Behind the Walls III

THE MIGHTIEST EGYPTIAN obelisk in the world stands in St. Peter’s Square. Until a few short years ago, a riddle surrounded the great needle. This riddle has now been solved by admirable scholarly deduction.

The Emperor Caligula, whose reign ended in A.D. 41, had had the obelisk placed in the center of an arena where gladiators fought and charioteers raced, and at the base of the obelisk he had had engraved in Latin a dedication to his mother, Agrippina. In the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus V had the obelisk, which weighs 320 tons, lugged from the site of the ancient arena to its present position in St. Peter’s Square. But where was the obelisk before it was in the arena? Where did it originally come from?

Since the elongated monument bears no Egyptian hieroglyphics, nobody was able to figure out its early history— until Professor Filippo Magi, an archeologist, deciphered an inscription that wasn’t there and unlocked a mystery which was centuries old.

One morning, while gazing at the Latin inscription, Professor Magi began to wonder why it had been carved on an indented rectangle and not directly on the surface of the obelisk. In the slanting rays of the morning sun, he noticed that scattered among the Latin words were innumerable little holes, each about a quarter of an inch deep. Examining the tiny holes more closely, the professor had a hunch. Could these holes be really only “bottoms” of holes that were once deeper? Could they be what remained of holes originally drilled an inch into the granite—holes in which the teeth of bronze letters of a previous inscription had been imbedded and fixed with hot lead? Perhaps, Professor Magi theorized, when Caligula received the giant stone from Egypt, he had ordered the letters removed to make room for his own inscription.

The problem now facing the archeologist was whether he could reconstruct the original bronze letters by calculating from the positions of the holes. Because many of the letters seemed to have been attached by three teeth instead of two, Professor Magi felt he stood a good chance of identifying their shape. He could then, he decided, use guess work—and the principles of cryptography—to find out what the other letters were.

Professor Magi had scores of fake plastic letters made to size. He juggled them around, and around. Then, finally, they fell into order, and the obelisk’s original inscription could be read. It revealed that the obelisk had been put up in Heliopolis by Caius Cornelius Gallus, a Roman prefect to Egypt who erected many such monuments to his own glory before he fell into disfavor and died by his own hand in 27 B.C.

The story of Professor Magi’s archeological detective work is one incident in the history of the obelisk. Another took place in 1586, when the obelisk was being installed in St. Peter’s Square. Thousands of workers and hundreds of horses were struggling with beams, ropes, and scaffolding to lift the unwieldy seventy-five-foot monument skyward. So the engineers would not be distracted, the death penalty was ordered for any spectator who even so much as uttered a word. But friction was beginning to burn the ropes, and it appeared the monolith would fall to the ground. A sailor who was watching knew what to do. Should he risk his life by disobeying the order of silence?

“Throw water on the ropes!” he yelled at last.

The suggestion was followed, and the workers completed the job without mishap. Instead of being executed, the sailor earned a papal reward, the right to supply St. Peter’s Church with palms on Palm Sunday. His heirs still have the concession today.

The giant obelisk, which is one of Rome’s landmarks, is not really in Rome, or in Italy. It stands just over the Italian border, about ten yards away from Rome, which entirely surrounds the State of Vatican City. Very little is known by the outside world about this tiny country, which, although it is an artificial state, is still a sovereign one.

The State of Vatican City, the most singular community in the world, doesn’t even have as many citizens as the United States Congress has members. Nor is there much prospect that Vatican City will substantially increase its population, because most of its citizens (who are clergy) do not marry. This partially explains why the death rate is forty times higher than the birth rate. There are fewer than 530 citizens within Vatican City, and altogether about nine hundred people five within its diamond-shaped seventeensquare- mile confines.

Unlike other nations, the State of Vatican City has no significant industry, no agriculture, and no natural resources, yet it ranks among the richest countries of the world. Millions of people cross its borders every year without a visa or any red tape, but Vatican City is the best guarded and most effectively sheltered country anywhere. The tourists who visit it never find overnight lodging, for the country doesn’t have a hotel. Neither does it have a single restaurant, movie house, or legitimate theater.

Getting around this minuscule territory is difficult, especially for a stranger, because all but one of the thirty streets and squares are without street signs. There are no traffic lights, but there hasn’t been an auto accident in over forty-five years. Vatican City has no streetcars or buses. Not only does the country lack hotels, restaurants, theaters, street signs, traffic lights, and public transportation, it also has no barber shop, no laundry, no dry cleaner, and not a single newsstand. Nor does it have any kind of hospital, a garbage collection crew, or a school for children.

The absence of these features is amazing, but Vatican City has other unique qualities, which may seem even more amazing.

Vatican City, a country that is managed by men of Italian origin, has a national anthem that was written by a Frenchman (Charles Gounod). The country’s official language is Latin, usually considered dead. The head of state is not only the country’s chief executive, he is also its legislature and judiciary, all in one, but he is neither a dictator nor a despot. The Lilliputian country has its own postage stamps and issues its own coins, yet it uses Italian money as its legal tender and depends on Italy to transport its air mail. (Local mail delivery is not made easier by the absence of any street addresses in Vatican City, but this doesn’t faze the postman, who knows where everybody lives.) Vatican coins, which are the same size as the equivalent Italian coins, have the Pope’s head engraved on them and usually bear a motto. “This is the root of all evil” is the translation of one such motto; “It is better to give than to receive,” the translation of another.

The Vatican flag, which consists of two equal vertical stripes of yellow and white with the papal tiara above two crossed keys on the white stripe, would be recognized by few people if they saw it. Vatican license plates bear the letters S.C.V. (for Stato Citta Vaticano) in either red or black on a white background; the numbers run from 1 to 142. The Pope has ten private cars, and these are parked in the Apostolic Stable, which was once used for papal horses. All told, there are a half dozen gasoline pumps in the Vatican, all of them carrying the same brand of gas—Esso. So far as is known, the Vatican does not plan to let Madison Avenue exploit the fact that the Pope has a tiger in his tank.

Although the country has its own railroad, there is no regular train schedule. The double-track spur enters the country through a metal gate in the Vatican wall; freight trains with supplies for the country come in fairly often, but not regularly. Mussolini put up the stone terminal building as a gift, and when the railroad was inaugurated, one of the engineers in charge of the works, offering an apology to Pius XI because the tracks had not yet been properly connected with the Italian network, assured him that that would be done shortly.

“It seems,” remarked the pontiff, smiling, “that you are in a hurry to get rid of me.”

In actuality passenger trains rarely depart from the station. The last one left the Vatican in October 1962, carrying Pope John and some members of his staff to Loreto and Assisi to offer prayers for the Ecumenical Council.

Many of the citizens of Vatican City, none of whom is subject to Italian income taxes (citizens do pay the Vatican an annual tax, but it’s only 300 lire—48 cents), live in Italy rather than on Vatican ground. This is their preference. Vatican gates close at 11:30 P.M. A resident who wants to go, say, to the opera, must get special permission and must then arrange to get back inside the country after the gates close. An alien who accepts a dinner invitation to a Vatican home must leave the country before the frontier shuts down.

Since there is no privately owned real estate in Vatican City, the people who live there, not all of whom are citizens, have their quarters assigned to them. Citizens are not charged for electricity or telephone service, and rents are very low, usually about 4 percent of an individual’s income. Thus a monsignor with a salary of $300 a month will usually pay about $12 a month for his assigned apartment.

Economic pressures and other problems of an industrialized society do not exist in Vatican City, even though incomes are low. Some cardinals receive as much as $800 a month; the commanding officer of the Swiss Guards gets about $340; and the editor of the unofficial Vatican daily paper also gets about $340.

A visitor once asked Pope John, “Holy Father, how many people actually work in the Vatican?”

“Oh, about half of them!” the Pope jestingly replied.

That would be about fifteen hundred people, for, altogether, about three thousand have jobs inside the Vatican.

Although most prices within the Vatican walls on items of food are concomitant with those of the neighboring country, and geared to Rome’s accelerated cost of living, general expenses are much lower. Vatican housekeepers, at least half of whom are males, do most of their grocery shopping on the grounds—but it’s necessary to go into Rome for such things as clothing, electrical appliances, and other durable goods. Sources in Rome supply the Vatican with its water and its electric power, while the Vatican’s so-called sanitation system empties into the Roman sewers. Without the help and good will of Italy, and especially of Rome, the non-self-sufficient Vatican would be unable to function efficiently.

The State of Vatican City doesn’t have a residential sector, as such. The Pope and members of his official family live in the Apostolic Palace, a conglomeration of buildings built, for the most part, during the Renaissance. With some 990 flights of stairs and more than 1,400 rooms (overlooking twenty courtyards), the palace of the Vatican is perhaps the world’s largest, surpassed or matched only by the palace of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.

The Pope’s nineteen-room apartment on the top floor faces St. Peter’s Square. His private office, with three great recessed windows overlooking the square, is commodious and impressive. Draped in gold damask, the windows are seldom covered by curtains, for, whenever the sunlight beats in, the white slats on the inside shutters are closed. The papal work chamber measures sixty by forty feet. The floor is carpeted, and the walls are panelled in blond wood. There are tables and satin-covered chairs spaced around the room, and books fill every inch of space in the two six-foot-high, glass-enclosed cabinets.

About five feet away from the door is the Pope’s desk, a table with a single center drawer. On the right side of the desk, the Pope keeps an ornate desk clock, a high-necked desk lamp with carved statuettes at the base, a roll- blotter, and several reference books, among which are the current Pontifical Annual and an indexed Bible. Facing the papal desk are two high-backed chairs that match the chair on which the Pope sits. Pope Paul has an electric typewriter, which he uses with consummate skill. He likes to do his own typing at night, when things are quiet. When he wants to make an appearance from his office, usually on Sundays for a noonday blessing, he invariably goes to the middle window.

On the lower floors are the apartments of the Cardinal Secretary of State and the Master of Pontifical Ceremonies. The palace also houses, in one of its extensions, the Vatican Museum, which contains what many experts believe to be the world’s finest collection of ancient and classical art. The museum has the most important single art spectacle anywhere—the Sistine Chapel, in which the enormous “Last Judgment” of Michelangelo covers the entire wall behind the altar and flows onto the ceilings and upper walls, done in fresco.

Alongside the Apostolic Palace, members of the Swiss Guards have their own barracks and apartments. Vatican City has three comparatively new apartment buildings, erected to partially correct a housing shortage, which still exists. There are three cemeteries in the Vatican, but these are rarely used today, for Vatican City also has a shortage of burial places (except in the vaults of St. Peter, which are now reserved for popes).

A walk through the fenced-in Vatican Gardens, which are manicured the year around by a staff of twenty, is an unforgettable experience. There are fruit trees, cauliflower patches, plants rooted in oversized ceramic jars, and fountains of all shapes. To ensure an adequate water supply, Pius XI had 9,300 irrigators installed. Fifty-five miles of pipe lines were laid, and two reservoirs built. Each reservoir holds 1.5 million gallons of water, which comes directly from Lake Bracciano, outside Rome.

At the Pope’s request, the irrigation system was equipped with some rather special devices—trick devices squirted great jets of water at the unwary visitor. When in a playful mood the Pope loved to drench new cardinals whom he inveigled to walk with him through the gardens. The jets are no longer working, but they can be seen if you know where to look.

The Vatican Gardens were one of Pius’ pet projects, and he frequently let the children of Vatican employees play in them. One day, noticing a school of flashy red fish swimming in one of the small ponds, he said to the youngsters who were standing nearby, “So many cardinals— and no pope!”

The next day two boys and a girl, giggling, went to the pond and emptied the contents of a small pail into it. Later, when Pius went out for his stroll in the garden, he saw one extra fish in the pond. The fish was all white, like a pope.

Not far from the gardens is the so-called business district of Vatican City. Located to the right of St. Peter’s Square, it can be reached by entering through the Santa Anna Gate, which is supervised by the Swiss Guards. Each visitor to the business district must state the nature of his business to the guardsman on duty before he is allowed to proceed. The roadway from the Santa Anna Gate leads past the tiny parish church to the grocery store, the post office, the car pool and garage, the press office, and the offices of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s daily newspaper.

As an independent state, Vatican City has certain prerogatives with respect to Italy. For instance, in time of war Vatican citizens and personnel are given access across Italian territory. The Vatican is exempt from customs regulations, a privilege that has sometimes been abused. After the end of World War II, visitors to Vatican City began picking up cartons of American cigarettes there, taking them into Italy, where American cigarettes were hard to find, and selling them for double what they paid. As much as this rankled officials of the Italian government (which has a state monopoly on the sale of tobacco), nothing could be done. Or can be done, for the practice continues even to this day—in spite of the fact that the Vatican now rations tobacco and other items, like liquor, which sell at higher prices in Rome.

Maintaining law and order is no problem for the Vatican, which has almost no crime. No instance of a holdup on Vatican ground has ever been recorded. Some years ago, however, there was one case of housebreaking. Only two murder attempts have ever been recorded. In one case a Swiss Guardsman, in a moment of temper, wounded his commanding officer, not too seriously; in the other a demented woman shot down a priest in St. Peter’s.

The Vatican prison was closed not long ago because of lack of use; it stood vacant for a while; then it was converted into a warehouse. Few inmates served any time at all in the prison. One was a clergyman, Monsignor E. P. Cippico, who had been involved and convicted of the illegal money traffic described in Chapter II. Another inmate, a man caught stealing in St. Peter’s (the crime occurred more than twenty years ago), was sentenced to six months, primarily to spare him what would have been a heavier sentence from the Italian courts. He served his full term and, according to Vatican sources, enjoyed it considerably because he was very well treated, and also, “because the window to his cell overlooked the beautiful scenery of the Vatican Gardens and allowed him to breathe the gardens’ balmy air.”

Most of the policemen who work in the Vatican are laymen, as are the firemen, lawyers, stenographers, sales personnel, carpenters, bakers, gardeners, bricklayers, painters, mechanics, and other employees who keep the Vatican machinery functioning. To supplement this lay staff, a number of small religious societies provide services of various types. For instance, the Vatican telephone system and local mail deliveries are handled by the friars of the Little Work of Divine Providence. A group of nuns, affectionately known as the Sisters of Tapestry, specializes in the mending and restoration of the thousands of precious tapestries that adorn the walls of the Apostolic Palace. The Do Good Brothers operate the Vatican pharmacy, and on a nearby island in the Tiber, administer a hospital, where during the Nazi occupation of Rome they earned a reputation for hiding American and British pilots shot down in combat, refugee Jews, and other enemies of Hitler.

Another religious group, the Sons of St. John Bosco, provides the Vatican with typesetters and linotype operators. Charged with printing secret and confidential Vatican documents, the members of this group also run the Vatican Polyglot Printing Plant, which, as its name implies, issues publications in a variety of languages. A large variety, for the Polyglot Printing Plant works with 120 different alphabets and publishes documents in hieroglyphics, Chinese ideographs, Braille, Glagolitic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Coptic.

Perhaps the most unusual job in the Vatican—a job that very few people ever hear of—is performed in a high- ceilinged room in the Apostolic Palace. The room is lined with shelves and drawers containing ashes, slivers of bones, and other remains of early saints and martyrs. Under an electric lamp in one corner of this strange chamber, the world’s most macabre library, sits a Vatican officer surrounded with tiny boxes and envelopes addressed to all parts of the globe. These are for the purpose of conveying saintly relics. According to canon law, a relic must be enclosed in every altar of every church. Because churches are inaugurated each week, and an authentic relic is required for each new altar, the librarian is constantly busy filling envelopes with pinches of dust. The envelopes are sent out as registered letters.

The visitor to the Vatican is not likely to see the relic mailer at work, but no matter where he goes inside the narrow plot of land, he is likely to come across someone busily doing an unexpectedly ordinary job. The Pope’s shoemaker, for example. Since 1939, the task of making papal shoes has belonged to Telesforo Carboni, who habitually refers to Paul VI as “an eight and a half narrow” and the late Pope John as “a wide ten.”

Like many other shoemakers, Carboni is quite a raconteur, particularly on the matter of footwear. Once Carboni said to me, “I remember the time Pope John, who had a big foot, which could take even a ten and a half, came to me and said, ‘Signor Carboni, you must make me a pair of shoes that are nice and big and don’t cramp my feet.’

“A man with cramped feet, you know, will usually have cramped ideas in his head, and so His Holiness wanted a pair of shoes that wouldn’t cramp him in his work. Do you follow?

“The Pope didn’t have corns on his feet, but he did have a high instep, and the top of a shoe, if it was a bad fit, could cut his foot when he walked. He showed me the most comfortable pair of shoes he ever had, made by his nephew, a shoemaker in Bergamo, and they were dyed purple. I was horrified at the color. Who ever heard of a pope wearing purple shoes?

“‘Holy Father,’ I said, ‘you can’t wear purple shoes. It’s not the pope’s color.’

“Pope John thought for a bit, then he said, ‘But, Signor Carboni, I don’t want to hurt my nephew’s feelings. When I write him, I must tell him I am wearing the shoes he made for me.’

” ‘Ci penso io,’ I said. ‘We will color the shoes red.’

” ‘Benissimo!’ exclaimed His Holiness. ‘You have solved my problem. You are a saint. You have made the first miracle of my reign!’ ”