Berry, Steve - the Third Secret

Children flooded out from the rooms. About thirty, all male, their ages varying from toddlers to teenagers. They crowded around him, their heads shaven— to combat lice, the nun explained. Some walked with a limp, while others seemed to lack muscular control. A lazy eye afflicted many, a speech impediment others. They probed him with chapped hands, clamoring for his attention. Their voices carried a weak rasp and the dialects varied, Russian and Romanian the most common. Several asked who he was and why he was there. He’d learned in town that most of them would be terminally ill or severely handicapped. The scene was made surreal by the dresses the boys wore, some over pants, some bare-legged. Their clothes were apparently whatever could be found that fit their lanky bodies. They seemed all eyes and bones. Few possessed teeth. Open sores spotted their arms, legs, and faces. He tried to be careful there. He’d read last night how HIV was rampant among Romania’s forgotten children.

He wanted to tell them God would look out for them, that there was a point to their suffering. But before he could speak a tall man dressed in a black clerical suit, his Roman collar gone, stepped into the corridor. A small boy clung to his neck in a desperate embrace. The old man’s hair was cut close to the scalp, and everything about his face, manner, and stride suggested a gentle being. He wore a pair of chrome-rimmed glasses that framed saucer-round, brown eyes beneath a pyramid of bushy white eyebrows. He was wire-thin, but the arms were hard and muscular.

“Father Tibor?” he asked in English.

“I heard you say that you were a colleague.” The English carried an Eastern European accent.

“I’m Father Colin Michener.”

The older priest set down the child he was carrying. “Dumitru is due for his daily therapy. Tell me why I should delay that to speak with you?”

He wondered about the hostility in the old man’s voice. “Your pope needs assistance.”

Tibor sucked a deep breath. “Is he finally going to recognize the situation we have here?”

He wanted to speak alone and didn’t like the audience surrounding them, especially the nun. The children were still tugging at his clothes. “We need to talk in private.”

Father Tibor’s face betrayed little emotion as he appraised Michener with an even gaze. He marveled at the physical condition the old man was in and hoped he’d be in half as good a shape when he reached eighty.

“Take the children, Sister. And see to Dumitru’s therapy.”

The nun scooped the young boy into her arms and herded them down the hall. Father Tibor spit out instructions in Romanian, some of which Michener understood, but he wanted to know, “What kind of therapy does the boy receive?”

“We simply massage his legs and try to get him to walk. It’s probably useless, but it’s all we have available.”

“No doctors?”

“We’re lucky if we can feed these children. Medical aid is unheard of.”

“Why do you do this?”

“A strange question coming from a priest. These children need us.”

The enormity of what he’d just seen refused to leave his mind. “Is it like this throughout the country?”

“This is actually one of the better places. We’ve worked hard to make it livable. But, as you can see, we have a long way to go.”

“No money?”

Tibor shook his head. “Only what the relief organizations throw our way. The government does little, the Church next to nothing.”

“You came on your own?”

The older man nodded. “After the revolution, I read about the orphanages and decided this was where I should be. That was ten years ago. I have never left.”

There was still an edge to the priest’s voice, so he wanted to know, “Why are you so hostile?”

“I’m wondering what the papal secretary wants with an old man.”

“You know who I am?”

“I’m not ignorant of the world.”

He could see Andrej Tibor was no fool. Perhaps John XXIII had chosen wisely when he asked this man to translate Sister Lucia’s note. “I have a letter from the Holy Father.”

Tibor gently grasped Michener by the arm. “I was afraid of that. Let us go to the chapel.”

They stepped down the hall toward the front of the building. What served as the chapel was a tiny room floored in gritty cardboard. The walls were bare stone, the ceiling crumbling wood. The only semblance of piety came from a solitary stained-glass window where a colored mosaic formed a Madonna, her arms outstretched, seemingly ready to embrace all who sought her comfort.

Tibor motioned to the image. “I found it not far from here, in a church that was about to be razed. One of the summer volunteers installed it for me. The children are all drawn to her.”

“You know why I’ve come, don’t you?”

Tibor said nothing.

He reached into his pocket, found the blue envelope, and handed it to Tibor.

The priest accepted the packet and stepped close to the window. Tibor ripped the fold and slipped out Clement’s note. He held the paper away from his eyes as he strained to read in the dull light.

“It’s been a while since I’ve read German,” Tibor said. “But it’s coming back to me.” Tibor finished reading. “When I first wrote the pope, I was hoping he would simply do as I asked without more.”

Michener wanted to know what the priest had asked, but instead said, “Do you have a response for the Holy Father?”

“I have many responses. Which one am I to give?”

“Only you can make that decision.”

“I wish it were that simple.” He cocked his head toward the stained glass. “She made it so complicated.” Tibor stood for a moment in silence, then turned and faced him. “Are you staying in Bucharest?”

“Do you want me to?”

Tibor handed him the envelope. “There is a restaurant, the Café Krom, near the Pia¸ta Revolu¸tiei. It’s easy to find. Come at eight. I’ll think about this and have your response then.”

FIFTEEN

Michener drove south to Bucharest, wrestling with images of the orphanage.

Like many of those children, he’d never known his natural parents. He learned much later in life that his birth mother had lived in Clogheen, a small Irish village north of Dublin. She was unmarried and not yet twenty when she became pregnant. His natural father was unknown—or at least that’s what his birth mother had steadfastly maintained. Abortion was unheard of then, and Irish society scorned unwed mothers to the point of brutality.

So the church filled the gap.

Birthing centers was what the archbishop of Dublin labeled them, but they were little more than dumping places, like the one he’d just left. Each was run by nuns—not caring souls like back in Zlatna, but difficult women who treated the expectant mothers in their charge like criminals.

Women were forced to do demeaning labor up to and after giving birth, working in horrid conditions for little or no pay. Some were beaten, others starved, the majority mistreated. To the Church they were sinners, and forced repentance was their only path to salvation. Most, though, were mere peasant girls who could ill afford to raise a child. Some were the other side of illicit relationships that the fathers either did not acknowledge or wished to keep private. Others were wives who had the ill fortune to become pregnant against their husbands’ wishes. The common denominator was shame. Not a one of them wanted to bring attention to herself, or to her family, for the sake of an unwanted child.

After birth, the babies would stay at the centers for a year, maybe two, being slowly weaned from their mothers—a little less time together each day. The final notice came only the night before. An American couple would arrive the following morning. Only Catholics were allowed the adoption privilege, and they had to agree to raise the child in the Church and not publicize where he or she came from. A cash donation to the Sacred Heart Adoption Society, the organization created to run the project, was appreciated but not required. The children could be told they were adopted, but the new parents were asked to say that the natural parents had died. Most of the birth mothers wanted it that way—the hope being that the shame of their mistake would pass in time. No one needed to know they’d given a child away.