And, say, there was Cygnus, and—whaddaya know!— Phobos, and, yes, if I squinted, Deimos, too, just beneath it.
But no. Surely the Holy Virgin had not revealed herself to Jurgen Emat. Peasant children, yes; the poor and sick, yes. But a televangelist? A rich broadcast preacher? No, that was ridiculous.
It wasn’t explicitly in Cardinal Pirandello’s message, but I knew enough of Vatican politics to understand what was going on. As he’d said, Jurgen Emat had been at seminary with Viktorio Lazzari—the man who was now known as Leo XIV. Although both were Catholics, they’d ended up going down widely different paths—and they were anything but friends.
I’d only met the Pontiff once, and then late in his life. It was almost impossible to imagine the poised, wise Bishop of Rome as a young man. But Jurgen had known him as such, and—my thoughts were my own; as long as I never gave them voice, I was entitled to think whatever I wished— and to know a person in his youth is to know him before he has developed the mask of guile. Jurgen Emat perhaps felt that Viktorio Lazzari had not deserved to ascend to the Holy See. And now, with this silly announcement of a Martian Marian vision, he was stealing Leo’s thunder as the Pope prepared to visit Fatima.
Martian. Marian, Funny I’d never noticed how similar those words were before. The only difference…
My God.
The only difference is the lowercase t—the cross—in the middle of the word pertaining to Mars.
No. No. I shook my head inside the suit’s helmet Ridiculous. A crazy notion. What had I been thinking about? Oh, yes: Emat trying to undermine the Pope. By the time I got back to Utopia Planitia, it would be late Saturday evening. I hadn’t thought of a sermon yet, but perhaps that could be the topic. In matters of faith, by definition, the Holy Father was infallible, and those who called themselves Catholics—even celebrities like Jurgen Emat—had to accept that, or leave the faith.
It wouldn’t mean much to the… yes, I thought of them as my congregation, even sometimes my flock… but of course the group that only half-filled the pews at Saint Teresa’s each Sunday morn were hardly that. Just the bored, the lonely, those with nothing better to do. Ah, well. At least I wouldn’t be preaching to the converted…
I looked around at the barren landscape, and took a drink of pure water through the tube in my helmet. The wind howled, plaintive, attenuated, barely audible inside the suit.
Of course, I knew I was being unfairly cynical. I did believe with all my heart in Our Lady of the Rosary. I knew— knew, as I know my own soul!—that she had in the past shown herself to the faithful, and…
And I was one of the faithful. Yes, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall—but I was more faithful than Jurgen Emat. It was true that Buzz Aldrin had taken Holy Communion upon landing on the Moon, but I was bringing Jesus’ teachings farther than anyone else had, here, in humanity’s first baby step out toward the stars…
So, Mary, where are you? If you’re here—if you’re with us here on Mars, then show yourself! My heart is pure, and I’d love to see you.
Show yourself, Mother of Jesus! Show yourself, Blessed Virgin! Show yourself!
Elizabeth Chen’s tone had the same mocking undercurrent as before. “Have a nice walk, Father?”
I nodded.
“See anything?”
I handed her my helmet. “Mars is an interesting place,” I said. “There are always things to see.”
She smiled, a self-satisfied smirk. “Don’t worry, Father,” she said, as she put the helmet away in the suit locker. “We’ll have you back to Bradbury in plenty of time for Sunday morning.”
I sat in my office, behind my desk, dressed in cassock and clerical collar, facing the camera eye. I took a deep breath, crossed myself, and told the camera to start recording.
“Cardinal Pirandello,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering, “as requested, I visited Cydonia. The sands of Mars drifted about me, the invisible hand of the thin wind moving them. I looked and looked and looked. And men, blessed Cardinal, it happened.”
I took another deep breath. “I saw her, Eminence. I saw the Holy Virgin. She appeared to float in front of me, a meter or more off the ground. And she was surrounded by spectral light, as if a rainbow had been bent to the contours of her venerable form. And she spoke to me, and I heard her voice three times over, and yet with each layer nonetheless clear and easily discernible: one in Aramaic, the language Our Lady spoke in life; a second in Latin, the tongue of our Church; and again in beautiful, cultured English. Her voice was like song, like liquid gold, like pure love, and she said unto me…”
Simply sending a message to Cardinal Pirandello wouldn’t be enough. It might conveniently get lost. Even with the reforms of Vatican III, the Church of Rome was still a bureaucracy, and still protected itself.
I took the recording wafer to the Communications Center myself, handing it to Loni Sinclair, the woman who had brought Pirandello’s original message to me.
“How would you like this sent, Father?”
“It is of some import,” I said. “What are my options?”
“Well, I can send it now, although I’ll have to bill the… um, the…”
“The parish, my child.”
She nodded, then looked at the wafer. “And you want it to go to both of these addresses? The Vatican and CNN?”
“Yes.”
She pointed to an illuminated globe of the Earth, half embedded in the wall. “CNN headquarters is in Atlanta. I can send it to the Vatican right now, but the United States is currently on the far side of Earth. It’ll be hours before I can transmit it there.”
Of course. “No,” I said. “No, then wait. There are times when both Italy and the U.S. simultaneously face Mars, right?”
“Not all of the U.S.—but Georgia, yes. A brief period.”
“Wait till then, and send the message to both places at the same time.”
“Whatever you say, Father.”
“God bless you, child.”
Loni Sinclair couldn’t quite mask her amusement at my words. “You’re welcome,” she replied.
Four years have passed. Leo XIV has passed on, and Benedict XVI is now pontiff. I have no idea if Jurgen Emat approves of him or not—nor do I care. Dwelling on Earthly matters is frowned upon here, after all.
Five million people a year still come to Fatima. Millions visit Lourdes and Guadalupe and La’ Vang.
And then they go home—some feeling they’ve been touched by the Holy Spirit, some saying they’ve been healed.
Millions of faithful haven’t made it to Mars. Not yet; that will take time. But tens of thousands have come, and, unlike those who visited the other shrines, most of them stay. After traveling for years, the last thing they want to do is turn around and go home, especially since, by the time they’d arrived here, the propitious alignment of Earth and Mars that made then-journey out take only two years has changed; it would take much longer to get home if they left shortly after arriving.
And so, they stay, and make their home here, and contribute to our community.
And come to my Masses. Not out of boredom. Not out of loneliness. But out of belief. Belief that miracles do still occur, and can happen as easily off Earth as on it.
I am fulfilled, and Mars, I honestly believe, is now a better place. This is a congregation, a flock. I beam out at its members from the pulpit, feeling their warmth, their love.
Now I only have one problem left. To lie to Cardinal Pirandello had been a violation of my oath, of the teachings of my faith. But given that I’m the only priest on all of Mars, to whom will I confess my sin?