“In exercising supreme, full, and immediate power in the universal Church, the Roman pontiff makes use of the departments of the Roman Curia which, therefore, perform their duties in his name and with his authority for the good of the churches and in the service of the sacred pastors”
— Decree concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church, Christus Dominus
The Vatican Gardens were still under the light of a full moon. Cardinal Jorge Sánchez and Prof. Gabriel Reidner stepped out of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the heart of the gardens. The Academy had its origins in the Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei and aimed to promote the progress of the study of science and mathematics. It was well past mid-night. Both men looked deeply troubled—Cardinal Sánchez more so.
Prof. Gabriel Reidner was the president of the Academy and a Nobel Prize Laureate. He had been appointed by Pope Francis in the first week of his papacy. He had a long and distinguished career as a biologist, was a key member of the Human Genome Project, and served for a term as President Obama’s National Science Advisor. Reidner was born to Mormon parents but he was non-practising. In fact, he had little time for religion and didn’t spend much time thinking about it, which was ironic considering he now worked at the Vatican. However, one of the reasons he took up the post as president was because he knew that the Academy was non-sectarian, non-religious, and international in scope, with its main aim being to promote science among the international community and keep the Holy See informed about latest developments.
Cardinal Jorge Sanchez was the chancellor of the Academy and a deeply pious man. His tenure as chancellor was long and stretched across four decades. He had seen popes come and go, but his allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See, and above all to God was unshakeable and implacable. He was aware of the legend that the soil in the Garden had been brought from Golgotha, or ‘Calvary,’ as English-speakers referred to it—the place where Christ had been crucified. This made him feel all the more reverent towards the lawns. He clutched his rosary beads tightly as they walked up Via dell’Osservatorio and passed the Mater Ecclesiae Convent on their left and the Chapel of Santa Maria Regina della Famiglia on their right.
Both men walked briskly, though Cardinal Sanchez, with his advancing age, was struggling to keep up with Prof. Reidner. The gardens remained disquietingly silent. The only sound that filled the air was the clacking of their shoes on the cobbled paths that led to the Palace of the Papacy. They were going to see the Pope.
“Shouldn’t we wait till the morning?” whispered Prof. Reidner. “I don’t know how happy the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household will be to see us at this hour.”
“No, we must go now,” Cardinal Sanchez insisted. “This is much too important to wait till morning.”
“But what if the Holy Father is asleep?”
“Christ forgive me, we will have to wake him up….” Cardinal Sanchez wheezed as he struggled to keep pace. “This is… this is… much too important….”
Up ahead, gleamed the impressive dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the largest churches in the world with its elegant renaissance architecture and exquisite paintings by Michelangelo, Maderno, Bernini and others. Cardinal Sanchez’s thoughts wandered to how it was widely believed that the body of St. Peter, the First Bishop of Rome, was buried under the basilica. This must be true, he convinced himself. To think, that under that majestic structure was the body of a disciple and apostle who lived and breathed with the Saviour Jesus; walked with him in Nazareth; broke bread with him in Jerusalem; listened to the sermon on the mount in Galilee… What would St. Peter make of the news they were now bearing? Everything would change, and change forever, once the world found out.
*** *** ***
Prof. Reidner and Cardinal Sanchez paced the floor of the Apostolic Palace, as the Prefect of the Pontifical Household, Archbishop Giuseppe Montana, glared at them.
“I hope you realise, this intrusion on the Holy Father’s hour of rest is most grotesque. I’ve only consented to have him woken up because of your long tenure in these hallowed grounds and have never known you to be melodramatic. ”
Cardinal Sanchez held his hands together in supplication, and said, “Thank you, Archbishop, this is a matter of… the utmost urgency… the utmost urgency, I assure you.”
The three of them walked towards the Papal Apartments where the Pope resided. They passed the vestibule and the Papal Secretary’s office and made their way to the Papal Study. 16th century marble covered the floor and baroque wallpaper lined the walls. As they entered the Pope’s study, Cardinal Sanchez immediately noticed the window from which the pope greeted and blessed pilgrims to Saint Peter’s Square on Sundays. He shuddered to think of the message the pope would inevitably have to share with his flock once he had discovered the reason behind their nocturnal visit. What would the faithful make of it? What would humanity make of it?
In a couple of minutes Pope Francis shuffled into the room. He was still in his night gown and his eyes look tired. He was accompanied by the Theologian of the Pontifical Household, who delicately closed the door to the study and ensured the four of them had complete privacy.
Archibishop Montana was first to break the silence: “Begging you pardon, Holy Father, for this abominable interruption on your time in your hour of rest. But Cardinal Sanchez says he and Prof. Reidner have news that cannot wait till the morning.”
The Pope glanced at the two men, and walked wearily to a chair and sat down. “Tell me, Cardinal Sanchez, what is it that is so pressing?”
Cardinal Sanchez froze for a moment and then realised the moment of revelation was upon him. “Holy Father, you will recollect when your predecessor, the current Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, ‘Nature is a book whose history, whose evolution, and whose writing and meaning we read according to the different approaches of science, while all the tie presupposing the fundamental presence of the author who has wished to reveal himself therein’.”
“Yes, I remember. It caused a mild controversy at the time, but nothing that troubled anyone too much.”
“Well, that might all change after you hear what Prof. Reidner has discovered.”
Prof. Reidner was at a loss where to begin and whether it was wise to simply blurt out what he knew. He decided the best approach would be to give the Pope some background information so that he might have some grounding to make sense of the significance of the discovery. “Holy Father, what I’m about to say makes little sense at the moment. I will try and condense it in layman’s terms for the non-biologist. As you are aware, all life is made of DNA—which is essentially a long linear polymer found in the nucleus of a cell and formed from nucleotides and shaped like a double helix; it is the DNA that is associated with the transmission of genetic information. This information is coded and can be ‘read out’ much like we can read out the code in a piece of software.”
“Yes, this much I know…” said the Pope.
“Ah, then you probably also know that a codon is a specific sequence of nucleotides on a strand of DNA that specifies the genetic code information for synthesizing a particular amino acid.”
“Go on…” said the Pope, indicating that he was keeping up.
“Now, geneticists have long known that it is possible to include a flexible code mapping between codons and amino acids. If done correctly, this flexibility allows modifying the code artificially that could theoretically remain unchanged over millions of years; in fact, it is probably one of the best way to permanently store information.”
“But what about the possibility of mutations, Prof. Reidner?” asked the Pope.
“Ah, yes, but here’s the genius, even if a mutation occurs in tRNA, all genes in the genome will still remain written with the previous code, and the mutant cell will quickly be lost without leaving any descendent cells with the mutation.”
“And you’re saying this is a method of purification at the genetic level?”
“Exactly, Holy Father, and it can last for billions of years. Over the last four years, we’ve been trying to find patterns in human DNA that couldn’t necessarily have formed naturally. Naturally-occurring code wouldn’t display the kind of precision and neatly ordered pattern. We’ve been looking for specific arrangements of the code that would indicate some sort of mathematical pattern or ideographical arrangement.”
“And is this really possible?”
“Well, researchers at Harvard have succeeded in encoding an entire book in the form of genetic code, so we’ve known it is absolutely possible to encode information at the genetic level. They took a digitised version of the book, composed of ones and zeros. They then translated the zeros into either the A or C of the DNA base pairs, and changed the ones into either the G or T. After that, they used fairly straightforward lab techniques that graduate students use to create short strands of actual DNA that held the coded sequence. Each strand consisted of a phrase or paragraph from the book.”
“So, what you’re saying is you’ve found a code—something written at the genetic level.”
Prof Reidner looked at Cardinal Sanchez and then nodded, “Yes, Holy Father” he whispered. “We found what we believe is a signature—possibly of our creator.”
Cardinal Sanchez was wringing his hands.
“What have you discovered?” asked the Pope.
Prod. Reidner took a deep breath. “We discovered a word—more specifically we discovered different synonyms of the same word occurring over and over again. We double checked –the code works in English and in Latin, and we’ve just begun translating it into Greek.”
The Pope remained silent. Finally he spoke. “And was the word you found ‘God’?”
Prof Reidener took a deep breath. We found the words, ‘Angra Mainyu’, ‘Kroni’, ‘Mara’, ‘Mastema’, ‘Azazel’, Baphomet’, ‘Iblis’, ‘Beelzebub’…” his voice trailed off as the Pope sank his head into his hands.
Cardinal Sanchez walked in silence towards the window that overlooked St. Peter’s Square, now bathed in moonlight. He shook his head slowly and whispered softly to himself in horror, “Spawns of the Devil…”
