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There was a long pause. Then:

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How terrible. I will pray for them
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Have you any idea who might do such a thing?

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There are over a billion Catholics in the world, and all but a handful of them accept the Pope's edicts without question. Doubtless some of them would kill on his behalf as well, but I can't help you work out which ones
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The figure in front of Kat flickered, then vanished.

“She's logged off,” Piola said.

“Fascinating,” Kat said, sitting back. “At the very least, it completely destroys the hypothesis that Jelena Babić wasn't a real priest. In her own eyes, she was just as valid as any man. And it gives us an explanation for what she was doing on Poveglia.”

“None of this can be corroborated,” Piola warned.

“I think it can – some of it, anyway. When I spoke to Father Uriel, he mentioned that some of the older nuns at the Institute of Christina Mirabilis worked on Poveglia when it was a lunatic asylum. I'll see if any of them can confirm the parts about Martina Duvnjak. I want to go back to the Institute anyway – I'd like Father Uriel to know that I didn't take his brush-off at face value.”

“OK. But not let's get distracted. At its heart, this is still a story about organised crime.”

“We can't be sure of that,” she protested.

He shook his head. “The cigarettes, the death of that fisherman . . . I agree with you that Marcello's story of quarrelling lesbians is nonsense, but at least it's simple. My thinking is that this may be nothing more than an instance of two worlds colliding. Suppose we accept that Jelena Babić was on Poveglia to say a Mass at the spot where this other priest had been locked up. And that whatever Ricci Castiglione was doing there, it was connected with the Mafia in some way – let's say, picking up contraband. So far, so clear, yes?”

Kat nodded.

“He finds someone else there, so he kills her – and yes, perhaps Marcello's suggestion that the gun was his, smuggled in over the Adriatic, isn't such a bad one. After he's killed Jelena, Ricci tries to make the murder scene look like a black Mass, both to cover his tracks and to reinforce Poveglia's reputation as somewhere people should stay away from. When the body gets washed into Venice, and the murder starts to attract attention, his masters decide to have him killed before he can spill their secrets.”

It sounded plausible, but she was reluctant to accept that the persecution of the women priests wasn't somehow relevant to the murder. “As a fisherman, wouldn't Ricci know better than anybody not to dump the body off Poveglia?” she protested. “He'd be aware that the currents would wash it into Venice. And what about the Freedom of Information request to the US Army? The questions about Dragan Korovik? Are you saying none of that matters?”

Piola shrugged. “Since we're not allowed to talk to the Americans, we'd better hope it doesn't. As for the Church . . . I certainly wouldn't object if we were able to wrap this up without dragging His Holiness into it. I have a feeling Avvocato Marcello isn't going to want to go there either.”

“Jelena Babić and Barbara Holton were killed because of their beliefs. I'm sure of it,” Kat said stubbornly.

“Is that statement based on evidence?” Piola said quietly. “Or your own beliefs?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that perhaps you relate to these women.” He gestured at the computer. “Women who are persecuted by men. You feel angry with the persecutors, so you want to be able to bring them to justice. But that's not the case we're investigating here.”

His logic stung her, not least because she knew that on some level at least, he was right.

“That's bullshit!” she exclaimed. Piola had the grace not to press his point.

“You know, there's one participant in all this we haven't yet spoken to,” he said. “Daniele Barbo. If he'll give us access to the material Barbara Holton uploaded onto Carnivia, it could tell us whether you're right in thinking that the women's deaths were connected to their faith.”

“That's a big ‘if'. My understanding is that he doesn't cooperate with the authorities.”

“It's worth a try. You should see him, anyway.”

“You don't want to come along?”

“He may respond better to you on your own.”

“You mean, I should flirt with him?” she asked, astonished.

“There won't be any need to. A woman like you only has to walk into a room and any man in it wants to please you, even if he doesn't realise it. Barbo's some reclusive computer nerd, isn't he? I doubt he's ever seen a woman like you, at least not in the flesh.”

“I think perhaps now you're the one seeing this from a personal perspective,” she said, unsure whether to be offended or flattered.

“Believe me, I'm not.” He looked at her, amazed. “Is it really possible that you don't understand how beautiful you are?”

“Aldo, this is making me uncomfortable. We left all that stuff behind twenty years ago.”

He shrugged. “Well, I'll let you decide how best to handle it. But I still have a hunch it'll be better coming from you.”

HOLLY BOLAND SPED
down the A13
autostrada
in her new Fiat Cinquecento, a car so tiny it felt like a child's toy and as a result was strangely exhilarating to drive. The day was sunny, the crisp winter air shrinking distances and expanding panoramas. One by one she passed towns and cities that shimmered on the horizon like images from Renaissance paintings. Padua, Ferrara, Bologna . . . Then through the mountains to Florence, the multi-coloured domes and towers of the historic centre rising like a mirage above the urban sprawl. She'd have liked to have stopped off in Pisa, to see how many of her old friends and neighbours were still living on the same street – most of them, she'd bet – but her first destination had to be Camp Darby.

She'd crossed Italy from coast to coast in just under four hours. Now she turned south along a flat strip of wooded land about twenty miles wide, squeezed between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the mountains. Camp Darby sprawled for about fifteen miles among the pine woods, all the way down to the US Navy dockyard at Livorno. Despite its size, she knew there were relatively few military personnel stationed here. These days, Darby was primarily a missile store and recreation centre. Every year, around fifty thousand soldiers and their families came from other bases in Italy and Germany to spend their vacations in the area, their children playing just yards from the nuclear bunkers. In theory, there are no private beaches in Italy. In practice, the Italian government never complained about the secure double-fencing, multiple ID checks and security cameras.