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Throughout his career, Vincent had had the luxury of rarely getting into heated theological discussions with his peers. He got into a vast number of other heated arguments, but they were nearly all about earthly concerns like how this clinic had no running water; or how the shelter didn’t have enough soap to clean the floors; or, no, this convoy isn’t assisting terrorists, it’s assisting people, and if you don’t allow us through the checkpoint right now as we transport critically injured children, I will have to escalate this with all the power bestowed upon me in my position, so help me God.
He didn’t always win. He failed a good amount of the time to get what was needed, so he had to make do with what successes he could scrounge up, sometimes literally from the gutter. Vincent spent weeks, even months, rarely thinking through the complexities of theological implications of his service because he was more concerned with keeping the people around him alive, safe, and fed, directly in that order. Vincent prayed constantly, and it wasn’t for guidance regarding, say, Benedictine philosophy—and he was a Jesuit anyhow—but for the electricity to stay on so he could boil enough water so he and his parishioners could avoid contracting cholera.
Now that he is Pope: Vincent is surrounded by constant theological debate. Aldo and Thomas, who are also Jesuits, have an ongoing, friendly dialogue about how to foster intellectual curiosity and rigor through guided spiritual exploration. They chat about the mechanism of that guidance as a way to entertain themselves during travel delays and even as a way to wind down over dinner. Vincent has dozed off more than a few times during long car or plane rides, their even, well-trodden conversation soothing him into slumber.
Joshua is better at drawing Vincent into theological conversation, if nothing else regarding the Benedectine dedication to obedience to superiors. It’s something that Joshua chafes against, despite how well he’s able to navigate the top-down structure of the Catholic Church, and Vincent is patently terrible at since his top skill is crisis management. They sit together one on one when their schedules allow it, which is about once a month, sharing food from a Nigerian restaurant that opened up six months ago.
“It boils down to our structural issues,” Joshua says as they divide up the takeaway container of goat pepper stew into their soup bowls, temporarily pilfered from the Casa Santa Marta kitchen. “Before the digital age, each diocese had much more autonomy. We have improved our cultural competency, but I fear we may have forgotten that humility should beget obedience, not the other way around.”
“You’ve given me too much,” Vincent says as he transfers a large chunk of meat to Joshua’s bowl.
“See what I mean?” Joshua laughs as a tour group passes by several yards away and gawk at the sight of them sitting on a ratty old blanket.
“I just don’t think it’s useful to fear God,” Vincent says, prying off the tight plastic lid over the potatoes, studiously ignoring the fact the tour guide is trying to hurry the group on and nearly everyone has their phones out. “It’s humbling enough to experience His love.”
“Most people need a balance,” Joshua says, shaking out the paper napkins for them to lay over their laps with a joyful flourish. “Ah, doesn’t this look delicious!”
They end up on social media, of course. Someone caught the whole sequence of Joshua shaking out the napkins and Vincent serving them both potatoes. Ray and Thomas look at them over the paperwork for the upcoming tour of Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom like they’re disappointed schoolmasters.
“It was a really nice day,” Vincent says, or conjoles.
“It was lunchtime,” Joshua says because they really didn’t do anything wrong.
“How did you get the takeaway here?” Thomas asks with the air of a man who God challenges on a daily basis.
“I picked it up,” Joshua says blithely as he resets his calculator; aside from Ray and Vincent himself, he’s the only member of the senior curia who has a valid driving license. “Now, what is this company—Galderma?”
Vincent has to leave the meeting half an hour early to make a scheduled visit to a children’s hospital about an hour away. He does a round through the pediatric ICU and then attends to a handful of patients on the schedule of the onsite chaplain, who is in his late thirties and struggles to contain how awed he is to be doing his service alongside the Pope. They take a promotional picture together at the end of the visit in the hospital chapel, and the priest clasps Vincent’s hands with trembling fingers.
“Thank you,” the priest says as Vincent’s security prepares to make him leave. “I have been meditating on your encyclical, seeking how I can better show love in my service to the sick and frightened. Your focus on action, on even how even a little action can be meaningful: it’s given me a lot of clarity.”
“It’s difficult work,” Vincent says, sincerely touched because he understands; he remembers what it was like when he was this priest’s age and whispering last rites over children who deserved nothing of what happened to them; he had felt his service was more needed than ever. “Thank you.”
But despite himself, the action of the day dregs up memories. Vincent gets back after dark after spending over two hours in traffic, phone plugged in to answer messages and emails. He goes up to his room in Casa Santa Marta, changes his shoes, and washes his hands and face. There’s always more he could be doing, but his brain feels like it is either going to melt or explode. It’s a feeling he’s growing to recognise, unique to his life since becoming Pope.
Everyone else is at dinner, so he sneaks out of Casa Santa Marta with his prayer mat and takes side doors and hallways until he enters St. Peter's Basilica. He uses his phone for light until he reaches Michelangelo’s Pietà. Vincent lays out his mat and takes off his shoes. He props his phone against his right shoe so the torch illuminates the Pietà, looking around the empty chapel before sitting down.
He looks at Mary, holding the body of her son Jesus in her arms. In the near darkness, Vincent is struck with two sensations at once. He feels as if he has seen her before, not in marble but in flesh. He feels his heart climb into his throat because he has seen her son, too, in this exact position. He feels this because he has seen this. He’s seen this far too many times.
Vincent shuts his eyes. He presses his hands over his face and rests his elbows on his thighs. He prays. It doesn’t have much structure, more repetitive than anything. He prays and thinks of Jesus and Mary. He prays and offers up all of his faith to God.
The reality of Vincent’s life is that he accepted very, very early on in his vocation that he was weak. The first time he saw a mother clutch her child and heard that world-rending scream: Vincent had been utterly helpless. He was the only priest available because his superior was dead, and his cassock was so dirty and tattered that he was indistinguishable from the people he was trying to shelter within the tenuous sanctuary of the church walls. All he could do was sit beside the woman and hold her as she struggled to make herself quiet for their safety, her whole being so wretched it hurt to look at her. There was nothing he could say. There was nothing he could do but pray because he didn’t know if the next person who came to the door would help them or hurt them.
Accepting his weakness gave him the peace he needed to do his work. He made himself walk up to people holding machine guns and ask for gas to run his clinic’s generator and bags of rice to feed his patients. He made himself stand and lift his chin to look them in the eye and proclaim that his church was a sanctuary, a place of peaceful worship of God, and they were no more a threat than a blade of grass. He was weak so he could hold his ground, even when he was struck down and beaten until someone else came to his aid.
He knew what he was doing. In that hard, undesirable work, Vincent found that his faith gave him an unending well of peace within himself because he knew exactly what he was doing, and it was worth whatever suffering he endured. There was no greater reward than seeing life return to the eyes of the despairing, and, for so many years, that was what Vincent thought God’s plan was for him:
To bear love in his heart even in the face of the greatest evil.
Vincent opens his eyes. Lowers his hands. There’s more light in the chapel. Someone has turned on the electric sconces. Vincent feels his lips trying to tug into a smile, but he resists it because it would not be kind.
“I know you’re here.”
Soft, even footsteps. Thomas comes to stand to Vincent’s left. He looks at the Pietà. At Vincent’s phone, the torch still focused on the Virgin and her Son. At Vincent, sitting cross legged on the floor. Vincent is careful not to look directly at Thomas. He looks at Jesus’s head. His curly hair looks real.
“I’ve disturbed your meditation again,” Thomas says, more than a little careful.
Vincent smiles. He knows what this expression looks like. To those who think themselves better than him, he appears guileless, simple even. To those who see him only as the Pope, it’s a mysterious expression, calm and difficult to read. To someone like Thomas, who knows Vincent’s secrets:
“You shouldn’t sneak out on your own.”
“I know,” Vincent says.
He lets himself look up. What Thomas sees makes him flinch. Vincent knows that he’s raw right now. Thomas is looking at the priest who hammered himself into a shield for his flock rather than the humble, unflappable Pope Innocent XIV. That priest:
There were more than a few times where men much bigger and more powerful backed down against him.
But Thomas, out of all the precious people in Vincent’s life now, is no coward. Vincent watches him steady. How the moment of instinctual fear in his eyes settles. How his demeanor doesn’t quite relax, and how it softens.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Vincent shakes his head. There’s some memories he would rather keep to himself, and others that he will take to the grave in respect of the dead. He reaches out and picks up his phone. He turns off the torch and checks the time. He’s been here for nearly forty minutes. A record so far in his unaccompanied excursions within the Vatican since he became Pope.
“Agnes saw you leave on the security system,” Thomas says, drawing Vincent’s attention back to him. “We debated this time if we should follow you because you took your prayer mat.”
“I put you through a lot,” Vincent says, and he can feel himself settling, the mourning wail further from his ears; it allows him to admit, “I needed some time alone.”
Thomas looks at him, sympathetic. His sharp, thoughtful eyes communicate that he is curious, and he does want to press, but he respects Vincent enough not to. Not because he’s Pope. Out of everyone, Thomas always remembers that Vincent is still just a man, and he’s made of flesh and blood, hopes and doubt.
And that is the truth: Vincent loved him from the moment Thomas revealed his doubt. Vincent, who made himself into a shield, who used himself as a battering ram, had listened to Thomas speak at the naissance of the conclave, and he felt he had met the part of himself that had been missing for years:
For Thomas took his heart out and bore it forth and set Vincent aflame.
“I can leave,” Thomas says even though they both know he really can’t.
“Stay,” Vincent says, and Thomas’s shoulders relax, his lips lifting in one of his small, private smiles. “I’m almost done. We can pray together.”
“I’d like that,” Thomas agrees.
He crosses himself and presses his hands together, eyes closing peacefully. Vincent watches him for a long moment, taking in his tall statue and solid carriage. He looks whole and full of purpose.
Vincent looks back at the Pietà. The love of Mary for her Son. And he prays.
Maybe he will never be a great theologian. Maybe he will never be able to express himself fully. Maybe he will never be more than what he is.
But he is at peace because he has a purpose:
Vincent holds love in his heart and lets God guide him forward.