“Of course.”
“And Chiara?”
“She’s well, thank you.”
“Have you two given any consideration to…formalizing your relationship?”
“It’s complicated, Luigi.”
“Yes, but what isn’t?”
“You know, for a moment there, you actually sounded like a priest.”
Donati threw back his head and laughed. He was beginning to relax. “The Holy Father sends his regards. He says he’s sorry he couldn’t join us. Piperno is one of his favorite restaurants. He recommends we start with the filetti di baccala. He swears it’s the best in Rome.”
“Does infallibility extend to appetizer recommendations?”
“The pope is infallible only when he is acting as the supreme teacher on matters of faith and morals. I’m afraid the doctrine does not extend to fried codfish fillets. But he does have a good deal of worldly experience in these matters. If I were you, I’d go with thefiletti. ”
The white-jacketed waiter appeared. Donati handled the ordering. The frascati began to flow, and Donati’s mood mellowed like the soft afternoon. He spent the next few minutes regaling Gabriel with Curial gossip and stories of backstairs brawling and court intrigue. It was all very familiar. The Vatican was not much different from the Office. Finally, Gabriel guided the conversation round to the topic that had brought him and Donati together in the first place: the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holocaust.
“How is the work of the Historical Commission coming along?”
“As well as can be expected. We’re supplying the documents from the Secret Archives, they’re doing the analysis with as little interference from us as possible. A preliminary report of their findings is due in six months. After that, they’ll start work on a multivolume history.”
“Any indications which way the preliminary report is going to go?”
“As I said, we’re trying to let the historians work with as little interference from the Apostolic Palace as possible.”
Gabriel shot Donati a dubious glance over his wineglass. Were it not for the monsignor’s clerical suit and Roman collar, Gabriel would have assumed he was a professional spy. The notion that Donati didn’t have at least two sources on the Commission staff was insulting. Gabriel, between sips of frascati, expressed this view to Monsignor Donati. The priest confessed.
“All right, let’s say I’m not completely in the dark about the Commission.”
“And?”
“The report will take into account the enormous pressures on Pius, yet even so, I’m afraid it will not paint a terribly flattering portrait of his actions, or of the actions of the national churches in central and eastern Europe.”
“You sound nervous, Luigi.”
The priest leaned forward over the table and seemed to choose his next words carefully. “We’ve opened a Pandora’s box, my friend. Once a process like this is set in motion, it’s impossible to predict where it will end and what other areas of the Church it will affect. The liberals have seized on the Holy Father’s actions and are pleading for more: a Third Vatican Council. The reactionaries are screaming heresy.”
“Anything serious?”
Again, the monsignor took an inordinate amount of time before answering. “We’re picking up some very serious rumblings from some reactionaries in the Languedoc region of France -the sort of reactionaries who believe Vatican Two was the work of the Devil and that every pope since John the Twenty-third has been a heretic.”
“I thought the Church was full of people like that. I had my own run-in with a friendly group of prelates and laymen called Crux Vera.”
Donati smiled. “I’m afraid this group is cut from the same cloth, except, unlike Crux Vera, they don’t have a power base inside the Curia. They’re outsiders, barbarians beating at the gates. The Holy Father has very little control over them, and things have started to heat up.”
“Let me know if there’s something I can do to help.”
“Be careful, my friend, I might take you up on that.”
The filetti di baccala arrived. Donati squeezed lemon juice over the plate and popped one of the fillets into his mouth whole. He washed down the fish with a drink of the frascati and sat back in his chair, his handsome features set in a look of pure contentment. For a priest working in the Vatican, the temporal world offered few delights more tantalizing than lunch on a sun-washed Roman square. He started on another filetti and asked Gabriel what he was doing in town.
“I guess you could say I’m working on a matter related to the work of the Historical Commission.”
“How so?”
“I have reason to suspect that shortly after the war ended, the Vatican may have helped a wanted SS man named Erich Radek escape Europe.”
Donati stopped chewing, his face suddenly serious. “Be careful with the terms you use and the assumptions you make, my friend. It’s quite possible this man Radek received help from someone in Rome, but it wasn’t the Vatican. ”
“We believe it was Bishop Hudal of the Anima.”
The tension in Donati’s face eased. “Unfortunately, the good bishop did help a number of fugitive Nazis. There’s no denying that. What makes you think he helped this man Radek?”
“An educated guess. Radek was an Austrian Catholic. Hudal was rector of the German seminary in Rome and father confessor to the German and Austrian community. If Radek came to Rome looking for help, it would make sense that he would turn to Bishop Hudal.”
Donati nodded in agreement. “I can’t argue with that. Bishop Hudal was interested in protecting fellow citizens of his country from what he believed were the vengeful intentions of the Allied victors. But that doesn’t mean that he knew that Erich Radek was a war criminal. How could he know? Italy was flooded with millions of displaced persons after the war, all of them looking for help. If Radek came to Hudal and told him a sad story, it’s likely he would have been given sanctuary and help.”
“Shouldn’t Hudal have asked a man like Radek why he was on the run?”
“Perhaps he should have, but you’re being naive if you assume that Radek would have answered the question truthfully. He would have lied, and Bishop Hudal would have had no way of knowing otherwise.”
“A man doesn’t become a fugitive for no reason, Luigi, and the Holocaust was no secret. Bishop Hudal should have realized he was helping war criminals escape justice.”
Donati waited to respond while the waiter served a pasta course. “What you have to understand is that there were many organizations and individuals at the time who assisted refugees, inside the Church and outside. Hudal wasn’t the only one.”
“Where did he get the money to finance his operation?”
“He claimed it all came from the accounts of the seminary.”
“And you believe that? Each SS man Hudal assisted required pocket money, passage on a ship, a visa, and a new life in a foreign country, not to mention the cost of providing them sanctuary in Rome until they could be shipped off. Hudal is thought to have helped hundreds of SS men in this way. That’s a lot of money, Luigi-hundreds of thousands of dollars. I find it hard to believe the Anima had that kind of spare change lying around.”
“So you’re assuming he was given money by someone,” Donati said, expertly twirling pasta onto his fork. “Someone like the Holy Father, for example.”
“The money had to come from somewhere.”
Donati laid down his fork and folded his hands thoughtfully. “There is evidence to suggest that Bishop Hudaldid receive Vatican funds to pay for his refugee work.”
“They weren’t refugees, Luigi. Not all of them, at least. Many of them were guilty of unspeakable crimes. Are you telling me Pius had no idea Hudal was helping wanted war criminals escape justice?”
“Let us just say that, based on available documentary evidence and testimony from surviving witnesses, it would be very difficult to prove that charge.”
“I didn’t know you’d studied Canon Law, Luigi.” Gabriel repeated the question, slowly, with a prosecutorial
