“Do you know Portuguese?” Monsignor Capovilla asked.
Tibor glanced up from his seat. Ten months working in the Vatican and this was the first time anyone from the fourth floor of the Apostolic Palace had spoken to him, much less John XXIII’s personal secretary.
“Yes, Father.”
“The Holy Father needs your assistance. Could you bring a pad and pen and come with me?”
He followed the priest to the elevator and rode in silence to the fourth floor, where he was ushered into the papal apartment. John XXIII sat perched behind a writing desk. A small wooden box with a broken wax seal lay on top. The pope held two pieces of notepaper.
“Father Tibor, can you read these?” John asked.
Tibor accepted the two sheets and scanned the words, not actually registering their meaning, only the fact that he understood. “Yes, Holy Father.”
A smile came to the rotund man’s face. It was the smile that had galvanized Catholics from around the world. The press had taken to calling him Papa John, a label the pope had embraced. For so long, while Pius XII lay ailing, the papal palace windows had been shrouded in darkness, the curtains drawn in symbolic mourning. Now the shutters were thrown open, the Italian sun pouring through, a signal to all who entered St. Peter’s Square that this Venetian cardinal was committed to a revival.
“If you would, sit there by the window and pen an Italian translation,” John said. “One page each, separately, as the originals appear.”
Tibor spent the better part of an hour making sure his two translations were precise. The original writing was in a distinctly feminine hand, and the Portuguese was of an old style, used more toward the turn of the last century. Languages, like people and cultures, tended to change with time, but his training was extensive and the task relatively simple.
John paid him little attention while he worked, chatting quietly with his secretary. When finished, he handed his effort to the pope. He watched for a reaction while John read the first sheet. Nothing. Then the pope read the second page. A moment of silence passed.
“This does not concern my papacy,” John softly said.
Given the words on the page, he thought the comment strange, but said nothing.
John folded each translation with its original, forming two separate packets. The pope sat silent for a few moments, and Tibor did not move. This pope, who’d sat on the throne of St. Peter a mere nine months, had already profoundly changed the Catholic world. One reason Tibor had come to Rome was to be a part of what was happening. The world was ready for something different and God, it seemed, had provided.
John tented his chubby fingers before his mouth and rocked silently in the chair. “Father Tibor, I want your word to your pope and your God that what you just read will never be revealed.”
Tibor understood the importance of that pledge. “You have my word, Holy Father.”
John stared at him through rheumy eyes with a gaze that pierced his soul. A cold shiver tickled his spine. He fought the urge to shift on his feet.
The pope seemed to read his mind.
“Be assured,” John said in barely a whisper, “I will do what I can to honor the Virgin’s wishes.”
“I never spoke to John XXIII again,” Tibor said.
“And no other pope contacted you?” Katerina asked.
Tibor shook his head. “Not until today. I gave my word to John and kept it. Until three months ago.”
“What did you send the pope?”
“You do not know?’
“Not the details.”
“Perhaps Clement doesn’t want you to know.”
“He wouldn’t have sent me if he didn’t.”
Tibor motioned to Katerina. “Would he want her to know, too?”
“I do,” Michener said.
Tibor appraised him with a stern look. “I’m afraid not, Father. What I sent is between Clement and myself.”
“You said John XXIII never spoke to you again. Did you try to make contact with him?” Michener asked.
Tibor shook his head. “It was only a few days later John called for the Vatican II council. I remember the announcement well. I thought that his response.”
“Care to explain?”
The old man shook his head. “Not really.”
Michener finished his beer and wanted another, but knew better. He studied some of the faces that surrounded him and wondered if any might be interested in what he was doing, but quickly dismissed the thought. “What about when John Paul II released the third secret?”
Tibor’s face tightened. “What of it?”
The man’s curtness was wearing on him. “The world now knows the Virgin’s words.”
“The Church has been known to refashion the truth.”
“Are you suggesting the Holy Father deceived the world?” Michener asked.
Tibor did not immediately answer. “I don’t know what I’m suggesting. The Virgin has appeared many times on this earth. You’d think we might finally get the message.”
“What message? I’ve spent the past few months studying every apparition back two thousand years. Each one seems a unique experience.”
“Then you haven’t been studying closely,” Tibor said. “I, too, spent years reading about them. In every one there is a declaration from heaven to do as the Lord says. The Virgin is heaven’s messenger. She provides guidance and wisdom, and we’ve foolishly ignored Her. In modern times, that mistake started at La Salette.”
Michener knew every detail about the apparition at La Salette, a village high in the French Alps. In 1846 two shepherd children, a boy, Maxim, and a girl, Mélanie, supposedly experienced a vision. The event was similar in many ways to Fatima—a pastoral scene, a light that wound down from the sky, an image of a woman who spoke to them.
“As I recall,” Michener said, “the two children were told secrets that were eventually written down, the texts presented to Pius IX. The seers then later published their own versions. Charges of embellishment were leveled. The entire apparition was tainted with scandal.”
“Are you saying there’s a connection between La Salette and Fatima?” Katerina asked.
A look of annoyance crept onto Tibor’s face. “I’m not saying anything. Father Michener here has access to the archives. Has he ascertained any connection?”
“I studied the La Salette visions,” Michener said. “Pius IX made no comment after reading each of the secrets, yet he never allowed them to be publicly revealed. And though the original texts are indexed among the papers of Pius IX, the secrets are no longer in the archives.”
“I looked in 1960 for the La Salette secrets and also found nothing. But there are clues to their content.”
He knew exactly what Tibor meant. “I read the witness accounts of people who watched as Mélanie wrote down the messages. She asked how to spell infallibly, soiled, and anti-Christ, if I remember correctly.”
Tibor nodded.
“Pius IX himself even offered a few clues. After reading Maxim’s message he said, ‘Here is the candor and simplicity of a child.’ But after reading Mélanie’s he cried and said, ‘I have less to fear from open impiety than from indifference. It is not without reason that the Church is called militant and you see here her captain.’ ”