Come All Ye Faithful

Of course, I did perform Mass every Sunday, and people did come out. But it wasn’t like a Mass on Earth. Oh, we had a choir—but the people who had joined it all made a point of letting each other know that they weren’t religious; they simply liked to sing. And, yes, there were some bodies warming the pews, but they seemed just to be looking for something to do; leisure-time activities were mighty scarce on Mars.

Perhaps that’s why there were so few troubled consciences: there was nothing to get into mischief with. Certainly, no one had yet come for confession. And when we had communion, people always took the wine—of which there wasn’t much available elsewhere—but I usually had a bunch of wafers left at the end.

Ah, well. I would do a bang-up job for Boothby and Jody on the wedding—so good that maybe they’d let me perform a baptism later.

“Father Bailey?” said a voice.

I turned around. Someone else needing me for Something, and on a Thursday? Well, well, well…

“Yes?” I said, looking at the young woman.

“I’m Loni Sinclair,” she said. “From the Communications Center.”

“What can I do for you, my child?”

“Nothing,” she said. “But a message came in from Earth for you—scrambled.” She held out her hand, proffering a thin white wafer. I took it, thanked her, and waited for her to depart. Then I slipped it into my computer, typed my access code, and watched in astonishment as the message played.

“Greetings, Father Bailey,” said the voice that had identified itself as Cardinal Pirandello of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. “I hope all is well with you. The Holy Father sends his special apostolic blessing.” Pirandello paused, as if perhaps reluctant to go on, then: “I know that Earth news gets little play at Bradbury Colony, so perhaps you haven’t seen the reports of the supposed miracle at Cydonia.”

My heart jumped. Pirandello was right about us mostly ignoring the mother planet: it was supposed to make living permanently on another world easier. But Cydonia—why, that was here, on Mars…

The cardinal went on: “A televangelist based in New Zealand has claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary while viewing Cydonia through a telescope. These new ground-based scopes with their adaptive optics have astonishing resolving power, I’m told—but I guess I don’t have to tell you that, after all your time at Castel Gandolfo. Anyway, ordinarily, of course, we’d give no credence to such a claim— putative miracles have a way of working themselves out, after all. But the televangelist in question is Jurgen Emat, who was at seminary fifty years ago with the Holy Father, and is watched by hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics. Emat claims that his vision has relevance to the Third Secret of Fatima. As you know, Fatima is much on the Holy Father’s mind these days, since he intends to canonize Lucia dos Santos next month. Both the postulator and the advocates diaboli feel this needs to be clarified before Leo XIV visits Portugal for this ceremony.”

I shifted in my chair, trying to absorb it all.

“It would, of course,” continued the recorded voice, “take a minimum of two years for a properly trained cardinal to travel from the Vatican to Mars. We know you have no special expertise in the area of miracles, but, as the highest-ranking Catholic official on Mars, His Holiness requests that you visit Cydonia, and prepare a report. Full details of the putative miracle follow…”

Rome didn’t commit itself easily to miracles, I knew. After all, there were charlatans who faked such things, and there was always the possibility of us getting egg on our collective faces. Also, the dogma was that all revelations required for faith were in the scriptures; there was no need for further miracles.

I looked out the shuttle’s windows. The sun—tiny and dim compared with how it appeared from Earth—was touching the western horizon. I watched it set.

The shuttle sped on, into the darkness.

* * *

“We speak today of the Third Secret of Fatima,” said Jurgen Emat, robust and red of face at almost eighty, as he looked out at his flock. I was watching a playback of his broadcast on my datapad. “The Third Secret, and the miracle I myself have observed.

“As all of those who are pure of heart know, on May 13, 1917, and again every month of that year until October, three little peasant children saw visions of our Blessed Lady. The children were Lucia dos Santos, then aged ten, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, ages eight and seven.

“Three prophecies were revealed to the children. The third was known only to a succession of Popes until 2000, when, while beatifying the two younger visionaries, who had died in childhood, John Paul II ordered the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to make that secret public, accompanied by what he called ‘an appropriate commentary.’