The Clowns of God Read Free

happy marriage and a full professional life. Whatever the cost, he must discharge the debts of friendship. He bent again to the study of the letter.
    You know the circumstances of my election. My predecessor, our populist Pope, had fulfilled his mission. He had centralised the Church again. He had tightened discipline. He had restated the traditional dogmatic line. His enormous personal charm the charm of a great actor had masked for a long time his essentially rigorist attitudes. In his old age he had become more intolerant, less and less open to argument. He saw himself as the hammer of God, smiting the forces of the ungodly. It was hard to convince him that unless a miracle happened, there might be no men left at all godly or ungodly. We were in the last decade of the century and only a stride away from global war. When I assumed office, a compromise choice after a six-day conclave, I was terrified.
    I do not need to read you the whole apocalyptic text; the plight of the Third World thrust to the brink of starvation, the daily risk of economic collapse in the West, the soaring cost of energy, the wild armament race, the temptation for the militarists to make their last mad gamble while they could still calculate the atomic odds. For me the most frightening phenomenon was the atmosphere of creeping despair among world leaders, the sense of official impotence, the strange atavistic regression to a magical view of the universe.
    You and I had discussed many times the proliferation of new cults and their manipulation for profit and power.
    Fanaticism was exploding in the old religions as well. Some of our own fanatics wanted me to proclaim a Marian year, call for vast pilgrimages to all the shrines of the Virgin throughout the world. I told them I would have none of it.
    A panic of devotees was the last thing we needed.
    I believed the best service the Church could offer was that of mediation with reason and with charity for all. It was also the task which I, as Pontiff, was best fitted to perform. I let it be known that I would go anywhere, receive anyone, in the cause of peace. I tried to make it clear that I had no magical formulae, no illusions of power. I knew too well the deadly inertia of institutions, the mathematical madness that makes men fight to the death over the simplest equation of compromise. I told myself, I tried to convince the leaders of nations, that even one year’s deferment of Armageddon would be a victory.
    Nevertheless, the fear of an impending holocaust haunted me day and night, sapped my reserves of courage and confidence.
    Finally, I decided that, to keep any sense of perspective, I must rest a while and rebuild my spiritual resources. So I went into retreat for two weeks at the Monastery of Monte Cassino. You know the place well. It was founded by Saint Benedict in the sixth century. Paul the Deacon wrote his histories there. My namesake, Gregory IX, made there his peace with Frederick von Hohenstaufen. More than all, it was isolated and serene. Abbot Andrew was a man of singular discernment and piety. I would place myself under his spiritual direction and dedicate myself to a brief period of silence, meditation and inner renewal.
    So I planned it, my dear Carl. So I began to do it. I had been there three days when the event took place…
    The sentence ended at the bottom of a page. Mendelius hesitated before he turned it over. He felt a faint shiver of distaste as though he were being asked to witness an intimate bodily act. He had to force himself to continue the reading. I call it an event, because I do not wish to colour your appraisal of it, and also because, for me, it remains a fact of physical dimension. It happened. I did not imagine it. The experience was as real as the breakfast I had just eaten in the refectory.
    It was nine in the morning, a clear sunny day. I was sitting on a stone bench in the cloister garden. A few yards away, one of the monks was hoeing a flower-bed. I felt very