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St. Peter's Square. For centuries—since 1542, when Pope Paul III set up the Universal Inquisition to defend the Church from heresy—confessions extracted under torture were filed here, building up history's largest library of satanism, witchcraft, and sorcery. Each means of torture was recorded in detail by a scribe and went into the heretic's file along with the evidence that had damned him.
    Today, the Inquisition goes by another name: the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Before his election in 2005 as Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—called "the Enforcer"—ran this office for a quarter century, defending the Church against heresy and silencing those guilty of offending the faith. Outside of this room, around forty people—theologians, scripture scholars, and canon lawyers knowledge-able in the laws of the Church—labored in four sections: doctrine, discipline, matrimony, and punishment of priests.
    They examined writings and opinions for heresy, dissolved non-sacramental marriages, and investigated the sexual abuse of minors by clergy and "grave delicts" like abuse of the Eucharist.
    To mark the third millennium of Christianity, Pope John Paul II decided to open "the archives of repression" to help the Church come to terms with its history. Some secrets, however, must be kept forever. So that's why the Legionary was locked away with these books and papers, charged with deciding what should be moved to the new secret archives.
    Through the windows of this room, the Legionary could see the Christian cross crowning the Egyptian obelisk at the center of St. Peter's Square. In ancient times, this marshy, hilly waste across the Tiber River to the west of Rome was called Vaticanus. Known for its malarial mosquitoes, snakes, and sour wine, Vaticanus is where the mad emperor Caligula decided to build his circus. At the center of the hub—the spina —around which chariots raced, he erected the obelisk plundered from Heliopolis. When Caligula was assassinated before the arena's completion, it fell to his nephew, the psychopath Nero, to finish the job. The Circus of Nero became that tyrant's favorite playground. He would personally take the reins of a chariot and drive it around in a frenzy to soak up the obligatory applause. When Rome burned for nine days in 64 A.D., Nero blamed the obscure sect of Christians for the disaster. Dragged to the circus for execution, those early Christians were torn to pieces by wild beasts, immersed in tar and set ablaze, or crucified. Among those crucified was the apostle Peter, who had come to Rome in Caligula's reign to spread the word of Christ. Because he felt unworthy to hang upright as Jesus did, Peter asked to be nailed upside down to his cross near the obelisk.
    In The Crucifixion of St. Peter, the apostle is naked, except for a loincloth, and already pinned to the wood. Three Romans, their faces turned away, struggle to lift the cross with the martyr head down. Bearded and bald, with tufts of hair on his wrinkled brow, the old man suffers in pain and fear of death.
    His execution grim and humiliating, Christ's apostle glares at the nail affixed to his left palm.
     "What in hell!" the priest exclaimed.
    As the Legionary stared at the painting hung high on the palace wall, St. Peter vanished from the cross of his martyrdom, and what remained was the inverted cross of the black Mass.
    Stranger yet, the scars on the Legionary's palms ceased to ache.
    Conjuring Satan? the priest thought, recoiling from the blasphemy he had just read in the Inquisition record. He crossed to the windows that looked north to St. Peter's shrine.
    After Peter's crucifixion. Christians secretly buried his body in the cemetery abutting the north wall of the circus.
    The next 250 years saw martyrs die by the thousands, forcing members of the persecuted sect to hide in the catacombs of Rome. There, they continued to practice the rites of their faith, and they passed on the secret that Peter