The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page B

sons to read both Greek and Latin, so I know the words Leo saw on that coffin drape. They form a prayer:
    Tuam Sindonem veneramur, Domine, et Tuam recolimus Passionem.
    In the dark, Leo must’ve been unable to form anything but a vague impression of the box’s dimensions, because this coffin was much too big for a pope. I know, because I saw it once with my own eyes.
    I know what Ugo was hiding.

C HAPTER 5
    S EVEN HUNDRED YEARS ago in a small French village, a Christian relic surfaced for the first time in Western history. No one knows where it came from or how it got there. But slowly, like all relics, it trickled up into better hands. The royal family of that region came to own it. And in time they transferred it to their Alpine capital.
    Turin.
    The Shroud of Turin purports to be the cloth in which Jesus Christ was buried. On its surface is a mysterious, almost photographic image of a crucified man. For five centuries it has lain in a side chapel of the cathedral in Turin, so carefully cared for and protected that it’s displayed to the public only a few times each century. Just twice, in half a millennium, has it been removed from the city: once when the royal family was fleeing Napoleon, and again during World War Two. That second journey brought it to a monastery in the mountains near Naples, where the cloth was protected in secrecy. It was on the way to that monastery that the Shroud, for the only time in history, passed through Rome.
    The only time in history, until now.
    Most relics are kept in special vessels called reliquaries. Seven years ago, in 1997, a fire in the Turin cathedral nearly destroyed the Shroud while it lay in its silver reliquary. Afterward, a new vessel was designed: an airtight box made of an aeronautic alloy, designed to protect the precious cloth from anything. The new box, not coincidentally, resembles a very large casket.
    Over that casket is draped a gold cloth embroidered with the traditional Latin prayer for the Shroud. Tuam Sindonem veneramur, Domine, et Tuam recolimus Passionem.
    We revere Your Holy Shroud, O Lord, and meditate upon Your Passion.
    I am sure, to a moral certainty, that what Leo saw in the bed of that cargo truck was the most famous icon of our religion. The capstone of the historic exhibit that Ugo Nogara created in the Shroud’s honor.

    I MET UGO NOGARA because I made it my business to try to meet all of Simon’s friends. Most priests are good judges of character, but my brother used to invite homeless men over for dinner. He would date girls who stole more silverware than the homeless men. One night, when he was helping nuns operate the Vatican soup kitchen, two drunks got into a fight, and one pulled a knife. Simon stepped in and wrapped his hand around the blade. He refused to let go until the gendarmes came.
    The next morning, Mother decided it was time for therapy. The psychiatrist was an old Jesuit with an office that smelled like wet books and clove cigarettes. On his desk was a signed picture of Pius XII, the pope who said Freud was a pervert and Jesuits shouldn’t smoke. My mother asked if I should wait outside, but the doctor said it was only an informal evaluation, and if Simon needed treatment, she would have to wait outside as well. So my mother, in tears, took her one chance to ask if there was a medical term for Simon’s problem. Because the term in all the magazines was “death wish.”
    The Jesuit asked Simon some questions, then asked to see where the drumstick of his thumb was sutured back to his palm. Finally he said to my mother, “Signora, are you familiar with a man named Maximilian Kolbe?”
    â€œIs he a specialist?”
    â€œHe was a priest at Auschwitz. The Nazis starved him for sixteen days before poisoning him. Kolbe volunteered for this punishment in order to save the life of a perfect stranger who would have been killed instead. Would you say this is the sort of behavior that concerns