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pattern was still that of the old rhetoricians. The argument was laid down. Scripture and the Fathers were quoted in support. Directives were given, binding the conscience of the faithful. There was a closing exhortation to faith, hope and continuing charity. The formal ‘we’ was used throughout, not merely to express the dignity of the Pontiff but to connote a community and a continuity in the office and in the teaching. The implication was plain: the Pope taught nothing new; he expounded an ancient and unchangeable truth, simply applying it to the needs of his time.
    At one stroke Jean Marie Barette had broken the pattern.
    He had abrogated the role of exegete and assumed the mantle of the prophet.
    “I, Gregory, am commanded by the Holy Spirit…” Even in the formal Latin, the impact of the words was shocking. No wonder the men of the Curia had blanched when they read them for the first time. What followed was even more tendentious: . The comfort which I offer you is the abiding promise of our Lord Jesus Christ: “I will not leave you orphans. Behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.” The warning I give you is that the end is very near, that this generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled … I do not tell you this of myself, or because I have predicated it upon human reason, but because it was shown to me in a vision, which I dare not conceal but am commanded to tell openly to the world. But even that revelation was no new thing. It was simply an affirmation, clear as sunrise, of what was revealed in the Holy Scriptures…
    There followed a long exposition of texts from the Synoptic Gospels, and a series of eloquent analogies between the Biblical ‘signs’ and the circumstances of the last decade of the twentieth century: wars and rumours of wars, famines and epidemics, false Christs and false prophets.
    To Carl Mendelius, deeply and professionally versed in apocalyptic literature from the earliest times to the present, it was a disturbing and dangerous document. Emanating from so high a source it could not fail to raise alarm and panic.
    Among the militant it might easily serve as a rallying-cry for one last crusade of the elect against the unrighteous. To the weak and the fearful it might even be an inducement to suicide before the horrors of the last times overtook them.
    He asked himself what he would have done had he, like the secretary, seen it, new-written, on the Pontiff’s desk. Without a doubt he would have urged its suppression. Which was exactly what the Cardinals had done: suppressed the document and silenced the author.
    Then a new thought presented itself. Was not this the fate of all prophets, the price they paid for a terrible gift, the bloody seal of truth upon their soothsaying? Out of the welter of biblical eloquence another text echoed in his mind;
    the last lamentation of Christ over the Holy City.
    Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill est the prophets and stone st them that are sent to thee! How often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but thou wouldst not! .. . Therefore the day will come when thine enemies will cast a trench about thee, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the things that are to thy peace!
    It was an eerie thought for the midnight hour, with the moonlight streaming through the leaded windows and the cold wind searching down the Neckar valley and round the alleys of the old town where poor Holderlin died mad and Melanchthon, sanest of men, taught that “God draws; but he draws the willing ones.”
    All his experience affirmed that Jean Marie Barette was the most willing, the most open of men, the least likely to fall victim to a fanatic’s illusion.
    True, he had written a wildly imprudent document. Yet, perhaps this was the core of the matter: that in the hour of