the Third Secret (2005) Read Online Free PDF

simultaneously. What had Kealy said?
Like others of faith.
    He sensed the stare of eyes. As his mind refocused, he realized Katerina had turned her head and was now looking directly at him.
    The face still carried the toughness he’d found so attractive. The slight hint of Asian eyes remained, the mouth tugged down, the jaw gentle and feminine. There were simply no sharp edges anywhere. Those, he knew, hid in her personality. He examined her expression and tried to gauge its temperature. Not anger. Not resentment. Not affection. A look that seemed to say nothing. Not even hello. He found it uncomfortable to be this close to a memory. Perhaps she’d expected his appearance and didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking she cared. After all, their parting all those years ago had not been amicable.
    She turned back to the tribunal and his anxiety subsided.
    “Father Kealy,” Valendrea said, “I ask you simply. Do you renounce your heresy? Do you recognize that what you have done is against the laws of this Church and your God?”
    The priest pulled himself close to the table. “I do not believe that loving a woman is contrary to the laws of God. So the forgiving of that sin was therefore inconsequential. I have a right to speak my mind, so I make no apologies for the movement that I head. I have done nothing wrong, Eminence.”
    “You are a foolish man, Father. I have given you every opportunity to beg forgiveness. The Church can, and should, be forgiving. But contrition works in both directions. The penitent must be willing.”
    “I do not seek your forgiveness.”
    Valendrea shook his head. “My heart aches for you and your followers, Father. Clearly, all of you are with the devil.”

FOUR
    1:05 P.M.
    Alberto Cardinal Valendrea stood silent, hoping the euphoria from earlier at the tribunal would temper his rising irritation. Amazing how quickly a bad experience could utterly ruin a good one.
    “What do you think, Alberto?” Clement XV said. “Is there time for me to view the crowd?” The pope motioned to the alcove and the open window.
    It galled Valendrea that the pope would waste time standing before an open window and waving to people in St. Peter’s Square. Vatican Security had cautioned against the gesture, but the silly old man ignored the warnings. The press wrote about it all the time, comparing the German to John XXIII. And, in truth, there were similarities. Both ascended the papal throne near the age of eighty. Both were deemed caretaker popes. Both surprised everyone.
    Valendrea hated the way Vatican observers also analogized the pope’s open window with
his animated spirit, his unassuming openness, his charismatic warmth.
The papacy was not about popularity. It was about consistency, and he resented how easily Clement had dispensed with so many time-honored customs. No longer did aides genuflect in the pope’s presence. Few kissed the papal ring. And rarely did Clement speak in the first person plural, as popes had done for centuries.
This is the twenty-first century,
Clement liked to say, while decreeing an end to another long-standing custom.
    Valendrea remembered, not all that long ago, when popes would never stand in an open window. Security concerns aside, limited exposure bred an aura, it encouraged an air of mystery, and nothing promulgated faith and obedience more than a sense of wonder.
    He’d served popes for nearly four decades, rising in the Curia quickly, earning his cardinal’s hat before fifty, one of the youngest in modern times. He now held the second most powerful position in the Catholic Church—the secretary of state—a job that interjected him into every aspect of the Holy See. But he wanted more. He wanted the most powerful position. The one where no one challenged his decisions. Where he spoke infallibly and without question.
    He wanted to be pope.
    “It is such a lovely day,” the pope was saying. “The rain seems gone. The air is like back home, in the