Read the Third Secret (2005) for Free Online Page A

it adjourned. One of his aides later informed him that the confrontation between Father Kealy and Cardinal Valendrea had continued for the better part of two hours. He wondered about the point of the hearing. The decision to excommunicate Kealy had surely been made long before the priest had been commanded to Rome. Few accused clerics ever attended a tribunal, so Kealy had most likely come to draw more attention to his movement. Within a matter of weeks Kealy would be declared
not in communion with the Holy See,
just another expatriate proclaiming the Church a dinosaur heading toward extinction.
    And sometimes Michener believed critics, like Kealy, might be right.
    Nearly half of the world’s Catholics now lived in Latin America. Add Africa and Asia and the fraction rose to three-quarters. Placating this emerging international majority, while not alienating the Europeans and Italians, was a daily challenge. No head of state dealt with something so intricate. But the Roman Catholic Church had done just that for two thousand years—a claim no other of man’s institutions could make—and spread out before him was one of the Church’s grandest manifestations.
    The key-shaped square, enclosed within Bernini’s two magnificent semicircular colonnades, was breathtaking. Michener had always been impressed with Vatican City. He’d first come a dozen years ago as the adjunct priest to the archbishop of Cologne—his virtue having been tested by Katerina Lew, but his resolve solidified. He recalled exploring all 108 acres of the walled enclave, marveling at the majesty that two millennia of constant building could achieve.
    The tiny nation did not occupy one of the hills upon which Rome was first built, but instead crowned Mons Vaticanus, the only one of the seven ancient designations people still remembered. Fewer than two hundred were actual citizens, and even fewer held a passport. Not one soul had ever been born there, few besides popes died there, and even fewer were buried there. Its government was one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies and, in a twist Michener had always thought ironic, the Holy See’s United Nations representative could not sign the worldwide declaration of human rights because, inside the Vatican, there was no religious freedom.
    He gazed out into the sunny square, past the television trucks with their array of antennas, and noticed people looking off to the right and up. A few were crying
“Santissimo Padre.”
Holy Father. He followed their upturned heads to the fourth floor of the Apostolic Palace. Between the wooden shutters of a corner window the face of Clement XV appeared.
    Many started waving. Clement waved back.
    “Still fascinates you, doesn’t it?” a female voice said.
    He turned. Katerina Lew stood a few feet away. Somehow he’d known she would find him. She came close to where he stood, just inside the shadow of one of Bernini’s pillars. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still in love with your God. I could see it in your eyes in the tribunal.”
    He tried to smile, but cautioned himself to focus on the challenge before him. “How have you been, Kate?” The features on her face softened. “Life everything you thought it would be?”
    “I can’t complain. No, I won’t complain. Unproductive. That’s how you once described complaining.”
    “That’s good to hear.”
    “How did you know I’d be there this morning?”
    “I saw your credentials application a few weeks back. May I ask what’s your interest in Father Kealy?”
    “We haven’t spoken in fifteen years and that’s what you want to talk about?”
    “The last time we spoke you told me never to speak of
us
again. You said there was no
us.
Only me and God. So I didn’t think that was a good subject.”
    “But I said that only after you told me you were returning to the archbishop and devoting yourself to the service of others. A priest in the Catholic Church.”
    They were standing a bit close, so