Sister Vincenza had been looking for Don Albino all afternoon. Walking the hallways of the Apostolic Palace, carrying a small tray with a glass of water and a pill on a saucer, she stopped by a window and saw him sitting on a bench in the gardens. The Holy Father was holding his head with both hands and seemed engrossed in disturbing thoughts.
“ Gethsemane,” Sister Vincenza said, almost reflexively.
The old woman descended the stairs leading to the wonderful gardens, and continued on one of the gravel paths toward the rotunda. Just on the other side, Don Albino was sitting in his pure white cassock, staring down at his shoes.
Sister Vincenza stood in front of him.
“The doctors recommended that you take walks through the gardens. They didn’t say you should sit in the gardens.”
There was a hearty smile on Don Albino’s lips as he looked at his loyal nurse.
“Yes. They suggested I go for walks to get rid of this swelling in my feet. But as it happens, with my feet so swollen I can’t walk. So, what can I do?”
Sister Vincenza, well acquainted with Don Albino’s unshakable logic, admitted that the doctors’ prescription wasn’t very practical.
Without a word, the pope took the pill and the glass offered by the nun, and after looking at the medication with a resigned sigh, he swallowed it, delighting more in the cool water than in the promised benefits of the pill.
“Did you know my father, Sister Vincenza?” Don Albino asked his nurse, still standing before him. “When I went to the seminary at eleven, my father spent two months without saying a word to my mother. She was a very devout woman, but my father-”
“Don Giovanni was a rebel,” Sister Vincenza said.
“No. Don Giovanni, as you call him, was a socialist. But, considering what is going on now, I don’t know if an immigrant, a laborer, or temporary worker who has always lived in misery can be anything else. In fact, when I entered the seminary, my father said, ‘Finally, a sacrifice has to be made.’ I’d say that, for being avidly anti-Church, he had a premonition almost like a spiritual vision. That’s what I was thinking about when you came.”
“God will help you carry this burden, Holy Father.”
Don Albino glanced benevolently at Sister Vincenza. No good could have come from his starting a conversation about the poor conduct of the directors of the Vatican Bank. What would this innocent nun think after being told that the Mafia’s money was being laundered through intermediate enterprises in the stock markets of Zurich, London, and New York? What would happen to Sister Vincenza’s simple faith if she learned that, since August 6, 1966, affable Cardinal Villot’s name appeared with the number 041/3 in the archives of the P2 Lodge? How could this venerable old nun sleep, knowing that her Don Albino didn’t head Christ’s Church, but a financial conglomerate that would end up exploding in his face if he didn’t fix it? And as for himself, how could he look that good woman in the eye, knowing that his Church had been converted into a den of thieves?
“I could bear this burden, Sister Vincenza,” he added finally, “but I don’t know if others would be willing to put up with me.”
“Put your trust in God, Don Albino,” the dear old woman said, turning back on the gravel path toward the Apostolic Palace. “Trust in God.”
John Paul I stayed a few minutes longer on that bench in the rotunda, engrossed in his thoughts and looking at his swollen feet. It was time to go back to his office. He had so much to do! With a resigned shrug, he got up, and a grimace revealed the pain in his ankles as he stood.
“ ‘Finally,’ as old Don Giovanni had said, ‘a sacrifice has to be made.’ ”
And he slowly walked back to his office, hands clasped behind his back.