The Confessor

Church of San Zaccaria that says closed for remodeling? In a highly unusual development, the Vatican intervened in the dispute. Father Luigi Donati fired off a blistering e-mail to Venice, expressing the wishes of the Holy Father that Signor Delvecchio be permitted to complete the restoration of the Bellini masterpiece. The superintendent quickly reversed his ruling. The next day, a box of Venetian chocolates arrived at the house, along with a note wishing Gabriel a speedy recovery.
    While Gabriel healed, they behaved as typical Venetians. They ate in restaurants no tourists could find, and after supper each night they walked in the Ghetto Nuovo. Some nights, after Ma'ariv, Chiara's father would join them. He would press them gently on the nature of their relationship and sound out Gabriel on his intentions. When it had gone on long enough, Chiara would swat him gently on the shoulder and say, "Papa,please." Then she would take each man by the arm, and they would stroll the campo in silence, the soft evening air on their faces.
    Gabriel never left the ghetto without first pausing at the Casa Israelitica di Riposo to gaze through the windows at the old ones watching their evening television. His stance never varied: right hand on his chin, left hand supporting his right elbow, head tilted slightly down. Chiara could almost imagine him perched atop his scaffolding, staring at a damaged painting, a brush between his teeth.
    WITH LITTLE else to do that spring but wait for Gabriel to heal, they followed developments at the Vatican with intense interest. As promised, Pope Paul VII set in motion his initiative by appointing
    a panel of historians and experts to reevaluate the role of the Vatican during the Second World War, along with the Church's long history of anti-Semitism. There were twelve members in all: six Catholics, six Jews. Under the rules established at the outset, the historians would spend five years analyzing countless documents contained in the Vatican Secret Archives. Their deliberations would be conducted in the utmost secrecy. At the end of five years, a report would be written and forwarded to the pope for action, whoever the pope might be. From New York to Paris to Jerusalem, the response from the world's Jewish community was overwhelmingly positive.
    One month after convening, the commission submitted its first request for documents to the Secret Archives. Among the items contained in the initial batch was a memorandum written by Bishop Sebastiano Lorenzi of the Secretariat of State to His Holiness Pope Pius XII. The memo, once thought destroyed, contained details of a secret meeting that took place at a convent on Lake Garda in 1942. Members of the commission, true to the guidelines, said nothing about it in public.
    The Pope's initiative was quickly overshadowed, however, by what became known in the Italian press as the Crux Vera affair. In a series of incendiary exposes, Benedetto Fó, the Vatican correspondent for La Repubblica, revealed the existence of a secret Catholic society that had infiltrated the highest levels of the Holy See, the Rome government, and Italy's financial world. Indeed, according to Fó's shadowy sources, the tentacles of Crux Vera reached across! Europe to the United States and Latin America. Cardinal Marco Brindisi, the slain Vatican secretary of state, was named as leader of Crux Vera, along with the reclusive financier Roberto Pucci and the former chief of the Vatican Security Office, Carlo Casagrande. Pucci issued a denial of the accusation through his lawyers, but not long
    after Fó's article appeared, a Pucci-owned bank suffered a liquidity crisis and collapsed. The bank failure revealed the Pucci empire to be a financial house of cards, and within weeks it was a smoldering ruin. Pucci himself fled his beloved Villa Galatina and took up exile in Cannes.
    As for the Vatican, publicly it clung to its theory that the gunman who wreaked havoc was a religious madman with no ties to any country, terrorist organization, or secret society. It strenuously denied the existence of a clandestine group called Crux Vera and reminded the Vaticansti at every turn that secret societies and lodges were strictly forbidden by the Church. Still, it soon became apparent to the press corps and all those who followed Vatican affairs that Pope Paul VII was in the process of cleaning house. More than a dozen senior members of the Roman Curia were reassigned to pastoral duties or were retired,