Mothers being raped in front of her so, watching, tied to a chair...

PROLOGUE: Commotion in front of the Cathedral

The three black devils made their way through the fog in the night towards Zagreb’s city Kaptol, part of the upper town, which is just above the main square. Zajdo, Krakarakakaus, and another one with them, without a name. In complete darkness, they followed from a distance the dim light from the top of Zagreb’s Cathedral as a target of their final goal. They fidgeted all the way. They walked twenty meters as fast as if they were going to start running and then the next twenty meters very slowly as if something scared them, so slow that it could not be noticed if they stopped or were still moving, then again twenty meters almost in a race and then again twenty yards as slow as if they were stopping, and so all the way they immersed themselves with their whole being in their gait, constantly changing the pace and speed of movement. These were the prayers of those of a pure heart that stopped them every single time and equally the sins and curses of the unpure hearts of wicked men who drove them forward. They walked along the most famous Zagreb street, Ilica until they came to the square where there was once a monument to the Croatian ban who foolishly conquered Budapest and Vienna in 1849. because the Austrians fired him in the midst of the revolutionary events of 1848. And it was these same Austrians who eventually proclaimed him as a Regent of all of Hungary, after first initially correcting their decision by bombing themselves in their backyard in Vienna, together with Ban who helped them bomb themselves upon his arrival, flooding Vienna with Croatian anti-revolutionary fury. The blackest devil, Zajdo, scolded himself:”We will not linger for a second on the site of the former monument to this historical comedy and our defeat of 1848. We turn left into this alley that leads up, to Cathedral, quickly my brethren …”

Zajdo looked like a horse standing on two legs, he was six feet tall and he was the tallest one among them, he was completely black. He had thick black hair that covered his body very thickly, he was naked only around his penis, which he stretched as constantly as he walked, masturbating every second. He had two long black horns on his head that reached another meter high, connected with two meters of his length from the head to the beginning of the horns, his long black horns perfectly matched his body size. His tongue protruded out of his mouth, so the tip of his protruding black tongue always, and in every moment touched that lower part of his terrible devil’s chin.

He wore heavy, loud clogs on his feet, and was further adorned with magical emeralds and silver jewelry, as well as all kinds of pearls, topazes, and opals, and all kinds of other precious stones and gems and Jules, which, variously ornamented, made a clattering / greasy sound at every step, which was a delight to hear anyone walk in; Like the sound of a multitude of horses’ hoofs beating the ground as they go into the battle! Like the sound of approaching cavalry with iron-shod Turkish Akindjy warriors on horseback. He wore clothes only above his clogs because his lower legs were partly bloody sores from a long journey, so he wrapped himself in a rustling fabric of a mixture of the finest satin and silk and cloth. All together he sang as he walked, with his all being! Scream, scream, scream! For the, For the!!! Pleasure!!! Ohh, my brethren, what a feast for the eyes and the ears!!! What a goropad delight, at this sight!!!

“Yeah … mmmmmm, we’re nice, real gentlemen …”

Kraka-ra-kakaus, cmon, spell it right!!!

Kraka-ra-kakaus, yeah, spell my name!!!  

Kraka-ra-kakaus!!!

Kraka-ra-kakaus!!!”

“Come on, pronounce my name correctly !!! Come on, come on, please … get serious… oh well, just come on …Pronounce it correctly a thousand times! And don’t mispronounce R instead of K! You keep repeating my name correctly and you will see what a pleasure it is to repeat my name! But pleasure is only if you know how to pronounce it correctly! Taste what I offer you! Just repeat, just repeat! “The one with that name roared.

They climbed the small alley that leads uphill from the square to the cathedral, fast or slow, they were always so physically concentrated around Zajdo in the center of their society. They came to the cathedral on the kaptol. Krakarakakaus noticed a nativity scene with little Jesus made of wood in front of the cathedral this Christmas time, a Bethlehem stable with various biblical figures, Joseph, Mary, and shepherds lined up around the figure of little baby Jesus lying in the middle of the straws completely alone. Mother Mary did not hold him in her arms but looked at him kindly from a distance of two meters together with the shepherds and Joseph, her face illumined with gentleness, caressing his gaze. Next to Jesus, there was a burning fire that illuminated the whole manger with a special bright flame of hope, someone talented tried to put everything in its place to create an ambiance of fire that burns peacefully and unobtrusively in the night, thus enticing passers-by to stop and feel peace. a mind that hypnotically provides him with an arrangement of things in the manger, the harmony of nature caused by God’s birth, the Catholic magic of the night…

“Are they wax figures or are they wooden?” Krakarakakaus stepped into the crib space and sat down next to the statue of Mary, whom he stared blankly at the rhythms of his question for a very long time. He approached the fire in the middle and began to swell his arms toward the fire, warming his frostbitten palms. Unlike the first one, he wore blue clothes all over his body, which were bright fluorescent blue that shone strikingly in the dark, almost like a walking blue light bulb. A fluorescent, magical phenomenon, with its image it fits into the project of the nativity scene. His hair protruded from that something like the jacket of the suit he was wearing and the hair was bluish or under the influence of the suit, or it seemed as if it were so. His face was like a pig’s, except that he had medium-long horns on his head, about thirty centimeters long. Unlike Zajdo who had black eye sockets, Krakarakakaus had pupils that went irretrievably up somewhere, he had “pupils all in white” so you can feel like someone else is looking at you through him. When you look at his eyes, you can’t see him through them, that it’s not him in himself anymore…

“Surely they wouldn’t leave the wax so close to the fire, and I’m not sure these figures are wooden, for the same reason” – analyzing the third nameless devil around the fire, next to St. Joseph, and Zajdo joined him in a deploying manner. Waving his arms around the fire, now fast, now slow …

“Look at this, well isn’t this is a famous Zagreb theater actress, Mrs. Lidija ?!”

The three of them, by the fire, harnessed, at the warning of the nameless, a torn look at the two silhouettes that passed on the other side of the space in front of the cathedral…

The devil without a name had human eyes, eyes of pure lust, so he was the quietest of the three and so he didn’t have a name because he didn’t have time for a name, he forgot his name because he was always, every second, concentrating on one and only one thought.

“Jooooooj, well that’s that conservative actress, who refuses naked roles in plays, I know her, yes yes … that’s why she walks around this religious kaptol place now at this time, she’s probably coming back from the evening mass, whore! Is that her son with her?!”

Zajdo looked back at the fire: “Guys, don’t forget why we came here! We have a task!”

“What we’re interested in is there, in the monastery, next to the cathedral, that’s what we came for!”

The nameless devil ignored Zajdo’s words, got up, and headed steeply toward Mrs. Lydia and her son. Walking instantly turned into a crash towards his goal, like a kamikaze, in the hundreds the space between him and Mrs. Lydia began to disappear, fall into the abyss, he breathed like a calf, and his lifeless, nameless appearance only now in such a panting state began to absorb, created energies, get the contours of the face and body image by which it was possible to describe it! Until that moment, he was just a silhouette, a ghost without a spirit, a display in the fog, an undefined character, the definition of an undefined spirit in space…

Nameless devil – he had tiny black eyes. He had a great knowledge of God. He looked like a young man in his twenties. The other two devils called him Maria, but he never responded to that name when they called him that: “Hihihihihhihihihi, I’ll knead your tits bitch, and the son will look around, hihihihhiihhiihhihihihi ….”

He punched her son in the back and knocked him to the floor. He took out his genitals. “Now I have to masturbate!!! Life at last!!!”

At that moment, when he grabbed his genitals with his hands, spines came out of his palms, like thorns, and stabbed his penis… AAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

“How did you stumble in the middle of a straight road, genius?” Mrs. Lydia picked up her son and shook the dust off him, looked back to see if anyone had seen the unusual fall, she sensed that stopping their brisk walk in front of the Cathedral might attract some gypsies who are always there begging money from the faithful, and it was already late night and it was smartest to hurry home…

And her son’s name was Dean. Dean came home later and couldn’t explain to himself why he felt so horny, he had to watch porn magazines until late at night to calm down as if someone had injected lewd energy into his body…

The nameless devil returned with cries and howls back to the manger and back to his original, permanent form. A lifeless, idealess form, without soul, that is nothing…

“You know we can’t get things in life like that?!” Zajdo muttered to himself, fatherly and calmly. “And now you will not have the energy you spent on this for our task, you have spent it!”

Krakarakakaus wanted to add something but decided to save energy after the look Zajdo gave him, focusing his mental state on preventing further ammunition, they both know that most of their energy goes to their inner conflicts anyway, so they lose regularly. Instead of addressing the nameless silhouette and potential conflict Krakarakakaus looked past the nameless silhouette, and as if speaking to a statue of St. Joseph, with the real message going to the nameless devil, said: “There is a time and a place, and a there is a way when we can get anything we want, don’t forget that Dean, so we don’t do all this for free and for nothing, don’t you understand that?”

Zajdo was looking peacefully straight into the nameless one eyes: “It was revealed to people through that diary that this Polish nun wrote that a sinner must know that he will be punished in eternity in a terrible and indescribable way with that same organ with which he did evil. That’s your punishment by God that you will bear forever and ever, nameless one, for committing adultery and rape in your lifetime, every time you will want to have a sexual delight your own palms will stab your genitals so you can’t even masturbate when the wish comes to you in passion, is that frustrating for you my friend? Imagine, having that developed, profound wish for sexual intercourse as you have, thinking bout nothing else but sex in your life and the women, and to never ever have a chance to have just a bit of pleasure of that kind again, never and ever, I feel sorry for you my friend of misery…” With one truth that Maria was still unaware of, as the youngest of the three, Zajdo killed the very essence of his being, his very core, making him turn into a sad lifeless silhouette even more. He did directly the opposite of what Krakarakakaus wanted to do to make Dean calm down and motivate him, this made Krakarakakaus angry…

“Why did you say this to him, Zajdo? For me and you, there is still a chance to enjoy, we are punished differently, but for him, it’s over forever !” Why are you doing this Zajdo? Why? A minute ago you were contemplating our task. You will make him without energy even more !”

“I said it because I’m the worst devil out of the three of us, only a maniac would do it at this moment. I said it because I don’t care for him. That was me in my lifetime and here I am again. My punishment is to rot knowing there is nobody I know that is worst than me and nobody is stronger than me, and there is nobody smarter than me, and yet, it is you, Krakarakakaus, that brought me here! And your punishment, mister Krakarakakaus, is to know that there is someone stronger than you and sooner or later I will get bored watching you. And when that happens it’s over with you pleasuring me all the time and then begins your problems…

Zajdo finally sighed deeply, looked at little Jesus in the manger, and said it was time to start doing what they came here for. He looked again at the baby Jesus in the manger, then he took the hands of the other two devils, in his hand, and with the hands joined together said: “Let us pray! They knelt down, joined hands together, raised them high in the air, and began to pray, repeating the words:”                                                        

 

“When you die, you will go to heaven, and you will enter the communion of the saints! 

Know what that means?              

Means you will never fuck again! 

There is no true joy in God, no youthful hair, no girlish breasts, no real happiness, no no…

No dance, no song, no no…

There are only shadows of souls…

Never go there, because once you go, you can never come back…

Don’t go there, don’t go, there’s no real joy there. There are only shadows of souls that were once young…

Now they are forever old, like a great shadow that guides them…

The shadow fell on them forever, and closed their eyes, so that they would never see song and joy again…

Please don’t go there, please…

There is no true joy in God, no youthful hair, no girlish breasts, no real happiness, no no…  “                                                                                      

                                                                                                

 

 

I. ZAGREB IN THE MIST

Zagreb. 1968.

“According to the prophecy of Saint Brigit evil people will prevail in the year 1980. See how close we are today to these events mister Krznar, just another twelve years and we are there! Devil’s agents act with fury! According to our information, coming from the Vatican secret services, young people will be forced to lose their virginity before marriage, such terrible pressure will be created, even through the media, that no one will be able to resist. Same as with abortion, evil will only rise, medical procedures will be turned into procedures that are life-threatening for young women, and eventually, for safety reasons, children will be killed in the abortions until their ninth month in the mother’s womb, hospitals will slaughter small babies, they will wait for the child to be born first, so they will cruelly kill them at the moment when the babies are already out of the mother’s womb in safety, they will crush their small heads with those forceps like teething! So if the child is already born but alive then this child is no longer an obstacle to the mother in any respect for life, is it? But no! That’s where the story goes in reverse! These are truly devilish deeds! We live in the wicked times, you understand Mr. Krznar, people’s exposure to negative influences is very high, many things come into your head that would not normally enter your head, it is best not to watch television that broadcasts bad influences on young people, turn off the radio which conveys savage beats in the heart that stir up a rebellious spirit. You blame yourself too much for some things, you increase the weight of your sin too much, it is enough to say to yourself, “God, have mercy, I am here, I am your child and I want to go to heaven with my father, Jesus, come to my aid!”

The Spaniard was sitting on a narrow chair, next to the dying man’s bed, in a position opposite to a small narrow window, from which his gaze shot over a great void, outside the monastery, and he constantly kept his gaze fixed in the direction of the window, never turning it in the direction of the dying man, to whom he was speaking. The window was a meter and a half away from him, and the entire monastery bedroom was only three and a half meters long and barely two meters wide, so in such a narrow space, the problem was to get out of the room, when passing the bed, and the chair had to be removed to do it. The walls were grey-white, damaged by moisture, which created, somewhere dark yellow spots, somewhere light yellow spots, everywhere on the wall, like written charters, and gave a clear smell to the room, magnifying the feeling of the claustrophobic narrowness of the room, but it could not be clearly recognized, whether the walls had lost their color due to moisture, from gray to white, or from white to gray, because everything was dotted with yellow spots. “To me, it’s like a beautiful painting of art!” The Spaniard commented, while at one point he stared at a part of the wall.

“It is an exaggeration of your guilt for what you are doing to yourself, for such things as disturbing you, it is enough to say that you have had lewd thoughts, and that is all. That is an exaggeration on your part. You are not a rapist, sir … You are imagining… You should put yourself in order, pick up the rosary, find places on the day of prayer, put God first, if God is first, everything else is in the right place, you understand, Mr. Krznar?! That’s how it should work for you in a normal order of things!” 

The Spaniard calmly and routinely recited, telling the same story for the tenth time that week, five of them just for Mr. Krznar, a 96-year-old gentleman who was dying. Krznar was a regular member of the Catholic community who, through his constant attendance at Mass and the work of the church, was able to receive this posthumous protection through connections and five interventions in one week for the same person in fear and panic of his impending death. Then the sacrament of Holy Confession was  performed,   Holy Communion was performed,  a speech of spiritual fraternal encouragement was performed, the same speech was performed once again at the personal request…

“Organized prayer of the rosary for the dying, organized this new prayer of this new rosary – this new form of devotion introduced from Poland this year – the Rosary of Divine Mercy coming to us from Krakow thanks to this promising and praised Archbishop of Krakow… Woytila … I forgot his name. You know, mister Krznar, we did everything you needed to do in one week, you may not die at all this week, you don’t look so bad, the doctors tell me that you have pre-dramatized your condition in the last couple of times. For years now, you are constantly dying, and finally, you have to die once, you are still ninety-six years old, that awaits us all once and for all, mister Krznar, that is the will of God… “

“Ra…. rap … ra …” The dying old man was gasping for air and was trying to catch his breath so that he could express his troubles again and what was bothering him in the depths of his soul. His efforts did not come to the approval of the priest Sanchez, a priest from Spain on temporary work in the city of Zagreb, which had lasted for ten years already. Sanchez was hungry and hurried to lunch: “Ohhhhh, not the rapings again, just not that!” He thought to himself as the old man rose more and more from the bed to a semi-sitting position…

“I want you to confess me, I need to let go of my soul!” Mister Krznar straightened up forward enough that he could now speak normally.

“But you have already confessed, Mr. Krznar, do you understand? You have confessed twice this week, also yesterday, you could not do anything new within ten hours, nailed to the bed here, at the age of ninety six, completely impaired in health, and I am a witness that you are a man of good will, and according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, all men of good will are saved, that is, such persons are not in the state of the mortal sin!”

“And where does it say that? Tell me this information, I must know!” retorted Krznar. 

“It is written somewhere, Mr. Krznar, surely we would not say that without reason. You do not expect me to dig into the theological books and dogmas of our science, do you?”

“I take your word for it, but you my dear Alfonso, as a priest, know that I must confess once more what weighs upon my soul momentarily in order to let it go for good!” The Spaniard nodded reluctantly, looking down at the floor as he nervously ran his fingers over the rosary.  He knew he could not turn him away,  no matter how hard it was and no matter how  futile  his  efforts,   because the situation was that Mr. Krznar might be dying, you never know, and we will all be there one day and maybe he will be like this too. Then it will be difficult for all of us. “Okay, mister, I will hear your confession, if that is what you need for your soul to be at peace, I will hear your confession again every day if needed, but I will also tell you that your soul is not in danger, you are a collected man in a state of God’s grace! ” The Spaniard signaled with his hand that the confession could begin, gently lifting her into the air above the bed and pulling her towards him, signaling with his fingers for Mr. Krznar to open up to him in spirit…

“I repentantly confess all my sins, the last time I confessed was yesterday afternoon!”

The Spaniard ran his hand briefly over the front, middle bald part of his scalp. “All right, Mr. Krznar, we can skip the opening form, you can say what’s on your mind…”

“I have imagined raping women all my life, that’s what aroused me the most, in all possible combinations, whenever I masturbated I imagined raping women.” Krznar took one deep breath and continued. “I masturbated every day all my life, and during the time when I went to church all the time, or even every day at some times, and during the time when it was not advisable to go to church here in Yugoslavia for political reasons, after the Second World War ended, when everything was still fresh!”

“I masturbated on all the women I met in my life, and every one I masturbated ended up in my fantasies where she was massively raped by groups of Chetniks, Yugoslav Partisans, Ustasha, Fascist Italians, Nazis, Cossacks, the Red Army, by every army that ever marched through this country, by everybody. Many of these poor women were raped by me in my imagination, but the vast majority were gang raped, as in war, just as these horrors took place in reality. I have always tried to imagine rape as realistically as possible, as it looks in reality, with the obligatory kidnapping of a woman, squealing and screaming and crying. The moaning and groaning of poor women, that’s what got me excited the most of all in my everyday war-rape fantasies.

“Okay, you have said enough! I understand what you are trying to tell me!” The Spaniard Sanchez made a sign that it was enough for old Krznar to confess his problem to him, although he had already confessed the same thing to him five or six times, he could not even count how many times old Mr. Krznar had confessed the same thing to him…

The old man began to coagulate his expression as if he were going to cry, but only for a moment, he was not even close to starting to cry, it was just his expression of uneasiness that Sanchez was suspending the further process of  liberation of his soul. “Do you want to take everything away from me on my deathbed? Is it possible that you will deny me further confession, indispensable for the salvation of my soul?”

“On the contrary, I’m here to help you! “

“God has chosen me as a priest and sent me into your life to give you sure guidance, to make sure you are on the right path so that you do not fall into the trap of the devil who wants to disturb you and question the salvation of your soul! And I have to inform you that in your case it is an exaggeration of what you are doing! So you give too much importance to some of your fantasies that have no basis in reality. As far as I know, you did not rape anyone and did not kill anyone, right?”

“Yes, that’s right, I’m not really, but…”

Sanchez interrupted Krznar’s speech again with a wave of his hand. “You never planned to rape anyone in real life, did you? “

“No, I didn’t, nor did I think of such a thing!”

“Well, you see, Mr. Krznar, if you haven’t raped anyone in your life and if you haven’t planned to rape anyone in your life then you have nothing to do with rape or rape planning in your life, do you, Mr. Krznar?”

“That’s right, I didn’t plan to rape anyone and I could never do that, I know myself well enough to know that I just couldn’t!” Sanchez felt that the end of this confession about rape was approaching and the moment of his departure for lunch, he could almost feel in his stomach how his stomach greeted him as a sign of welcome for quickly maneuvering long fantasy descriptions of rape that he regularly listened to at Mr. Krznar’s confessions…

“Oh, great, so we can conclude this; you have sinned lewd thoughts with your fantasies about raping various women. You have sinned only masturbation with your fantasies about rape, and you have sinned wanting married women. These are all grave sins but they are also common and characteristic of most people I meet in my craft, so to conclude, your fantasies about rape count only as of the sin of lewd thoughts and not as the sin of rape or say adultery…”

“But Jesus said that he who looks with lust at a woman has sinned adultery!”

Sanchez winced briefly and snapped. “Yes, you are right! The truth is, this sin you committed, it can also be counted as the sin of adultery, and your thoughts unclean!”   

 Krznar continued, “For if you only imagine sex with her, according to Jesus, that is the same as having it!”

Sanchez: “That’s right!”

Krznar: “Well, I imagined raping women, which by Jesus’ standards means it’s the same as raping those women!”

Sanchez: “Well, I would not say that. I do not agree with that!”

Krznar: “And how can we find out what exactly Jesus meant in this particular case, or what he was thinking?”

Sanchez: “We do not know, and we will never know until we meet the good Lord in eternity, but I am not going to insist on asking him that particular question, maybe you could?!”

Krznar: “Now you are making fun of me!”

Sanchez: “Maybe I am making fun of you for two reasons, first because I do not understand you and second because you are exhausting! If I am to be honest, I am really hungry and would like to have lunch as soon as possible. With all due respect, we have confessed enough for today, even if your sin is fornication and worse than what you thought, the good God forgave you for that a long time ago! “

At that moment, Sanchez demonstratively got up and moved away from the bed, began to put on a scarf, but not yet a coat, giving the impression that he had something to say before leaving the room. As he wandered around the room, he approached the window of the monastery, where he managed to catch a brief glimpse of the square in front of the monastery and in front of the Zagrebs Cathedral. It was a foggy Zagreb morning, the fog had not lifted since the night before. One could hardly see anything…                                             

They could not see the finger in front of their nose. only silhouettes in the distance. This Christmas in 1968. was without snow and it seemed as if the whole year would be without snow …

“The sexual revolution in Paris, we were not good this year, neither God will help us anymore, nor send snow!” A gypsy woman was shouting in front of the cathedral, trying to encourage the passers-by in front of the church to give her some money…

Sanchez looked at the nativity scenes in front of the Cathedral and noticed that they were arranged differently than he had left them yesterday, the figures were placed differently and St. Joseph did not have his hat on his head, which he had invented especially for these nativity scenes. He could not see well through the mist, but it seemed to him that there were still some people sitting in the manger…

“Where were we?” Old Krznar interrupted him again with a thoughtful look out the window. “We stopped where I was going for lunch!” The Krznar now fired hastily from his cannon; “There’s something else I have never confessed or told you!”

Sanchez: “Uffff, this must be another case of imaginary rape?!” 

Krznar: “Yes, but this case is different from all the cases mentioned so far!” 

Sanchez: “Believe it or not, I wonder what you are going to say?!” 

Krznar: “Immediately after the war there was a young Ustasha military woman from the NDH youth machine!” Sanchez thought he was good at reading people, and now he sensed something that would really sound even worse…

“And what did you do to her?” He replied. 

“I did not do anything to her, but this Ustasha girl was raped by the Yugoslav partisans at the end of the war. I knew she was raped and I masturbated every day on her and her rape event!”

Sanchez stepped away from the bed Krznar was lying on again and stared out the window.

He stared wordlessly out the window into the distance for a while, deliberately allowing silence to fill the room with its omnipotent presence. He willingly allowed the unease to enter in the awkward relationship between himself and his dying protégé.                                                               

Now Krznar was silent, he bowed his head, surrendered to shame, but he bowed his head down a little and at that moment he no longer pressed with questions and his demands. The silence suddenly crystallized so abruptly in all four corners of the room at that moment. The end of the sounds. 

Now you could hear the ticking of the clock, but the smallest hand that indicates the seconds is constantly tapping with a slightly muffled voice that is impossible to imitate with a human mouth, because that sound is just too specific…

“I told you about this new devotion from Poland. We have prayed them before in the past few days, but I do not know to what extent the insights I tried to impart to you about these supposed apparitions of a certain sister from a Polish convent have captured your mind. I doubt if you have been listening to me all these days, for I have spoken to you quickly, Slaven. Your name is Slaven, is it not, Mr. Krznar?

“This devotion has been banned until this year. I mean, forbidden by the Church!” “Yes, I understand what you are saying, mister, I always forget your name priest although I call you by name frequently?” Krznar asked.

“Alfonso! Alfonso Sanchez!” Sanchez retorted.

“And now this year in Krakow they have lifted the ban on these proclamations of Heaven to this nun in the Polish convent, Faustina Kowalska, it was pronounced by this new Archbishop in Krakow – Wojtyla. 

“Yes, I see!” Krznar trailed off his thoughts…

“And what I want to say to you is that in your case, I mean your conscience, which you cannot calm, perhaps the wisest thing is to try to pray the rosary properly and to put a picture of this rosary on your chest while you are lying on the bed or on the wall right next to you. I am not your judge, Mr. Krznar, if you wish, I will pray with you!”

“Yes, of course, thank you, young Mr. Alfonso!”

“Because you see, Mr. Krznar, it is Jesus himself, through St. Faustina, who is promising to every soul who prays that rosary at least once in their lifetime to give some grace of God at the end of their life, in the most important moment of all and that is our death. Jesus also promised that those souls who worship the image of Divine Mercy will not be lost! This is probably because these souls are called to the greatest attribute of God, and that is God’s Mercy! You understand, Mr. Krznar, this is very important and great information in our world, in our church. and in our lives! Do you know that one should pray a lot every day for the dying?!”

Alfonso began to rummage through his belongings, and as he took the draft of the rosary out of his pocket, he read the documents delivered to the Kaptol in Zagreb, directly from Krakow, relating to the rosary, and said: “This is not just about you, it’s about me also, see what Jesus revealed in the diary made by sister Faustina, so he gave him a semi-yellow paper, on which it was written:

 

“Souls, who become apostles and spreaders of my mercy, I will protect all their lives as a mother protects her newborn, and at the time of their death, I will not be a Judge for them but a Savior. At the hour of death, the soul has nothing to defend itself with but my mercy. Blessed is that soul, who all her life has endeavored to be under the protection of my mercy, for such a soul will not receive my justice. ” I promise that the soul who worships this image will not be lost. Already in this world, I promise her victory over her enemies, especially at the hour of death. “

 

Sanchez took his rosary, dissolved a huge rosary with large grains, a long rosary from Spain, from the place called Garabandal, it fell over his whole legs in length, almost to the floor…      

“This is how the rosary of Divine Mercy is prayed, Mr. Krznar!” At those first words, all the claustrophobia, the narrow space of the room, the smell of damp walls, and all the sources of condemning emotions, in the old heart of Slaven Krznar, were broken. Soon, the destruction created in the room, with the speed of lightning, spread further, through the narrow corridors of the monastery, as if it were traveling, for the Spaniard prayed loudly, and his voice traveled through the narrow corridors of the monastery, every ear heard it, and every heart felt it, throughout the monastery.

 

On the first three grains on the Rosary, Sanchez prayed:                                                                       

 

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom comes, Thy will be done, both in heaven and on earth. Our daily bread Give us today,and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,save us from evil. Amen.

 

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord be with you. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,tortured under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died and buried;descended over hell; on the third day he rose from the dead;ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,  the Holy Catholic Church communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, eternal life. Amen.”

 

On the large grains of the rosary Sanchez prayed:

 

Eternal Father, I present to you the body and blood, the soul and the divinity of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as satisfaction for the sins of us and the whole world.

On the small grains of the rosary Sanchez prayed:

Through his bitter torment, be merciful to us and to the whole world.Completion of the Rosary:Holy God, holy strong God, holy immortal God, have mercy on us and the whole world!

 

Closing prayer:

 

“O Blood and Water that flowed from the Heart of Jesus as a source of mercy for us, I trust in you! Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for us ! Jesus, I trust in you! (thrice) Have mercy on us and on the whole world, Lord!”

 

After the rosary, Sanchez made strong appeals to Divine Mercy:

 

“Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Christ, hear us! Christ, hear us! Heavenly Father, God, have mercy on us! Son, Redeemer of the world, God, have mercy on us! Holy Spirit, God, have mercy on us! Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us!”

 

The narrow damp corridors of the old monastery echoed with Sanchez’s invocations, of Divine Mercy, and his invocations, to Divine Mercy, were heard by all persons in the entire monastery.

                                                                       

                                                                     

                                             2.

 

Slaven Krznar was a strong man, almost two meters tall and anatomically pronounced throughout his body. He had strong forearms and a very pronounced jaw, he seemed rabid. It was the ideal proportions for a boxer or some other activity where mindfulness in composition with raw strength is required. Even at the age of ninety six, he gave the impression of a strong person, he simply had a face that showed that he was not to be played with, a wicked face. According to his mother, he was originally from a conservative environment, Imotski, where he lived from an early age only with his mother because his father was not known. After his mother’s death, he moved to Zagreb with his half-sister who was ordained a nun in the convent where he is now. Through connections along this line, he secured his care in the last years of his life as a person of special merit for the renovation of the monastery because he gave monetary donations…

“I lost my hair early, I’ve always been bald, my whole life. Despite that I never cut my hair completely, I always left the rest of my hair on my head like this, in my opinion, I’ve always been ugly, with my hair and without my hair, and I never counted on getting married so I didn’t even care about the look, and you Sanchez, have you ever tried to trim your bald head or have you always walked around like this with that haircut, same like mine? Do you know when a man has a problem he is always wondering what the other person with the same problem is doing? How old are you at all, you seem young to me ?! I was bald and young, just like you are! So, tell me,  have you always wanted to be a priest or did a bald head bring you here? “

Immediately after the prayer ended Krznar tried to turn the story further into an additional channel so that there would be no unpleasant silence at the moment when Sanchez is leaving the room.

“You’re wrong, mister, I’m not a young person. It’s the other way around. I look young despite being a fifty eight year old man. People with poor insight sometimes give me as little as thirty, but in fact, most place me where I belong by age. Okay, maybe I’m cheating on some because I’m skinny and I’m that fragile type of man.” Sanchez was still sitting relaxed next to the bed on which Krznar was lying, which was a sign that he would slowly tell him something else.” As for your other questions, I can honestly tell you that there was a woman who loved me the way I am and it was my intention to get married, I’ve only been a priest for the last thirteen years, so count how my life went. And why we didn’t end up married I have no intention of telling you, it’s my private matter that I don’t share with people I know little about! “

“Ah, after all the awful things I’ve confided to you about myself you’ll be shy with me on this?!” Krznar laughed cynically with a sub-question. “Well, I’m ideal to be someone who took your secret to the grave. Say, say!!!” He laughed at the Spaniard, who now began to get up and put on his coat. 

“Yes, but by profession, as a Catholic priest, I am obliged to take everything you told me to the grave with me while you are constantly present at my workplace, the risk is too great, I will not tell you anything. Or do you want me to tell you in Spanish which you don’t understand, but maybe you can tell by my facial expressions what I said? So you have something to break your head with. I think you’re a little bored here all day in the room, don’t you? Here, if you can guess what it is, the next time we see each other I’ll admit, if you really guess, is that ok?”

“Challenge accepted, just say, to make it my last thing realized before I die!” Krznar had an expression on his face which showed that the priest’s riddle had him forgotten for the moment the difficult topics that would keep the room filled long after the Spaniard had left the room. Only when the Spaniard got up from his sitting position could one see how small he was, not so short as he was a narrow man. Already on his departure, he wanted to close the door and give up the riddle, but still putting his hat on his head he said: “Ella era hermosa para mí, la miré con tal asombro que él no pudo levantarse.”

 

 

II. COUNCIL OF INNOCENCE                                                                                                                                             

On several occasions, the crowd gathered in Ban Jelačić Square, Zagreb’s main square, and sang in rapture Croatian national songs, which were also Croatian Catholic songs. Collected, it reached great numbers, with great speed, and swarmed into a great mass, and then, with equal speed, disintegrated, like their song, which, from clear intonations, turned into a vague clamor, and then the noise of the crowd would become only a voice, in the distance, which turns into silence. They waved different flags; Most of them waved Croatian, red white blue flags, in the Yugoslav version, which had a big red star in the middle of the flag, a communist symbol, instead of the Croatian coat of arms, while the braver ones waved the normal, old Croatian flags, which had a red and white checkerboard, in the middle of the flag, the old Croatian coat of arms. Some waved Vatican flags, white and yellow in color. One trickster waved a flag with three lion heads – the historical coat of arms of Dalmatia, and explained to an old grandmother: “Dalmatians, in World War II, were all in the Yugoslav partisans, no one will see this as a Croatian provocation, against communist Yugoslavia.”                                                                                                                                                                The vast majority of those gathered were just ordinary, everyday passers-by, in the main square of Zagreb, who would have passed here anyway, at that time, even if it hadn’t been for this special occasion. The vast majority of passers-by did not even know what people were gathering around. They would blend into the crowd, and spin a little in the crowd, until it became clear to them. Then they mostly hurriedly continued with their work. Some just laughed at everything. Some understood it nationally, not religiously. Some stopped and sang for a while, together, with the loudest, and then they too continued on their way. A mass of several dozen people would spontaneously turn into a mass of several hundred people, and then it would turn into a large mass of several thousand people, which would soon disintegrate again into a smaller mass of several hundred people, after which it would again be reduced to a very small number, from a few dozen of the bravest. The crowd would mostly disperse, upon the arrival of larger groups of members of the Yugoslav militia, to the square, where nothing was clear to ordinary militiamen, except for the occasional well-informed inspector. Despite the reports, they did not manage to understand the gathering, nor to grasp it by the head and tail, in the sense of conducting informational interrogations, because they did not know whom to interrogate, and exactly what. Because every time, when the crowd broke up, one group, of less than a hundred of the bravest, would start from the square up the hill, towards the chapter house and the office of the Zagreb archdiocese, which was a small building in the courtyard of the archdiocese, between the monastery and the cathedral. They would hang around there for a while, going in and out, from the yard of the archdiocese, and after that, they would go back again, to the square, after the cordons of the Yugoslav militia turned into Ilica street because it seemed to them that a large crowd, from the square, was going to that street, so the militia would follow it into Ilica, and in fact, this, the largest crowd, was pouring into Ilica because it dispersed like that, spontaneously dragging the militia with them, from the square, which again remained empty, after which the mob, from the courtyard of the archdiocese, again descended back to the square, and with the song began a new birth of the masses of people. A famous Croatian Catholic song echoed through the square:

 

“Hail, Maiden, full of all graces,

the radiance of the eternal sun envelops you.

Around your forehead is a starry crown,

under your feet the dragon of hell is moaning.

Heavenly Maiden, queen of the Croats,

our Mother, our dawn of gold,

receive the gift with hearts devoted to you,

receive the ardor of our pure love.

You are blessed because you are all clean, the

snake’s breath does not infect your chest!

the star of happiness shines for us too, the

darkness of the night of sin dispels evil!

Heavenly Maiden, queen of the Croats,

our Mother, our dawn of gold,

receive the gift with loyal hearts,

receive the ardor of our pure love…”

 

One of the remaining communist militiamen returned back to the square, and in a second found himself right among the singers. A young maiden, with elven blonde hair and sky-blue eyes, noticed him. She came up to him, looked at him gently with her blue eyes, and lightly placed her hand on his shoulder, as a sign of a hug. For such an act of illegally touching a militiaman, in communist Yugoslavia, she risked being beaten with a baton, on the spot, until she was unrecognizable, and then ending up in long-term imprisonment, on Goli otok, for attacking the militia. The policeman, at about a hundredth, met her look in his eyes, and without any sign of surprise, in his being, he removed her hand from his shoulder with his truncheon, and, impeccably maintaining his professionalism, calmly continued on. 

“Serbs are cold!” whispered her cousin, nervously, as she dragged her by the sleeve, in a second, to the other side, deeper into the crowd, which was again increasing in number, instinctively, so that the militiaman would not return, and added: Don’t try to explain anything, they will understand this as a provocation”, still referring more to the Serbs than to the militia, because the Serbs made up a large percentage of the communist militia, even in Zagreb, where they were planned, by the Croatian and Yugoslav communists, since they, as foreigners, were more suitable for the suppression of Croatia, and who, as an Orthodox nation, could interpret everything Catholic that was happening in a nationalist way, as a political provocation, in terms of the political aspiration of Croatian nationalists, to separate from Yugoslavia. 

Another group of people, dressed in black, was slowly approaching the square from the direction of Ilica. It was mostly about members of the Zagreb clergy, but they were also followed by some ordinary people, dressed in civilian clothes, apparently in connection with them. There were several dozen of them, among them there were also nuns, as well as priests and monks, in all forms of clothing, which existed in the arsenal of the Zagreb archdiocese. They seemed like a procession, descending towards some kind of goal. They moved extremely slowly, which could only be related to the older age of many of the people in that group. 

“Children of God are coming!” A Zagreb maiden exclaimed, and the attention of the central group, in the Zagreb square, was attracted, which then, in its entirety, turned towards another group of people, in black clothes, who were coming down to the square like a procession, and headed towards them at high speed. This was the group that they had been waiting for the whole time to appear, somewhere in the area around the Zagreb Cathedral. Soon, that group, consisting of several dozen Zagreb clerics, was surrounded by hundreds of people from Zagreb, who waved flags around them and started new religious songs, the loudest so far. Several ladies had ready wooden brushes, which were loaded with pink, white, and red rose petals, and all kinds of other flowers, and they started to take out the flower petals and throw them on the black procession. Red, pink and white petals!

“Blessed be the people of God!” “May your every step be blessed, until the archdiocese!” One lady repeated in rapture while throwing white lattices, in a black procession, in which her old husband soon joined her, after which they hugged each other, out of joy, and soon a new song began, that is, the narrative “Kyrie Eleison”, in which everyone got involved at the same time, soul and body, so that the whole procession resounded with that song, showered with thousands of petals. The procession is suddenly surrounded by new people, with musical instruments, who were already waiting for that song:

 

“Lord, have mercy!

Lord, have mercy!

Christ, have mercy!

Christ, have mercy!

Lord, have mercy!

Lord, have mercy!

 

Kyrie eleison!

Kyrie eleison!

Christa Ellison!

Christa Ellison!

Kyrie eleison!

Kyrie eleison!”

 

“Jakubec, aaaaaaaa…!!! That’s him!” Dozens of virgins started to surround the young, and handsome, priest Jakubec, who, at the age of twenty-five, became a phenomenon in Zagreb, after moving to this city, where he came from Croatian Gradisće, in Austria. He was immediately noticed, of the female gender, as half-Croat and half-Austrian, he looked different from the local Croats, who were generally of a rougher build. Jakubec had a different face, with gentle contours, and a different facial profile. It was obvious that he was a foreigner. The girls loved his clumsy expressions, in Croatian, which he was not yet well versed in, and he always had to further explain what he meant in German, using some mixture of the two languages. He came across as funny, even when he didn’t want to be. The love that women felt for him was a special kind of love, free from the painful trappings of reality. All of them knew that he would never belong to any woman, so they had no reason to be jealous of anyone, and every virgin, from the Lower city parish, as well as the Upper city Zagreb parish, felt that Jakubec belonged to her. His appearance freed women’s hearts from the shackles of reality. When people love, they are jealous, but not with people like Petar Jakubec. Women fell in love with him and felt liberated by that infatuation. His appearance nourished the soul. Falling in love with his appearance led young people to desire to surrender to a life of holiness. The square was the border of two parishes. Many people from the Lower Town came to Mass in the Upper Town, just because of him. Several virgins embraced him, and walked with him in arms, for some time. Marina hugged him tightly: “Brother, you are the proof of Jesus’ words, that in heaven there are neither women nor marriages, but in heaven, we will all be like brothers and sisters, I love you!” For Jakubec, the journey through the procession was coming to an end, when he felt that one of the priests was pulling him by the sleeve, signaling his separation from the procession. He separated energetically, from the embrace, saying: “Thank you sister, I will pray the rosary for you, meine schwester, that you may reach das Reich Gottes, the Kingdom of God!” While he was leaving, dozens of virgins showered him with rose petals, and while singing, shouted: 

 

Jakubec, we love you!!!

Jakubec, we love you!!!

Jakubec, we love you!!!

Jakubec, we love you!!!

 

Arriving at the archbishop’s office, which was a small building, wedged between the monastery and the main Zagreb cathedral, a group of five members, of the Zagreb clergy, separated from the mysterious procession, greeting the whole crowd, showered with rose petals. The group, which separated, held the old priest Haramina, short in stature, who could hardly walk. One of the priests, who remained standing in the crowd, announced himself at that moment, and drawing attention to himself, took control of the entire group, directing them, further, towards another nearby chapel. “All of you, join us in prayer, in the nearby chapel, on the upper town, our work here is finished, and theirs is yet to come, we can help them the best we can, by finding them in our hearts, through our prayer. Let us all together go to the nearby church, or chapel. Everybody follow me!”                                                                                                                                     

As they entered the courtyard of the monastery, a “sick man”, as they called him, ran up to them, one of the beggars, who were always asking for  money in front of the cathedral, and started asking them for some change. He had a pilot’s cap on his head and large glasses. A pilot. An actual pilot’s cap, from an old war plane, a biplane, from the first world war. Dressed only in a raincoat, under which he was naked, sometimes he used to open the raincoat, and show his naked body, or masturbate, if he didn’t get money. The militia took him away many times, according to reports from citizens, but he always returned, after which stories developed that the communist authorities deliberately let him go, to provoke people, in front of the cathedral, and the Zagreb archdiocese, as part of the regime’s pressure on the church, so most of the clergy ignored him, or gave him change to get rid of him. He had diving fins on his legs, which he flapped loudly, all around. In appearance, with those diving fins, he resembled some animal. Like some kind of duck. A quacking duck. 

“Don’t give him anything!” Haramina mouthed. “Did you hear me? Don’t give him money! Let him go fuck somewhere else!” But the bishop slipped him some Yugoslavian dinars, and

gestured towards Sanchez and Jakubec, who were holding the old priest hand in hand, to bring Haramina into the parish office, before he could look back and see that he had given him some money.                                                                                      

“Bishop Križanec must make a final decision on this.” Jakubec switched to the main topic of their meeting as soon as they entered. “Haramina, close the door if everyone is in.” Jakubec pointed Haramina towards the open door, and at that moment the nun got up and went out of the room: “Excuse me, gentlemen and fellow clergy, but now I have to go to the toilet!”                                                                                                              

“I dont feel like getting up from the armchair, why dont you do it!” A bald, stout priest, short in stature, Haramina, whose full name was Eugenije Haramina, sat directly opposite the open door, silently looking into the courtyard of the monastery. He answered Jakubec, without any change of emotion on his face. His gaze was fixed on one point, and his hypnotized eyes showed that he was not thinking about anything. Sanchez was sitting in an armchair, at the other end of the room, directly opposite Haramina, and the young priest Jakubec, but at a good distance from them, and he was smiling slightly at the scene, watching the usually unsuccessful discourse, repeated, between the experienced old priest, Haramina, and all other priests of the Zagreb archdiocese, as well as among all other tenants of the monastery, in the courtyard of the archdiocese. 

“Ahh Eugenije, you are eighty years old, although I am absolutely sure that you were just like this, and when you were only twenty-two years old, that was how old you were when you entered the monastery, right…? 

“Stop it, dont you see you never had a sex?!” It rang through the room, from Haramina’s mouth, calmly, exactly in the second when Petar sat down on the chair, instantly creating a special expression of discomfort on young Jakubec’s face, as if he had sat on a nail, while Haramina was still staring motionless, with a pale face, without any emotions, in the same direction, the door now closed, then continued. “You wanted to fuck, but you couldn’t. Then you came to our monastery and became one of us. That’s how it was, that’s your history. God chooses the weak, and now you have become a lance soldier, in the front ranks!” Jakubec’s face literally started to redden, so much, that in the same second, the reddening, from just the ruddy cheekbones, at the very beginning of the reddening, spread further to his entire face, cheeks, and forehead. “The young virgin is uncomfortable now, isnt he?!” The experienced Haramina saw it all, and knew it, even without looking at him, still looking fixedly, all the time, in the same direction, with the door now closed. 

“It’s because of that idiotic hairstyle of yours! Although it’s closer to a short haircut than a long hair, the contours of the hairstyle are wavy, kind of like Legolas, only cut all the way short, but with a middle parting, if you’ve read Tolkien. Well done! A complete idiot! I just don’t know if your hair color is blonde or brown, or something in between! And the icing at the end, a dull look in the middle of the forehead!” Haramina completed the verbal portrait of the Austrian. 

“Your words are neither human nor worthy of your concern. However, I assume that even for this kind of cruelty, you waited in your heart for Sister Ankica to leave the room first?!” Bishop Križanec intervened, as expected, and with his authority decided to end any further conversation between the old priest Haramin and the young Austrian, saving him from further humiliation. 

“Ah, UDBA contacted us!” Haramina had a verbal cannonade ready, also for the bishop: “You are ten years behind me, even if you were a real bishop of the Catholic Church and not an infiltrated scumbag!” Your understanding of spiritual realities is backward. Shyness is the twin sister of vanity, as the saint said… well some saint said it, I don’t remember which one! If young Jakubec is ashamed of his innocence, that is a crack in his heart, through which the devil will grab him! I am here to train him in humility.”

And continued: “On the other hand, there is no hope for the bishop! There is no escape for you! But, you never told us which degree of Freemasonry you belong to, let’s talk about it, it’s interesting to hear it from the first hand! Come on, tell us a little about all of this together, we’ve been longtime acquaintances, even though we’re on opposite sides!” Bishop Križanec wore cloudy glasses, huge dioptres, which made his view, behind the cloudy glass of the glasses, completely blurry, so that his eyes could never be recognized. He had short gray hair. He calmly listened to Eugene’s sermon, without blinking an eye: “You’re right, Eugene, as always. I sincerely enjoy your stories. After all, that’s why I chose you as a member of this council, regarding this issue, which we will solve today. But I feel sorry for the others, I can’t stand it.” And he added: “Come on guys, we’ve had enough fun for today, sister will be back in the room soon, let’s get serious and get down to business.” 

“The poor girl ran out of the room!” Sanchez followed up on the bishop’s words, at the same time skilfully diverting the topic from the painful tracks on which Haramina was riding, it seemed as if he was doing it out of pure boredom, and hanging out, which neither he wanted nor could listen to. “Another enigma, for young Jakubec!” Eugenije answered again.” Is it possible?” Haramina briefly looked for approval from the people present, but from his gaze, which was still staring fixedly at the door, it was clear that the riddle was coming regardless of the approval of those present.                                                                                                                                              

 

“The door!” 

“What’s is the catch for the riddle of the closed door, please answer?”                                                                                                                                                                                       “What about the door?” The bishop was also interested. “Let Peter answer, he imprisoned them. Peter, what’s the catch?” Haramina was persistent. Haramina stared at the big wooden door at the entrance to the parish office with his greenish-brown eyes, which always looked watery, as if they had some kind of liquid in them. And Jakubec watched them silently, the large wooden entrance, and in the lower part of his stomach he felt discomfort, which gathered in him, from pressure and fear, fearing new discomfort from Haramina’s mouth, at the same time feeling anger, more and more, because of the hard words, which he must to suffer, from the person he dragged all day, through the city: “Oh mein Gott… I don’t know what the catch is… I surrender…” He instinctively answered quickly, wanting to end this conversation with Haramina as soon as possible, in order to avoid the possibility , for Haramina to continue harassing him, even after sister Ankica returns, and God forbid she hears what he says to him.

“Here’s a very good hint for the riddle; “The handle is used to open the door.” Haramina clarified.                                       

 “That. that’s right.” Jakubec instinctively speed up, unconsciously, looking for a transition, to finish the riddle. 

“This wooden door has no handle on the outside, and you closed it! How will sister Ankica get in?” 

“She will knock on the door! That’s the answer to the riddle!” It was finalized by Jakubec, without the German language. “Yes, but then one of us will have to get up and open the door, instead of you leaving it open!” Haramina answers.

“You don’t always manage to be funny, Haramina!” Sanchez answered. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but your appearance reminds me of my friend, the exorcist, Gabriel Amorthe, from the Vatican, and you yourself are an exorcist, like him. I imagine you, like this, old and weak, driving the devil out of someone, and you have to sit down to fart. Otherwise, if you fart standing up, you’ll get rheumatism!” There was a knock on the large wooden door. Jakubec quickly got up to open the door, expecting his sister Ankica, but when he opened it, there was a young man standing at the entrance, short, with curly black hair, thin, in black clothes, similar to that of a priest, but despite this, it was clear that the young man he was still not a priest. “That is the last member of the council, let him in, gentlemen, I personally invited him, so that our council would be as neutral as possible today, in the decision. I decided to invite one person, who none of you know. The young gentleman is a future priest. And he will help us today, make a decision.” Bishop Križanec said this in one breath, after which he addressed the unknown young man: “Come in, come in, go ahead! Introduce yourself to everyone! And after that make yourself comfortable, sit in one of the armchairs or chairs, there is room, just come in. Welcome!”

“Praised be Jesus and Mary. I am Viktor Pašalić. I am twenty-two years old, I need three more years to complete the priestly service minimum. I am familiar with the case in detail, I guess that’s why Bishop Križanec invited me to join you, or maybe on the recommendation of Bishop Žankovac. I’ll probably never know. Good evening everyone!” 

After that, the newcomer quickly sat down on the chair, next to Sanchez, and while he was getting ready, Haramina spoke up: “So the shit decided to invite one of its players. So that in the event of a difference of opinion, the decisive vote of the one he invited will be decisive. That would probably mean that the person he invited is just as shit as he is!” Pašalić adjusted himself in the chair, took off his suit and listened attentively to Haramina, but from the confused look in his eyes, it was clear that he still could not understand, that Haramina was talking about him. 

“Don’t pay attention to the words of this old gentleman, he has a habit of making rude jokes, but don’t take him seriously, such a situation has been developing for decades, those before us allowed it, so he got used to it, and over time it became even worse. He is too old to be kicked out of the priesthood now, it makes no sense, we have to put up with him. And he is currently the only exorcist in our town, so we have to protect him. You’ll love him when you get to know him a little better.” Križanec calmly explained to Pašalić, while taking out his pipe from his drawer. He dabbed some tobacco into his pipe, lit it, took a smoke, and continued: “As for the council that Eugenije mentioned, it is not an obligation, nor a necessary formality.” The final decision is made only by me, you are all here in an advisory capacity. But after prayer, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, I decided that I would call a council, and after another prayer, I decided that the decision of this council would be my final decision. Just so you know.”

“Yeah. And if I may ask, where is the young gentleman from, since he is not known to anyone here?” Haramina continued eagerly.

“From Zadar!” Pasalić answered briefly.

“Yes Yes, Zadar is good.” Eugenije sounded cynical, while lightly stroking his chin with one hand, but still staring hypnotically at the same point, which he had been looking at since he sat down in the armchair.

Then he continued: “But, let me ask you something, you from Zadar, but only if you want to answer that question.” Pašalić devoted himself stimulatingly, with his whole being, to Haramina, feeling the vibration of the room, that it was important to reach an agreement with the unknown bald old man: “I will certainly answer you, mister Haramina, just ask me, whatever you are interested in!”                                                    

“Have you ever fucked?” 

“What?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know what cock is?” 

“Cock goes to the cunt!” Eugenije clarified…

Pašalić looked confusedly at Haramina, his eyes wide with anger. Sanchez was laughing next to him, then patted Pašalić on the shoulder: “Križanec explained to you, but he didn’t explain to you!”

Through the greasy, cloudy, large dioptres, on the glass of Križanč’s glasses, movements were noticed, like the movements of the pupils, but it is not clear whether this is really rolling of the pupils, or if it is just the eyelids opening and closing. There is just a glimpse of some kind of movement, around the eyes, behind the thick, cloudy glass of his glasses. “Pašalić, please go and see where sister Ankica is, she has been gone for a long time!” Still looking in amazement at Haramina, Pašalić stood up and headed towards the large wooden door. “And why doesn’t the sister know how to knock on the door herself, so she didn’t run away!” – Haramina spoke again.                                                                                 

Pašalić opened the large wooden door slowly, because, due to its bulkiness, it sometimes got stuck on the wooden parquet on the floor, so it could not be opened quickly. When he had half opened it, he stopped, and for a while silently looked out through the half-open door: “She is standing there!”

Nun Ankica stood, in silence, in the courtyard of the Zagreb archdiocese, and looked at the space in front of her, in front of the monastery courtyard. She seemed overcome with fear. The days were short, and it was already getting dark. By the time she went to the toilet, the day had already turned into almost night. Dogs howling could be heard in the distance. 

“Let’s invite her in!” Križanec ordered. 

“What is she doing outside for so long, is she scratching her pussy?!” It was felt in the air, that Haramina used the last opportunity to say something, from his repertoire, before the nun entered the room.

“Understand that the sister has stage fright!” Križanec turned to Haramina, but his explanatory message was actually for Pašalić, who was the least in touch with the group, and sister Ankica, so Križanec felt the need to explain to him. “There is no reason to panic, when everything is already known. She will only repeat what she said before!” Sanchez replicated.

Nun Ankica slowly walked towards the entrance to the office of the archdiocese, and at that moment the wind blew hard, blowing her long, black, monastic robes for a short time. As she entered, through the large wooden door, her body almost touched, with Pašalić, and smoothly slipped, between him and the door, into the room. Viktor then used a little more physical strength to close the large wooden door. After that, they both sat down on the chairs at the same time, so that all the people in the office room sat properly arranged, in a small circle, and sister Ankica was now closest to the door, with her back turned towards them. It was felt in her being that she would gladly, at any moment, get up and go outside, and her appearance, at that moment, was an unusual combination of calmness and nervousness. She was naturally a calm spirit, a blissfully calm being, the calmest kind that exists, but at this moment, beneath that blissful calmness, a great deal of nervousness was emanating from her, so that it could not be hidden. She was, at that moment, a great contrast of nature. A lamb being led to slaughter.

“All the people here already know everything about your case, just as the news about it has already spread through Zagreb, so we also experienced this welcome, by the masses, today in the square. You have a lot of people who love you, let that comfort you, regardless of our decision. And I saw that many will believe you, regardless of our decision. But as we have to make some kind of decision, for the sake of the highest possible quality, of our decisions, you will repeat now, in front of us, everything that happened to you, so that we, all together, here, can testify, first-hand, about everything that was said, that it really comes from your mouth, and not from perhaps some retelling, from some other person, close to you, from your monastery, or relatives, etc… who may have misunderstood something, or who is just passing on things that someone else told him, etc… do you understand, then, what I am trying to explain to you, sister?” Križanec recited in one breath.                                                                                                

“By the way, I’m Josip, although we’ve met before, and met several times, I don’t know if I’ve ever introduced myself to you by name. Mostly they call me bishop or Križanec.”

“In fact, he is an infiltrated Mason, and a member of the UDBA, he personally killed his predecessor, in order to take the position of bishop. He poisoned him. I’m not kidding, sister! There is garbage sitting in front of you!” At the same time, Eugenije pointed with his hand to the pipe, which Križanec was smoking, asking him to pass it to him, in order to inhale the smoke. The bishop first wanted to answer something to Haramina, and then he felt that he would explain more if he handed him the pipe calmly, without replicating.

“Yes, I understand you!” The sister answered the bishop, not experiencing Haramina’s chatter and intrusions, because she had known him well for many years.

“I would describe you as a woman of such an ordinary and simple appearance, and equally so imperceptible appearance, that it is impossible to describe you, how ordinary you are! There are still plenty of such nuns, in our monasteries and in Zagreb, who look this simple and ordinary, which is why it is even more difficult to notice you, in a crowd of such, anywhere and anytime. You go through life completely unnoticed!” He replicated Haramina and her silence. He took a smoke from the bishop’s pipe and passed it back to him. After that, he kept the smoke in his lungs for a very long time.

All the time, since she entered the room, Sister Ankica maintained a completely stiff and serious speech, body and face, which exudes great concern.

In the nearby church, in the upper town, a crowd of several hundred people was on their knees. A group of about a hundred people, which had been gathering all day, in the square, now grouped there, and new reinforcements were constantly arriving, and the crowd grew again to a larger number, of several hundred people. They prayed the rosary. They prayed loudly and devotedly. At every tenth of the rosary, the priest repeated the intention, their prayers: “Dear God, give wisdom to this council, which is deciding right now in the archbishop’s office, to make a fair decision. Send them the Holy Spirit, Lord, to inspire them to see the truth!”

When they came to the last ten, on the rosary, the priest changed the words of the intention, which he had been repeating until then, and became emotional: “Lord, we already know in our hearts that the apparitions experienced by our sister Ankica are God’s truth, and that they come from you! We ask you, Lord, that this truth be recognized by the people sitting in the council, together with our exemplary bishop, Josip Križanec! And to finally make a decision, by which these apparitions will be approved! Because everything that does not come from God will perish!”

“You are free to begin with your presentation, sister.” Križanec opened a new corridor of conversation at the meeting. “Haramina, from now on no more intrusions, please!” In conclusion, he warned. “Sister is very nervous, sister relax! Take it easy!” Sanchez noticed, and further encouraged Sister Ankica. There was, for a short time, complete silence in the room, after which the nun took a deep breath: “Where do you want me to start?”

“Start from the beginning!” The bishop proposed.

There was complete silence in the room again, for a while, and the nun fidgeted a little on the chair, and then she began: “That’s a big cross. In the room of our monastery, in front of which we worship every day, and that day we went to the usual worship, in front of that cross. I am thinking of myself, and of my roommates, from the convent, other nuns. We prayed, one, five or six sisters, together, for a while, and then the number slowly decreased, as each nun left, left the prayer, left for some of her work, mainly performing the duties of the monastery, around the monastery, their daily work. So that, after a while, I noticed how in the end only I was left there to pray. And it was often like that. That I may remain praying for the longest time, in front of the Most Holy, and be alone with Jesus, in the Most Holy Altar Sacrament. I prayed like that, on my knees, in front of the Most Holy, which is stored in a golden casket, on the altar, right next to that big cross, before which we worshiped. In fact, we worshiped Jesus, who is present in the holiest altar sacrament, not the cross.” At that moment, the nun paused again, with an exposition. The contours of her face took on a confused shape. Her eyes stared deeply into her own thoughts, looking aggressively somewhere at the floor. Silence once again filled the room of the archbishop’s office, in a profound way.                                                                                                

“We’re following you, keep going, sister!” The bishop instructed, showing that he was concentrating on noticing every change in the sister, which resulted from her gesticulations.

“I noticed mild, yellow-white rays of light falling on me, I don’t know how long it lasted. They did not, in any way, dare me in prayer, but I noticed them very well. I didn’t have time to think, at that moment, if those were the rays coming through the window of the monastery, I mean the rays of the sun, coming from the daylight, from outside. Or where they come from.”

“It’s okay sister. You don’t have to deal with describing your inner state. You don’t have to describe your inner feelings in the presentation you give. We are only interested in you presenting the external course of events, how it went, concentrate on that.” The bishop was giving instructions to the nun. 

She nodded slightly, with her entire upper back and head, as a sign that she fully understood the bishop’s instruction, and continued again, after a short silence: “So, I don’t remember having any particular reaction to that light, it’s all too short lasted so that I could elaborate on it now. But, after a while, I heard a voice, inside me. That voice was like my thoughts. But different! I knew right away that he was different! I mean, that voice didn’t scare me in any way, or create discomfort, or be like my thoughts, because we constantly hear something, in ourselves, by ourselves, we constantly hear some kind of loud thoughts. And then it’s not terrible, so that voice didn’t throw me out of my order of things.” The nurse paused again for a short while, and stared thoughtfully, sinking her gaze into her own thoughts, analyzing them. Looking at her, looking at the floor, it was clear that she didn’t know exactly what word to use. “What I want to say, I don’t know how to describe it to you exactly, I can’t find the right words to describe that state of mind!” 

The bishop again noticed that the sister was confused about this presentation, so he once again had the need to encourage her, with his own words, and let her know that he understood what he was saying to them: “I think I understand what you want to say, sister!” He said this in a deep way, something almost like a transcendental touching, to a point in her soul, which should have become clear, that he understood her, and made her move on. Bishop Križanec always had such power with people. The power of extraordinary communication, and understanding, in serene silence. And then progress. With such calmness, he led the Zagreb archdiocese and managed it. And solved problems.

“But the voice didn’t say anything, at first, I just heard it talking to me, inside. But now, when I’m trying to remember, at first he didn’t say anything, or I can’t make out what exactly he said to me, like when you hear a person whispering next to you, but you don’t hear what exactly they’re whispering. You only hear his sound, but you don’t understand exactly the words he uttered. That’s how I heard him, at first. I’m only speaking at the beginning, that’s what I mean.” The archbishop nodded slightly in silence, as a sign of approval and understanding, while looking at his sister. Haramina was still staring at one and the same spot on the door, which he had been staring at since entering the room. Now he was looking in the direction of his sister, but right next to her, since she was now sitting approximately in the direction he was looking. Sanchez, Jakubec, and Pašalić listened to the presentation by looking at the floor, all three of them. Everyone was thinking in some way, about how to please and facilitate the presentation of the sister, with their presence.

The bishop drew simple, straight strokes with a ballpoint pen, on the paper, on an empty sheet of the notebook, in front of him, on the table, but not with a full swing of his fist, but strokes from his finger. He repeated them hypnotically, at regular intervals, giving the impression that he intended to write down some things that Sister Ankica would say. He was sitting geometrically regularly, on an antique chair, as if he were stiff, but at the same time completely collected and calm. An unusual, transcendental peace emanated from his stiffness. From the very beginning of the meeting, he did not make a single unnecessary move, extra, with any part of his body. This once again attracted the attention of Haramina, who at the same time took advantage of the silence that had arisen in the room, with a new pause in the presentation of the nun, who again sank into your thoughts.

“He hasn’t blinked an eye since we entered this room, that’s because he’s magically colored! They instill in them that, some kind of, artificial calm, at those gatherings of theirs, where they spin. It’s a special mental technique!” The bishop silenced Haramina’s words again, and with a ballpoint pen he began to draw longer and longer strokes, on the blank paper, which went from one side of the sheet, his notebook, all the way to the other side, and made a rasping sound, on the paper, which was the only sound that was heard, at that moment, in the whole room, filled with complete silence, The sound of a ballpoint pen scraping on paper, was pleasant, and somewhere in her mind, the nurse briefly gave a signal of approval, to herself, to listen to that sound, in silence, rather than saying what he has to say. The bishop briefly stopped his movements, with a ballpoint pen, and tapped the tip of the ballpoint pen, on the notebook paper, in one place: “Yes, sister, we are following you, continue! And take breaks, as many years as you need, so you don’t feel any pressure, we’re in no rush, we can be here until tomorrow afternoon if needed! Take it easy.” After that, he continued to draw rough strokes, with a ballpoint pen, on the notebook paper, first again only with his fist, short strokes, and then increasingly long strokes, which again passed from one end of the paper to the other, across the entire width, repeating a pleasant sound in the room, which gently put everyone present to sleep, giving them peace of mind.

“See what he’s doing, that with a ballpoint pen, that’s the same hypnotizing technique, with which he keeps us under control! They teach them that, and various bioenergetic tricks! So that a normal person does not even notice, we are not even aware, that it is constantly working on us!” Eugenije repeated quietly to himself, but loud enough that his words could be clearly heard in the room. “Rapping with that ballpoint pen, on the notebook paper, creates that pleasant sound, which calms you down, and in fact, in that way, subconsciously prepares you to agree with each of his suggestions, because it suits your inner being to be near him, while subliminally he caresses you with those moves, so you miss what you agreed to, just to be close to him.” Pašalić’s facial expression still showed that he was not clear about who exactly Haramina was talking about, while Sanchez was obviously listening to something he normally listens to, and he didn’t pay too much attention. Jakubec was fine with anything, as long as old Haramina didn’t touch him with comments. Sister Ankica was searching somewhere very deep, in her thoughts, without even thinking one minute or one second in her mind about anything Haramina was saying to anyone.                                                                                                             

“I looked up, and I saw that those rays were coming from the cross, now I saw it clearly! They came straight from the wounds of Jesus. From his heart came one, slightly red ray, around which were those, yellow-white rays. Then I heard a voice again, inside me. Now it was already completely clear to me that something unusual was happening, but at no point did I panic, I was overcome by an incomprehensible peace, and now that voice took on an intelligible spoken form, and I could clearly hear what it was saying to me: “My daughter, I am sending you my mother, she will speak to you, and what you will suffer, in the rest of your earthly life, you will suffer for the salvation of the souls of sinners, but only if you yourself agree to this satisfaction!” The nurse now made one energetic move, rocked back and forth on the chair with her whole body, then continued: “That was the first time he spoke to me. If he spoke to me. I crossed myself, right after the rays stopped shining, and I, in my being, felt the great love of God, which God has for me, and for every creature. My tears came from the depths of my soul, while I was overwhelmed by immense divine mercy. Only a few months later, such an experience happened to me again, it was very similar to the first time. Then after that, it happened again, once more, after a month, and then it started to happen again and again, every couple of weeks. Now I began to understand that God is preparing me so slowly, to complete the task, in order to give my soul time to prepare for the storms. 

“In those first meetings, nothing special was revealed to you?” The bishop asked. 

“No, that came later!” The nurse answered. The Mother of God began to appear to me, at first, on different holidays. She came gently, as did her son, whom she sometimes held in her arms, like a little baby!” 

“It took years before you told anyone, didn’t you?” Sanchez confirmed his role as the second interrogator. 

“That’s right, I actually had no intention of revealing anything to anyone, I thought it was a mercy, just for me. But people themselves started talking, that something was happening to me, they noticed that I always stay alone for a long time, in front of that cross, they noticed that someone was talking to me, that I was listening to someone! They noticed the tears, in my eyes, and then finally there were other sisters, who noticed that light, white-yellow in color, how it completely illuminated me, on several occasions. Then the whole thing became a monastery thing, not just mine, and the story started to spread! 

“But you haven’t had visions yet?! Alfonso asked further and thus discovered that he knew everything well.

“No, the visions started this year! And I immediately received God’s special grace, which I clearly felt, inside, as a gift of knowledge, that it is my duty to convey these visions to the people around me, to warn them.” 

“So, Jesus never personally ordered you to pass them on to someone?” The bishop asked and drew a sharp, long, chemical line across the notebook paper. 

“No, he didn’t, but I felt it, deeply, in my soul. And it was quite clear to me that they were given to me in order to warn people around me, that was their only purpose! At first, I recounted them to people, but it was often happened, a confusing situation, that people did not understand that I was explaining the vision to them, but they thought that I was telling them, something that I knew, from some other source, I don’t know, I don’t know how I would explain to you! I’m not a suitable person, I don’t know how to verbally compete with people, so I started writing down these visions, and I handed everything I wrote down to the Sister Superior, in the monastery, as my superior. Understand that I am a simple wretch, I mean, I don’t even know the exact structure of the church religion, and whether I should have immediately informed someone about it; I didn’t know the priest, the bishop, and forgive me if I made a mistake.”

“Everything is fine, sister! You did well!” The bishop spoke to his sister in a comforting tone. 

“The visions are written down, on paper, in my notebooks, and you have already received them, and I have no intention of repeating them here now! I’m very embarrassed when I have to talk about them, but you’ve seen it all before, and you already know everything about it. 

“Ah, that has spread a lot lately, especially after Sister Agata experienced an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who confirmed to her that she was appearing to you. After what did people start calling her “Gospa Gornjogradska“?!” The bishop asked, and then wrote “Gospa Gornjogradska” in his notebook, on Croatian language, and then wrote again, the same name, but in English language, “Our Lady of the upper town“, already indicating that he would have to send a report about it to the Vatican, even though he had permission, at the local level, to confirm apparitions as authentic…

“Yes, that’s how she presented herself to me, as “Gospa Gornjogradska”!” The nurse confirmed.

“Okay, you don’t need to rehearse the visions now, your notebooks are already here!” The bishop opened the desk drawer, and took out a small green notebook – “That’s it?” He waved at his sister, with a notebook, to which the sister nodded her head. He opened the green notebook, and began to read to himself, and next to her notebook was still standing, open, his brown notebook: “I have read it all, many times already, but still I have to question you, a few things, in connection with those visions, in order to be completely sure, that we understood each other well. When you say “army of the dishonorable”, do you mean the soldiers of the Red Army? Do you mean the Soviets?” The bishop asked for an exact confirmation, to which the sister nodded affirmatively.

“The sister thinks of what was called the army of rapists, in World War II, that’s what she means!” Haramina interjected.

“And one more thing, when you say that those who agree to a pact, with them, that these are the same ones who will receive a sign of loyalty to the devil! Was it entrusted to you by a higher power, or did you figure it out yourself?” 

“I came to the conclusion myself, but the effect of the vision was so strong, that it was completely clear to my being that it was so!” The nurse explained. 

The bishop was reading lines from his sister’s green notebook, and at the same time he was still drawing lines with a ballpoint pen on the blank paper of his brown notebook, which stood partly next to and partly under the green notebook he was now reading. 

“So, you want to say that this is not a sin of fornication, but an act of betrayal of faith?” The bishop questioned.

“Yes, we are talking about the act of surrender, although it was seen in the visions that people will not always be fully aware of it, but it is an act of surrender to the devil, similar to the one described in the book of revelation, it is a precursor, it is a previous sign, which precedes all that.” The nurse consistently confirmed.

The bishop sank deeper and deeper, into re-reading the visions, from the text, from his sister’s green notebook, all of which he already knew by heart, and only at the first, opening lines of the text, the visions came alive in their entirety, in the memory of his being…

“KGB witches, invasion of people like Haramina, sons of whores, animals suffer a lot, eh…” Alfonso muttered in a whisper, under his breath, throwing occasional, short, scathing glances at Haramina. 

“Call Sister Agata, not the one who had visions, but this Agatha of ours, the assistant, here from the archbishop’s office. Gentlemen, I think we could use some hot tea to continue our socializing here!” The bishop gave a short order, signaling action to Pašalić, who immediately started towards the door, whereupon his papers were scattered, which he distributed on the chair next to him, which he did not even notice. These were documents, various apparitions, with notes from church authorities, about these events.

“That paperwork won’t help us, Pašalić, for this job. Each transitory case is a case in itself, looking at one case through the prism of another, earlier, same event, is dumbing down the existing event, with missed parameters.” Briefed Sanchez, collecting the papers after Pašalić, which were scattered on the floor, in all directions, and putting them back on the chair, looking at some of them along the way, filling the silence of the room, the archbishop’s office, with the rustling sound of papers.

Pašalić soon returned to the room, leaving the door open for Sister Agata, the bishop’s assistant, and his secretary of sorts, through which the nun soon entered, quickly bringing tea to those present, for which she was obviously prepared in advance. As she entered the room, the porcelain teacups, which she carried on a tin tray, jingled nervously, while fine china on the tray, closely spaced, collided with other fine china, creating a jingling-nervous sound, as if accompanying an energetic, Sister Agata’s quick, nervous walk. The tinkling china did not stop ringing, not even after Sister Agata placed the tray on the table, in front of the bishop, but, due to the physical laws of friction, it continued to rattle still, in place, for some time after Sister Agata left the room, gradually becoming quieter. . As she was leaving the room, Sister Agata looked pityingly at Sister Ankica. Without saying anything, only with a gentle look of greeting to everyone present, she quietly left the room, silently, as she had entered, politely indicating that something was happening here that she was not up to, and that she did not belong there.

“Your appearance radiates that the bishop runs this place geometrically accurately, and draws straight lines in time!” She didn’t hear Haramina’s remark, because she was already outside the room when Eugenije spoke.

“Gentlemen, help yourselves!” The bishop straightened himself up, in a raised position, and started handing out cups of white porcelain, into which tea was already poured! There is more, and for later, if anyone wants!” Thinking of a large metal pot, with tea, standing on a metal tray, full of hot tea. 

Clinking china began to fill the room again, just after the clinking sound stopped for a moment as cups of tea were handed out to those present.

Taking cups of tea in their hands, those present at the same time began to throw aside the copies of the document about the sister’s visions, which they had read until then, and which had been distributed to them, on yellow paper, stored in white folders, which they now put back, into folders, and quickly closed, in order to refresh themselves with a cup of hot tea, while it is still hot. The smell stunned them in seconds.

 “And since when do Croats drink tea?” Sanchez noticed.

“You’re on the right track, Sherlock!” Haramina followed him with words before Sanchez uttered the last letter. “Did you see the yellow paper from which we read these documents? How strange, who lets people read important things from yellow paper?”

“Sanchez, don’t feed the troll! Haramina, if you’re really serious about coffee, I can have Sister Agata make it for you, especially if you’re going to keep quiet after that! May the prayers of those who are now praying, in the nearby church, for a positive outcome of our meeting, be multiplied now, just for the purpose that the old bald man will shut up, at least for five minutes, oh Lord help! And I decided on tea, just so I could hold in my hands this fine porcelain, which Cardinal Artagnan sent me, as a thank you for… some of our things. Cups are for tea, so we made tea…” The bishop explained, holding the cup in his hand, with his other hand wiping some tea, which had spilled, on his hand, all the while still making a clanging sound, of colliding porcelain, which continued to clatter. , in small porcelain saucers, on which the cups were given to those present. “The handles on the cups are a bit too small, Herr Križanec, it’s awkward to hold them, I only have to use my fingertips, and my cup is constantly shaking… oh Mein Gott!” Jakubec protested, still looking for an opportunity to say anything in fact, so that the continuation of his presence in the room, in the minds of those present, would be removed from the images of reality, with which Haramina surrounded him.

“It is arranged so that this porcelain creates this rattling sound, which pleasantly stimulates our brain, in a certain way, it all has its purpose. It is a pleasure to listen to the tapping of this china, oh china, and so our thoughts are unconsciously reserved, and we unconsciously begin to rest the brain circuits, it is perfidious hypnosis. The most dangerous hypnosis is that of a mild form, because a person is not aware that he is hypnotized, and still partially functions, and as such he takes steps, and makes moves, in his own name, and later he is surprised that he signed, said, etc….” Haramina persisted, muttering to himself, but enough for everyone to hear.

“Viktor, it’s time for your expertise! Just briefly and concisely, present comparisons with known cases, and your observations, honestly and without hesitation, we are all brothers here, and no one should take anything personally, or tragically, whatever the final decision of the council may be.” The bishop directed Pašalić to the paperwork, which he had brought with him, which at the same time drew old Haramina’s attention to the pile of papers, which was now, once again, placed on Pašalić’s thighs.

“Who is that woman in the picture? Haramina finally looked away from the point where he was constantly staring, and with a slight, minimal rotation of his head and neck, he turned his gaze towards the magazine, which was standing under a rag of paper, at the bottom of the stack. Pašalić was confused and surprised when he saw that someone managed to notice the magazine, which he kept at the bottom of the huge paperwork, thinking imperceptibly. “It’s actress Raquel Welch!” 

“I fucked her. Before I became a priest. I confessed it.” Haramina calmly returned his gaze to the point he had been staring at the whole time, with an equally slight movement of his neck, rotating the head back, as if he was careful not to injure himself, leaving Pašalić surprised, and added: “And that is really disgusting, on your part, to bring materials for masturbation, to this holy place.”

“Sister, as far as I know, you are familiar with the character and work of Eugenija Haramine and his legacy in our archdiocese, so there is no need for me to explain anything to you about this legend of the kaptol, and I dare say, the whole city Zagreb, because he is widely known, outside the clerical framework. However, in case you are offended in any way by what you hear, I deeply apologize on behalf of our archdiocese. Some say he is crazy, from so many exorcisms he performed, I must admit that he was successful. Some say he is senile, some say he is no longer aware of what he is saying due to old age. Nevertheless, even as such, due to the invaluable experience he has gained over the years, he is still one of the most important soldiers here at kaptol. But I will admit that he only has a very good sense of humor, which does not befit his profession, let alone the place and time. We don’t know how it happened, that he was allowed to behave like this. He eased up a bit, and people got used to it, and he got worse over time. It’s incredible what can develop in time. Don’t take him seriously, let’s accept him as he is!” The bishop had the need to explain, seeing that  Haramina did not stop, reciting quickly, immediately after the Haramina, not allowing an awkward silence to be created, or doubt about the nature of the old man’s outbursts.

“Pašalić, here you go young sir!”

Pašalić began to quickly sort through his papers, at the same time hiding his gaze from the people in the room, still sick to his bones with uneasiness from Eugenije Haramina’s last outburst. “Already at first glance, it is clear that our sister did not present any new information, it is all the same information, which is repeated, in all these last years, and continues in various places. I mean the information regarding the Soviet invasion, the information regarding the triumph of communism in the world, the information regarding the coming persecution of Catholics in the world, this has been published, and repeated many times, in various places, by our blessed mother, but it is important that is the most credible, and for us today, here, the most important apparitions, one Italian apparition, to Blessed Sister Elena Aiello, from Italy, she saw that Russia would march against all countries in Europe, and especially that it would attack Italy. These revelations and apparitions are considered particularly credible, because Elena was a stigmatist, received the wounds of our Lord, and, as I said, was declared blessed by the Catholic Church. In another place, I would like to mention the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Garabandal, Spain, which received great attention in the Catholic Church during the 1960s, that is, from the beginning of the 1960s. These apparitions have not yet received any recognition or approval from the Catholic Church, at least not officially, but Padre Pio and the Pope are great advocates of these apparitions. They are also a source of information about the upcoming persecution of Catholics in the world, which is supposedly ahead of us, and about the sudden attack of the USSR, which will come on Europe, and, according to what has been described, it will seem as if their influence has captured the whole world, it is not clear if they mean the USSR, or communism, or communism inspired by the USSR, probably one and the same, but maybe not. Information was presented there, that the attack will take place, sometime in the near future, after the Pope returns from his visit to Moscow. There we see an example of repeated information, about the time frame of the attack, in the context of the information presented by sister Ankica. In the third place, I would mention, as the least important, the visions of Arlois Irlmaier, a Catholic mystic, from Germany, but he is the least important in the whole story, since he is neither blessed, nor a saint, nor a member of the clergy, nor important to the church, in any way which way. An ordinary man. Nor was information entrusted to him by divine persons. I don’t know what this mystic is supposed to mean, it has no value, but I had to characterize it somehow. It’s about some kind of visions that he received, they weren’t even locutions. But we can mention him here, in the context of all the above, since he described the attack of the USSR on Europe, in an identical way, as sister Ankica described it. He spoke about the three wedges of the Soviet attack on Germany. He saw Soviet troops regrouping in Belgrade and moving towards Italy. That’s why I mentioned him. And the second reason is that he also mentioned the use of some kind of new weapon by the Soviet Union and that the attack would go right to the Rhine River. So we see the complete identity of all these cases in the description. I don’t know what else to say!” Viktor presented a comparative analysis in a nerdy style. Pašalić doesn’t read any of that, from the paper, but just runs his thumb over the layers of paper, and keeps his eyes on the empty space below. He already knew by heart what he was going to say. Bringing out difficult information like this was actually a joyful escape for him, at this moment, and a blissful port of salvation, to get away from the discomfort that Haramina was spreading all around him, with his ultra-humiliating jokes, which people, in his presence, were deprived of every human dignity.

“Yes, maybe I could also mention, as a nice note, in the end, that all these events, in one way or another, are connected with the Fatima apparitions. For example, if we look at the opening words of the apparitions in Spain, with which the Virgin Mary began the apparitions, in that place, those words were “because my son did not listen to my request”, by which the Virgin Mary alluded to the Pope, that is, the Pope earlier he did not obey, through the earlier Fatima apparitions. So many who are familiar with the case believe that it has something to do with it. Because, as you know, it was ordered that the third secret of Fatima must be revealed in 1960, which was not done. Therefore, these apparitions, in a small Spanish village, Garabandal, apparently come as a reaction of heaven, to the Pope’s disobedience, in the events of Fatima, that is, to the fact that the Pope turned a deaf ear, that is, all the Popes, in turn, turned a deaf ear, throughout the 20th century, at the request of heaven, from Fatima. Because the apparitions in Garabandal started in 1961. So heaven intervened, already the next year, as soon as the request was not fulfilled in 1960 as ordered. At least that’s a reasonable conclusion. Here it should be pointed out, and underlined, that the Virgin Mary said that the secret must be revealed to the whole world in 1960, especially, for this reason, I quote the Blessed Virgin: “Because then everything will be clear”. It would therefore make some sense that these latest revelations, to Sister Ankica, come as another reaction, from heaven to the non-disclosure of the Fatima secret.” Pašalić concluded once more, without looking up from the paper he was looking at, only briefly fixing his glasses with his hand.

After a short, contemplative silence in the room, the bishop spoke first: “Yes, well, but how should it have been clear in 1960. that Russia was preparing to invade Europe? And how was it supposed to be clear, that their agency was infiltrated in Europe, if according to these revelations, to sisters Ankica, if we assume they are true, we see that it was all done in secret? So, in 1960, nothing, in particular, should have been clear about that, just as now, eight years later, nothing, in particular, will be clear about it.”

Pašalić now looked up, and looked down at his sister Ankica, with a questioning expression on his face. “Yes, but Sister Ankica is not even endowed with complete knowledge of the third secret of Fatima, as far as I know. This is where we got involved in the story. She was given only these specific visions, if I’m not mistaken, let my sister correct me. In this sense, if I am wrong, please correct me!” And he continued to look at her, waiting for an answer, for approval, for what he said. The sister was still looking in front of her, blankly, in silence, and a foreboding of tragedy and mortal concern was emanating from her. Sensing, however, that a question had been asked, she leaned forward a little and began to nod her head slightly, towards Pašalić, approving, letting everyone in the room know that what she was saying was correct. “Furthermore, the nurse never received any explicit instructions to convey to someone word for word, is that right? She only received these visions, which were never put into any context, from heaven, from some divine person, in the sense that she had to reveal them to someone, in a certain context!” Pašalić expanded his understanding by explaining, and the sister just continued to nod her head affirmatively, to every word he said.

 

 

Blessed Virgin of the Catholic Church. Elena Aiello, had a stigma, and received visions of future events…

 

 

 

Blessed Elena Aiello observes the Russian invasion of Europe…

 

“Yes, yes, if everything should have been clear to everyone by 1960. that what was foreshadowed in the third secret of Fatima started to happen, then it would actually mean that the third secret of Fatima was supposed to be a kind of confirmation of certain events, which are already happening in the world, and which should only confirm to people that this is so, as it seems to be. I say this in the broadest sense of understanding the third part of the Fatima secret. So it is to be expected that the third secret of Fatima, in its broadest context, refers to much wider events. Or it refers to much narrower events than what Sister Ankica is saying. And as we mentioned earlier, apart from the non-disclosure of the third part of the secret, there is also the problem of the consecration of Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which the Virgin Mary requested in Fatima, which was not carried out, or the consecration was not carried out in a satisfactory manner. To summarize, recently the Pope performed the consecration of Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but now we are already entering into total speculation, because according to the witnesses present there, the Holy Father was surrounded by numerous world politicians, from the West, at the very act of consecration, and when he asked them for permission to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, they allegedly said not by chance, that is, they did not allow him to do so, because they were aware of his intention in advance and protested in advance. So that in the final act, the consecration of Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Holy Father did not say at the end that he was consecrating Russia, but he said that he was consecrating “Russia and the whole world”. By which I bypass the Blessed One’s request to explicitly consecrate Russia. This is why it is considered that the consecration was not performed in an appropriate manner, and therefore had no effect. Maria warned that if Russia is not consecrated to her heart, it will spread its delusions throughout the world, and many nations will be destroyed.” Pašalić, almost in one breath, exhaustively continued the reasoning process.

“Oh mein Gott, so why should it be a problem for politicians, or the Pope, to dedicate Russia to the Virgin Mary, was is passiert! And why would God in heaven make a problem about these protocols, if we didn’t fulfill them, in accordance with the formula, warum? Let’s tell the truth. Ich habe keine angst!” Jakubec stroked his minimally short, brown beard with his fingers, which he had at the very top of his chin, rolling his eyes, talking to himself.

“Okay, if that’s the case, you little brat from GradišÄ‡e, then when you baptize the child, send the mother instead of the child, so we can baptize her! Then I’ll tell her to spread her legs to me, from the back, so I can kick her ass, to make her fly back to Austrian GradišÄ‡e, where the mare gave birth to you, such a fool.” Eugenije entered his space of thought.

“Mein mutter is dead! Enough with these stupid jokes! Stop Herr Haramina! My mother is dead, she is my pride. Everything has its own ass!” Jakubec protested loudly, while Haramina grinned, simultaneously fighting his shortness of breath, which would get worse when he laughed hard.

“He said butt!!! Have you heard the criple? They say that everything has its own ass, instead of a border, have you heard? Hahaha. First, she’ll lick my toe, on my shoes, and then I’ll kick her in the ass! And you will watch it, tied to a chair!”

“Oh, Herr Haramina, das ist genug!” Wide-eyed, Jakubec didn’t know what to do with the old man. Completely lost, and powerless, he sank to the end into a conversation with himself, exclusively in German, explaining Haramina to himself.

“You can’t do anything to me!” Haramina said, and by gesticulating with his eyes, he changed the direction of his thoughts, back to the topic:

“Because of pride! Because of the religious pride of our great theologians. Because of the national pride, of various countries! Russia is not even a Catholic country, so if we were to dedicate it to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it means that we, as a Catholic world, would put a country in the first place, which is not even Catholic. That was a lump for someone to swallow. Or fear reigned among the theologians, of the Vatican Curia, that perhaps, by such an act, consecrating the Orthodox land, they would not commit some kind of heresy, and find themselves in the mortal sin of heresy. God chose the weak, as our holy book, the Bible, says. This does not mean that the weak are better than the strong, but the world of Christianity is a world of the weak, it is a world of pinky-winky weak men, who live in fear, and this has its great disadvantages, not only its advantages. Here, for example, we see, from all this nonsense, with the consecration of Russia to Mary, and the inability, in fifty years, to perform an ordinary consecration. We see how human weakness becomes, turns out to be an insurmountable obstacle to God’s will. The whole world will suffer because the cowards from the Vatican are afraid of hell, and their own theology, so they stick to the folk “so glad we wouldn’t interfere!” Haramina, struggling to catch his breath, went all the way into Jakubec’s explanatory talk, with himself, and resolved his dilemmas. 

“Unless there is actually an even wider context, in the sense that certain politicians had a specific reason, and a specific purpose, such obstructions, because of which they disabled the consecration process, about which we know nothing.” Added Sanchez, noting by the way that nun Ankica didn’t even blink at the latest barrage of nastiness from Haramina’s mouth, which began to exceed his usual level of outbursts, but, deep in thought, she was constantly looking into space with a worried look, giving the impression that she was waiting for someone to kill her.

“You may be right, Haramina, but still, I would like to add one more piece of information, which I have not seen mentioned anywhere, related to revealing the third part of the secret. Namely, in 1980, at the congress in Fulda, when asked about the secret, the pope answered, I quote. Sanchez picked up a piece of paper, from which he intended to quote: “If there is a message, that the oceans will pour over the continents, and in seconds wipe out entire parts of humanity, then publishing such a message would no longer be something desirable to publish!” And he added: “The Pope said that he was afraid that by publishing that message, he would encourage the world power of communism to take certain steps. That was his defense, for not revealing the third part of the secret!”

“Yes, and it probably confirms that what the Vatican exorcist, Malachi Martin, said on this subject is true. He said that in the third part of the secret, there is certain information, which is of vital importance for the defense of the West. And that therefore the secret cannot be revealed, because that would undermine the defense of the West! I know.” Eugenije confirmed. “But you see, no matter how much something seems to the Pope, it doesn’t change the fact that God ordered the secret to be revealed. So that’s no excuse. After all, I was talking about the act of consecration of Russia, to Mary, which is crucial in the whole story, and which was not done, and there is absolutely no justification for that. It is pure cowardice, theological arrogance, and theological disease, a convulsion in fear of making a wrong move. We’ll end up like Samson, with his hair cut off. The hooves fucked us. People like Jakubec! Crazy hooves!”

“When they were leaving that meeting, where the consecration of Russia was not carried out as it should be, the assembled bishops, that is, one of them, said; “We have just killed a billion people!”

“I partially understand you, that is, your spirit reminds me of a sentence of Jesus, from the diary of Saint Faustina. There, in one place, Jesus says: “A soul that burdens itself with nonsensical fears cannot please me!” Sanchez tried to agree with the old man, in fact skilfully dragging him into theological discussions related to their topic, in order to take him off Jakubec, who was still energetically talking to himself, in German language, about Haramina. He waved his hands and made aggressive grimaces on his face. It seemed that with his gesticulations he was describing some sort of fight.            

At one point, the situation in the room of the archbishop’s office took on a different atmosphere, from the one that prevailed until then, in a room filled with six people. Several people energetically competed with questions, theories, assumptions, against the dead silence, and quiet contemplative meditation, which had been present in the room until then, as a sign of the seriousness of the questions they were faced with. The question of the secrets of Fatima, the announcement of great signs, and God’s warnings, from Garabandal, aroused everyone’s curiosity. Sanchez, Pašalić, and Bishop Križanec were the most active in the dialogue and exchange of opinions, while Haramina and nun Ankica remained mostly silent.

“The first secret of Fatima is that hell exists, Mary showed it to them! She opened the crust of the earth, dissolved the bowels of the earth, and showed them hell. The second secret was that the second world war would happen, as a punishment for sins!” The sister was huddled, deep in her thoughts, and Haramina was more dozing, eyes open than awake. On several occasions, he drifted gently into sleep, from which he would be brought back by the tapping of china on the tin, every time the bishop put down his cup of tea.

“Notice that the Virgin Mary, in Garabandal, announced that everything will happen when communism returns. So, this communism, which we are now seeing around the world, will seemingly disappear from the world stage. And it will all be one big trick, by the communists, with which they will deceive us, in order to get us into their paws. God will send a great warning, to all mankind, when the situation in the world is worst!” Sanchez tried to sound comforting, because the very announcement of the departure, of the existing communism, sounded like a great relief for the residents of the Zagreb kaptol, who, as members of the clergy, were under constant surveillance by the communist services, and pressure from various forms. The disappearances of priests were not unknown, and the Zagreb cardinal, Alojzije Stepinac, also died in a staged trial. He was sentenced to prison, in a staged trial, in which he was systematically poisoned, until his death, because he did not want to agree with the separation of the Croatian Catholic Church from the Vatican, with which he was pressured by the communist government, in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, part of Yugoslavia, led by Josip Broz Tito.

“Spaniard, you surely know that, is it true, that there, in Garabandal, a priest died of happiness, after he too saw the Virgin Mary in an apparition?” Pasašlić asked, looking at one of the papers.            “Yes, Luis Andreu!”                                                                                                                                      

After the apparition, he said this, which is written on the paper, and immediately, after saying it, he died of happiness and contentment.” After which Pašalić sent a paper, which circulated around the room, among the gathered, from person to person…

 

Luis Andreu, kneeling on the far left in the picture, taken at the moment of the apparition, died immediately after the Virgin Mary appeared to him, and before that he said:                                                            

‘I am so happy! What a wonderful favour the Virgin has bestowed on me! How fortunate we are to have a Mother like that in Heaven! There is no reason to fear the supernatural life. The girls have shown us how we must act with the Blessed Virgin. There’s no doubt in my mind that the things involving the girls are true. But why should the Blessed Virgin have chosen us? This is the happiest day of my life!’

 

“It’s all strange, that the Pope openly tells us that it’s better for us to never find out about something that God has definitely decided to entrust to us?!” Viktor wondered. “I mean, it doesn’t really make any sense. Then I guess it’s better that they never discovered anything, right?” 

“It’s not that simple. It was not about one man’s decision. The Pope, who was the first to read the secret, decided to pass the burden on to the next Pope. The next Pope again decided to transfer the burden to the next Pope, with a delicious hint to the entire Catholic world, that the secret must be revealed, and that everyone has the right to know it, with which the Pope, in a way, fulfilled his obligation, towards heaven, washed his hands of that he didn’t do anything, but nothing came out of it. Add to that that the seer Conchita Gonzalez, from Garabandal, said that she would rather have her children dead than experience that moment, when the great punishment will fall on humanity, if humanity does not change, after the great warning, which will God send us. She said that she was afraid that the punishment would take away her children and that she was begging the Virgin Mary that her children would die, before the execution of that punishment, so that she would not experience that!” Sanchez gave his perspective on the whole thing, along with a lot of new information, to everyone present.                                                      

“Malachi Martin actually got too excited about everything. He should not say that he is under an oath of non-disclosure of the text since he is one of several hundred privileged souls who have read the text. He said that the information, in the third part of the secret, is such that it is enough to drive any man crazy, just from reading that text. And that every, mentally strongest person, would be able to go crazy while reading the text, if they were not in a state of God’s grace, and spiritually ready, to bear such information. He said that the third part of the secret is the worst nightmare that a living person can imagine, multiplied indefinitely.” Bishop Križanec interjected, with his knowledge, and, accepting the debate, continued on, at a dark pace, which, even before his appearance, filled the room. “Moreover, reports are spreading, from the Vatican, and stories, in our corridors, that many priests succumbed mentally, after reading the text. Ending up in psychiatric hospitals, resignations from priestly service, suicides are mentioned.”           

“Ajaja, you see how he is darkening everything? Would God give something, in prophecy, to harm us? It will turn out now, in the end, that the text is actually dangerous to read!” Haramina spoke again, with sleepy speech, from the half-dozing state he was in, but still mentally present. “Well, I’m not talking about God, nor about a secret, Mr. Troll, but about Malachi Martin, and his expertise, that man is spreading fame unnecessarily, in a negative way. He has filled people’s minds with his conjectural statements, and all this does no good only harm. We have the Pope, and we have to listen to him. No information, from private announcements, and this includes the Fatima apparitions, in our faith, is not above the authority of the Pope. The Pope is the last, and whoever wants to pretend to be a Catholic greater than the Pope is not welcome at this meeting. Remember the suffering that our Cardinal Aloysius endured, because of his impeccable loyalty to the Pope and the Vatican.” Said the bishop, looking at the picture of the late cardinal on the wall. “This second part, that’s not what Malachi Martin said, this, about the suicides of the priests, that’s what you added, to his statement, in a hurry, a superb presentation of false information, under the direction of the bishop.” Haramini’s head was completely drooping, and he was talking from sleep, from a sitting position, and his labored breathing was combined with some kind of half-snoring, between which he continued to place verbal aggression.  

“Someone here mentioned the Pope’s statement, at the congress in Fulda, can you tell me what year that congress was held in Fulda, if I remember the name correctly?” Haramina asked all but looking at Sanchez.                                          

“In 1980, year.” Pašalić was the fastest, with the answer, while Sanchez looked thoughtfully, not really experiencing, in his mind, the meaning of the question that Haramina asked him. “And what year are we living in now? In 1968, right?” He uttered it, sleepily, again slowly sinking into a doze, from which he continued to speak: “Pašalić, dear child, give me that magazine you’re holding, among those papers, with that actress. Give it to me! Put it in my hands!

Viktor added the magazine to him, as he requested. Haramina took it in his hands, eyes closed. Closer to a dream than to a waking state, he caught it with one hand, and then with both hands, he began to feel it sensually, with his fingers and palms. “Mmm, nice paper!” He opened his eyelids just a millimeter, and looked at the magazine, at its front page, with actress Raquel Welch, half-naked, energetically posing, across the entire cover. Sensually, with his long, old fingers, he felt the paper of the magazine for a while.

 “Here is a puzzle for everyone present. Look at what is written, in this magazine, under the picture of this actress. Under quotation marks, in bright yellow letters, it was written: “Years cant do nothing to her. She is like wine, the older she gets, the better she is. Everyone agrees that today, at the age of sixty, she looks better than ever before. Look, today she looks exactly the same as she did in her youth, when, at the height of her popularity, she was only about thirty years old!”                      

Loud noises interrupted the imagined session of those present. Three short shots. No one noticed the first series of knocks. It happened again, with even louder bangs. The loud knocking was heard on the big, thick door of the archbishop’s office as if the knocking hand knew that it was necessary to knock hard on the thick wooden door in order to be heard inside. Pašalić was the first to flinch at the signals coming from the door, but soon the bishop gestured with his hands towards Jakubec to open the door.

“I don’t know if anyone else was supposed to join us today, at this meeting, here?!” Sanchez asked a rhetorical question, to which the bishop answered him with a look of approval, of what he said, in the sense that he was right, and that no one else should have joined them, in that meeting, which was already in a deep phase anyway. It is too late to explain everything to someone, who might later join the council, from the beginning. “Wo bist du?” Jakubec asked in German, before even grabbing the doorknob. There was no answer from the other side, after which Jakubec opens the door, and for a while looks mysteriously, very concentrated, through the half-open door, recording the space in detail: “There is no one outside!” Jakubec closes the door and returns back, among the deep session of those present, sitting back, just as quickly, as he got up. And immediately created, and showed with his being, the mood, that he is ready to continue to listen attentively, about what was discussed just before, which in his case, resulted from the fact that he began to pluck with his fingers, that slightly short, hairy beard, what he was wearing, stroked thoughtfully, heartily picking through those hairs, not paying attention. 

“What a fool!” Haramina said, not even looking at him, continuing to talk about him, from a half-dozing state. The bishop soon gestures, now towards Pašalić, that it is still necessary to check this situation a little better. Pašalić looked for a short time to see if Haramina would return his magazine to him, and then he began to put the paperwork away from himself and slowly pull himself out of his sitting position to go check who was knocking on their door, instead of Jakubec, whose reaction, obviously, even the bishop was not satisfied. At the same time, the phone rang in the room. A black telephone, with a large plastic handle, with two large, black, round arms, and with a white dial, in the middle, for dialing numbers with the fingers, which are dialed in such a way that the finger rotates the dial in a circle. The bishop picked up the phone. And that moment, when he picked up the receiver, created a short pleasant sound in the room, that deflection of the plastic and metal of the telephone handset, from the rest of the machine. TKLAK!!! Sanchez immediately fell in love with the phone, and that sound, removing the headphones, from the rest of the phone. He wants to hear that sound again, and he can’t wait for the phone to hang up again, so he can hear it again; TKLAK!!! For a short, while he thought that he would like to hear a hundred more times, how the receiver is picked up, from the phone, but then it was immediately clear to him that a hundred times would be too much, and the pleasure would fade. It would be more appropriate, just eight more times, to listen to that deflection of the receiver, from the telephone. The bishop kept his figure motionless throughout the evening, and elegantly put the receiver to his ears: “Hello! This is the archbishop’s office! That? Say, please?! Who is that?”

Those present looked curiously toward the bishop, realizing in their spirit that the knocking on the door was certainly connected with the phone call. While they were watching the bishop, it was not clear to them, from his posture, whether he was listening to someone who was speaking to him over the phone, or whether the bishop was silently listening to the silence, on the other side of the phone, and thus responding to it, with his silence equally. It was impossible to read. After a while, the bishop hung up, back to the black telephone. A huge, big earpiece, with which he again created that expectant sound, which Sanchez wanted to be silent again, and just waited: TKLAK!                                                                

“There was no one on the line!” The bishop signaled the answer they were waiting for. “We are being eavesdropped on! If someone calls again, don’t talk over the phone! Don’t mention any details, don’t mention any names, don’t make any conclusions!” Haramina dictated everyone’s behavior, still from a half-dozing state, not getting excited at all.                           

“Now the spirits of Zagreb are disturbed. And they’re interested in finding out what’s going on.” At the same time, Pašalić opened the door, first in a half-open position, as if he was hiding behind it, and then he suddenly opened it, all the way, which was difficult to do, due to the massiveness of the object, and it took a lot of physical strength to do so. Once it was opened, and then he looked for a while, from the door, and then he started and decided to go outside, to see if there was anyone, in front of the area of ​​the archbishop’s office. He walked up and down, in the courtyard, between the monastery and the cathedral, it was already almost completely dark outside, and at the same time the fog, which was constantly present in Zagreb in those days, began to creep in.

“Is anyone there?” He said loudly once more while standing in the courtyard, and then he moved on, towards the exit from the courtyard, to the area of ​​a large clearing, in front of the main Zagreb cathedral. His attention was soon drawn by a man in a yellow coat, and under a hat, who had a large collar on the coat, which he was clutching around his neck, as if it were a scarf. He behaved as if he was a bit cold. The man soon noticed him too, they looked at each other for a while, from afar, and then the man walked towards him. On the other side of the space he noticed an unusual yellow van, which maybe wasn’t unusual, but what was unusual was the knocking on the door, now mysterious, which made everything suddenly seem unusual to him; And that man, and that van, and the night, and the fog.

The man, who was approaching him, suddenly quickened his pace and began to approach him at a higher speed. He stopped three meters from Pašalić.

“Good evening, sir, I am Commissioner Milošević!” The stranger introduced himself as expected, for Pašalić and in an expected way, because he now assumed that he was probably some kind of civil servant; A member of the police, an inspector, a member of the KOS, or a member of the UDBA, in any case, it was about one of the snoopers of the law enforcement agencies, or a member of the secret state services, between which, in Yugoslavia, as usual, at that time, there was a very thin line between them. “Good evening, young reverend, was it very lively in the square today?” “People look forward to all kinds of nonsense!” Pašalić answered briefly, in a non-informative spirit. “Yes Yes.” Briefly confirming, his statement, while a trace of breath left his mouth, in the cold, which flew out, together with “yes yes”, the commissioner smiled, and continued calmly. In a second, they clearly agreed in spirit, about everything they could agree on, if by chance they talked for a long time. Everyone was doing their own thing. Pašalić watched Milošević leave for a while, not thinking about whether he had knocked on the door. He moved away, and stopped in the place where he was standing before. From the yellow color of Milošević’s coat now only the yellow borders of the coat, inside which everything is black, were visible, which suddenly took on the image of the Virgin Mary, dressed in yellow, which fixed Pašalić’s gaze on Milošević for some time. After some time, he himself decided to retreat back to the office of the archdiocese.

“The militia is circling around the cathedral, because of today’s gathering of people in the square. Some commissar. I think he said Milosević was his name.” He reports to the group in the room.

“What commissars, what militia, don’t be naive! Tell me, rather, what kind of coats were they wearing, or were they dressed in those heavy raincoats, and what color exactly?” Eugenije examines and asks Pašalić for details in the description of the people in front of the cathedral.

“That was the color yellow!”

“The yellow color, or did you just think it was a yellow color, but it was actually a cream color? It’s not the same!” He is looking for a completely correct answer.

“No, it was yellow, really yellow. It was already getting dark outside, but I didn’t think so, I saw well the color yellow!”

“Coats, which seem light, or heavy raincoats?”

“Coats. They seemed light, yes. Yeah, they didn’t seem too heavy. I mean to say, they were not of thick material, if you mean that, and it seemed to me that the man froze a little because of that.”

“Coats, about knee-length?”

“Something like that!”

“It’s OZNA, they’re always in yellow colors, UDBA is in thick heavy cream raincoats, made of some kind of heavy material, KOS is in tight long black coats. Well, if it’s just OZNA, it means that they don’t intend to kill sister Ankica tonight.” Haramina concluded at the end of the detailed description, and Sister Ankica shuddered at the word “killed” with her entire being.

“Come on Mr. Haramina, don’t mention such things.” The bishop warned.

“And that, on the phone, a moment ago, was it really no one on the phone, as you said that no one was on the phone, or was there someone on the phone, and you reported to us that there was no one on the phone?!” He answered the bishop.

“Sister Ankica, don’t be alarmed by these disturbing allegations.” The bishop tried to sound comforting.

The lights in the room started to blink. First, vibrate a little, and then more and more, in time intervals, which were repeated, in longer and more intense intervals. Everyone noticed this, which interrupted the current conversation. “Ah, now they’re screwing with the electricity! They are sending us a message,” Haramina answered first.

“And this room is probably being bugged, maybe everyone should move somewhere. It would be best if we continue the conversation in the open, somewhere by the Sava river.” He continued to propose.

“Where are you going, are you exaggerating? Come on, don’t dramatize it.” Said the bishop.

The flickering of the light continued for some time, and then the light in the room went out completely. Darkness arose in the room. The shock of the people in the darkness was felt strongly, but they all sat in silence for a while, saying nothing, and then a figure in the darkness rose to its feet, from a sitting position, and started towards the bishop.

“I have candles with me!” In the dark, Sanchez spoke to the bishop, who had already started to feel something on the table with his hands in dark: “No, no, no need, I have a kerosene lamp somewhere on the table, so we’ll light it, that’s a better solution!”

Sanchez repeated Eugenije’s proposal, that they might move somewhere, or that they should part ways, and finish the meeting on another day, while the light shone again in the room, from the bishop’s kerosene lamp, illuminating the room with a new glow, to which those present got used to it, the following few minutes. The new light gave a subdued, blissful glow to the room, like the blissful light, at Jesus’ manger, and spread a soothing comfort with great speed, as the only source of light in the darkness, since they were now sitting in a sort of semi-darkness.

The bishop did not agree with Sanchez, after which he again began to pick up, in his hands, the huge telephone receiver. He picks up the phone; “TKLAK!” And with his fingers, he starts turning, on the big white dial, in the middle of the big black phone, now in the semi-darkness of the room. He decided to call someone on the phone. Every time, when he turned his finger on the dial and thus selected a number, he would wait almost ten seconds before turning the second number, and all that time, in the time gap between dialing two numbers, the sound of the first reversed number would resound through the room. , which would go on loudly, when he would energetically turn a number with his finger from that huge white dial on the black telephone set, and hold on, because the selected number, on the dial, would spin back on the set for a long time: Zvizzzzzzzz! It seemed infinitely long, in time, creating a sense of comfort for those present, while listening to it; Zvizzzzzz! Zvizzzzzz! Zvizzzzzzzzzz! Night fell, and the day was exhausting, with tasks for everyone, and exhausting for the body, but not so much that it was already time to sleep. However, this sound was exactly what put sleep in their eyes. Their eyelids slowly began to close, while they listened to the clapping of the bishop’s fingers, according to the numbers on the white dial of the black telephone.

“I’m calling Sister Agata, to see if the phone works, and if it does, to see if she also has no electricity in the monastery.”

His sister answered his phone, they briefly exchanged two or three questions, and after the confirmation, the bishop closed the phone. “TKLAK!” “They have electricity in the monastery, and everything works normally, so this is only up to this room of mine! I think we can continue with the work, and if you agree, it would be good if we speed up the conclusions, and part ways as soon as possible, in order to partly respect the mentioned proposals, since some people obviously want to go home, and to make it easier for nun Ankica, to end all this as soon as possible.”

“Does anyone have any other questions, before we move on to our first witness?” The bishop gave another chance, for the last part of the first part of the meeting.

 After a short thoughtful silence, everyone in the room, Pašalić answered once more. “Yes, I have another question, related to these things, of a comparative nature, with other apparitions.” So he continued; Did “Gospa Gornjogradska” mention anything related to the papacy to you? In terms of how long the Pope will be around, before… I don’t know, something important starts to happen. I say this because we have, in Garabandal, an interesting allusion, which, in some way, closely or from afar, coincides with the prophecies of Saint Malachy, about the Popes. Namely, after the news of the death of Pope Ivan XXIII arrived in Garabandal in 1963. Conchita, the seer of Garabandal, heard a voice, the Virgin Mary, in the form of a locution, in her interior, which said: “After this Pope, there will be only three more Popes, and after that, the last times will begin.” After that, she added: “Actually, there will be another Pope, but they will only rule for a short time.”

“I have heard of it, but then it would actually be the prophecy of the four Popes, although it is known as the “prophecy of the three Popes.” The bishop confirmed Pašalić’s allegation and let it be known that he was familiar with the matter.

Sister Ankica thought deeply. Sorting through her own thoughts, she gave the impression that she would have something to talk about, she wanted to start talking, but then she stopped, before saying the first word, she changed the train of thought in her head, so she just followed up on what she really wanted to say : “It is very difficult for me to talk about it, because my visions about it were very confused, and I did not fully understand them. I saw a Pope, looking in the mirror. How he observes his own reflection in the mirror. It was not one of these Popes, who are known to us today. That’s all I saw. I don’t know the meaning of that, I can’t tell you anything else about it.” 

“Yes, but there are a few problems. The first problem is that we don’t know if the Virgin Mary, when she said “after this Pope”, meant the Pope who had just died, or if she meant the Pope who had just come, after the one who had just died, you understand what I want to say? We’re not sure which Pope we should start counting the prophecy from?!” Sanchez expressed his dilemma about Garabandal.

“But Alfonso, we can get to that dilemma by waiting to see which Pope will reign for a very short time, so short that his pontificate will not be worth mentioning, in the vision of the Virgin, and that way we will know where to start counting.” Haramina tried to help.

“Well, not really, you’re not right Haramina, I’ve thought about it many times. If the Virgin Mary meant “after this Pope” the one who had just died, that is, John XXIII. then we count the four remaining Popes from the current Pope Paul VI. And if by “after this Pope” she meant Pope Paul VI. who just came to power, then we count the four remaining Popes from the one who will come after the current Pope Paul VI. So, everything changes if the current Pope Paul VI. the first in the series that we count, or the one that will come after him is the first in the series that should be counted.” Sanchez presented his calculation in one breath, which was difficult for the old Haramina to follow. This heaviness in his thoughts was evident from the fact that Haramina opened his eyes, coming out of his constant half-dozing state. He strained to think.

“Yes, actually, you’re right. Nothing changes whether there is a Pope who will rule for a short time. Actually, it’s not like it doesn’t mean anything. It means very much because from this it will be seen whether the prophecy was true, but it does not tell us from which Pope we should start counting the remaining ones, even if it is true.” Haramina muttered slowly under his breath, counting, losing himself in counting, closing his tired eyes again.

“You mentioned another problem?” He reminded eyes closed again.

“There are two more problems, we can describe them as one problem. Although the first understanding of the second problem is not a problem, but a difference in name, but again a kind of uncertainty. So, some say that the Virgin Mary did not use the phrase “before the beginning of the end times” but used the phrase “before the end of Catholic times!”

“Ah, so that is closer to the prophecy of St. Malachi if I am following you correctly?” Haramina spoke more and more slowly and drowsily, and was on the verge of snoring: “Why are we all sleepy like this?

 

 “Have you all fallen asleep, no one stayed with me to watch?!”

 

“You’re not following me well, you’re obviously too tired, it has nothing to do with Malachi!” Alfonso protested to him, on insufficient vigilance, while they were debating.

“Yeah, I like it.” And he fell asleep.

“Finally, there is a completely different problem, in the very understanding of the nature of the sentence, which the Virgin Mary used. The difference, in the very nature of the word, she used, as a difference in case or verb. The Blessed One said: “There will be three more Popes before the end of time!” So not “three before the beginning of the end times” or “three before the end of Catholic times”, but “three before the end of time”, and then probably in further retellings, those words “end of time” were changed and recounted as “the last times ” or “Catholic times,” Sanchez summarized.

“Or it was the other way around!” Haramina woke up and showed that he had followed him, even in his sleep.

“Well, fuck it!” He added.

“Oh no, it wasn’t the other way around, but the Virgin Mary, there in Spain, doesn’t talk about the “end of time” as the end of the world. That is not the meaning of those words. Remember my riddle, with the prostitute Welch.”

 

“Verily, even the powers of heaven will be shaken!”

 

The bishop decided to intervene in the calculation. “Let me help you, it’s actually very simple. That prophecy, about the Popes, from Garabandal, in order to be true, must necessarily intersect with the prophecy of Saint Malachi, about the Popes. So, this would mean, according to Malachi’s calculation, that after this current Pope, that is Pope Paul VI. four more Popes follow, before something significant, and probably something terrible, apocalyptic. So, the four remaining Popes, from Garabandal, should be counted from the next Pope, who comes after this one, whose pontificate is now in progress. That’s what the Virgin Mary meant in Garabandal, and how she expressed it is not important, so we won’t get caught up in vague sentences now. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, if two prophecies are so close in time, if they intersect in time, then it doesn’t make any sense that they don’t intersect until the end, and that way, both prophecies are fulfilled to the end, as we expect. I guess that’s reasonable, right?”

Sanchez nodded his head slightly, towards the bishop, as if confirming what was said. It made sense to cut the unnecessary tangles around something that sounds so close.

“Sanchez, don’t fall for it, the Virgin Mary said “after this Pope” referring to Pope John XXIII. who just died in 1963!” Haramina completely woke up and returned to the game: “Here, let me clearly demonstrate to you what the mason is saying; Imagine that your child dies tomorrow, and imagine that after that, for your own child, on the day of his death or funeral, you use the sentence “after this child, I will have three more children”, while counting from the next child, which is not even born yet. Well, that’s the logic of reasoning, at such a low level, that it’s inhumane!”

“Bald, don’t you see what you’re talking about?!” The bishop countered.

“And when you say bald, who do you mean, since we’re both bald?” Sanchez asked, running a hand through what little of his short black hair he still had around the edges of his head.

“I mean the one who doesn’t have a single hair on his head! To the one who is completely bald! To the one whose head is so bald that it always shines, even from this weak reflection of light, from this kerosene! On Haramina!”

“So, old senile Haramina does not understand that according to the prophecy of St. Malachi, there must be four more Popes after this one. So, after the current Pope Paul VI. there must be four more Popes in order, period!”

“Because, otherwise, it would mean that Malachi’s prophecy is not correct, yes yes yes…” Sanchez was trying to let the bishop know that he understood his logic.

“Sanchez, don’t give Garabandal, don’t give the truth, don’t give the three Popes from Garabandal! Don’t give end of time!”

Haramina began to sink again, into a drowsy sleep, at the same time sifting through his thoughts, struggling with conclusions, he said, while his eyelids closed: “The days are getting shorter, the years are flying faster, time is speeding up, people are noticing it. People, from sixty years of age, look as if they are thirty years old, or in their old age, they look younger than they looked in their young years. The dimension of time is coming to an end. People say that the whole year seems to have flown by, too quickly, as if it were a week.” He yawned deeply, immersed in half-sleep: “They think they are imagining.”

“We could talk about all that until tomorrow, but we have to deal with the most important parts. As intriguing as some of the questions here are, and seemed interesting to us, for discussion, special attention should be paid to a specific question, which the sister mentioned at the beginning, which concerns the spiritual threat to the souls of our young people. No matter how terrible the possible physical catastrophes that threaten in the undefined future, they are still only sufferings of a physical nature, which as such are not as important as threats of a spiritual nature, which can ultimately lead the human soul to complete ruin, and this is the reason our greatest concerns, and we will now devote our greatest attention to this, in the continuation of the meeting. I call the first witness; From our parish community, we will question one girl, who is an exemplary member of our youth, about the habits of young people, behavior of young people, and whether the strange order of our youth is in any way threatened, according to this guy, in order to see if such statements have a basis in reality?”

The bishop again reached for the receiver of the large telephone; “TKLAK!” And began to turn the numbers, with his fingers on the white dial, again in the same way, making an interval of ten seconds, between each stroke, letting the sound of the spinning dial, rotating backward, echo through the room; “Zvizzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzzzz!” I call Sister Agata, to tell her to send a young girl, who is patiently waiting for our call, sitting on the premises of the neighboring monastery.” Soon there was a knock on the door, which was much softer than the first knock, but since everyone was expecting a girl, they immediately noticed it. Pašalić walked towards the door and let the girl in. 

“Praised Jesus and Mary! I am Sabina Ivanišević. I guess I entered the right room, Sister Agata told me that she did not know how many people were in the room, but that with the sitting bishop there would certainly be two bald men, one completely bald, and one who still had a little hair, and by that I would know if I entered the right door. Hahaha, that’s what she really told me, no offense, brothers, so I guess I came to the right place?!” She was a slightly fuller brunette, with wavy hair, in her mid-twenties. She was wearing a brown fur coat, which fell to her knees, and revealed that she was wearing a gray coat under the fur coat, which also reached her knees.

“Welcome! Praised Jesus and Mary! Feel free to sit on the armchair.” The bishop confirmed all the above to her. 

As soon as Sabina sat down on the armchair, her attention was drawn to Haramina, who was sleeping in the room, sitting up, and who was not awakened by her entrance. The bishop noticed her looking towards him, astonished, and took advantage of this to warn her at once; “This is one of our old members, who is not quite himself, from old age, it is best to let him sleep. Don’t pay attention to what he says if he wakes up. He has lost the ability to reason and is not aware of the sentences he utters. We keep him here, out of respect for his old times. I warned you!”

“Sister Agata gave you instructions about everything that happens here, and explained to you what we are asking of you?”  

Sabina nodded and confirmed that everything was clear, adding: “It’s wonderful that our mother is showing up, in our parish, the people are overjoyed. God has not forgotten us, in these gray times!”

The bishop looked for questions, on one sheet of paper, from his notebook, which he had prepared in advance: “Let me see this first. So, we were looking for a person who is still young but is close to marriage. So you are engaged, with your man, and on the verge of marriage?”

“No, we are not engaged! I and my boyfriend have been in a relationship for two years now, so it will most likely end in marriage.”

“So you, and your future husband, are in a relationship that the catechism of our faith calls “cjelov”? The bishop asked for clarification.

“I have not heard of such an expression. We don’t have a name for our relationship. We’re together, and we’ll probably end up married.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“We are interested in whether your future husband has ever made any immoral proposals to you? Any kind, in the sense that he’s asking you for some kind of sexual activity? Which would, in any way, constitute a violation of God’s sixth commandment?”

“Well, I don’t know, now, what exactly do you mean? My boyfriend is completely normal, and an honorable man, he will be a real Christian husband in marriage!”

“Alright. We understand that these questions are of an intimate nature and that you may be uncomfortable, we will not go into any details that could hurt your privacy. That’s why you have a confession.”

“The third question is, has your boyfriend ever tried to get you drunk? I mean, have you noticed that he’s offering you an unnatural amount of alcohol?”

“Nothing special, we used to drink alcohol at celebrations; For the new year, birthday celebrations, and even on some occasions, and for religious holidays, for Christmas, outside, when we were in town.” Sabina was surprised by the last question, which she did not show, but answered routinely, in accordance with the task she had come to perform. Sabina Ivanišević was constantly smiling, from the moment she entered the room. She exuded satisfaction, that she could contribute to this meeting, and talk about her integrity, but she also exuded satisfaction, that she looked physically well. Sanchez looked at her, several times, purely considering her physical appearance, as the realization split in his head, and he couldn’t quite see if she had so many lush curves, or if she was actually a bit fat. Somehow it seemed to him that she had recently lost a lot of weight, and that she now looks the way every woman should look, and that she herself is aware of it, and that is why she is so satisfied with her appearance. This satisfaction of Sabine, with her appearance, Sanchez noticed, from her constant engagement with some part of his body. She fixed several times, in a row, her wavy hair, of medium length, with a hairstyle, and the glitter of her hair testified that her hair was dyed brown and that she was not a natural brunette, but a natural blonde, and the whole hair, touched by her hands, for a moment it would appear blue, not brown, and then suddenly it would appear brown again. She was constantly fixing her fur coat, fidgeting in the armchair.

“Okay, we are done with your personal part, now tell me if you have noticed, about the youth, and when I say youth, I mean youth in general, not only youth related to our parish, but the youth of your age in general. Have you noticed a change in their behavior, in the sense that they accept the sin of fornication in any way, or that they seem damaged to you?”

“Well, I don’t associate with youth who are not present in the church. I come from an honest and honorable Catholic family! However, I cannot say that the youth I know is deviant in any way. Girls are loyal to their boyfriends.” With the last answer, Sabina changed the shape of her sitting position, crossing her legs.

The bishop again reached for his pipe, slowly relaxing, slowing down the pace of conversation and questions: “You know, it’s very comforting to hear things like this, from the mouth of a young man, after everything we’ve heard this evening, and since this situation started happening. Black news, catching up with each other.” 

“From your mouth to God’s ears, if only it were so!” Sanchez followed up on the bishop’s words.

“Don’t let me start thinking that you too have been brain-drink by magpies!” Haramina spoke this old Croatian saying to Sanchez, from his dream, still not opening his eyes: “Well, do we have apparitions of the Virgin Mary there, in Kerizinen, France, which lasted until 1961 and which were approved by the church. Did the Virgin Mary state the statistics nicely, as we currently stand, with the number of people who are in mortal sin, who are lost. If I am not mistaken, the Blessed One stated that two-thirds of humanity is in a state of mortal sin. Pašalić, you have the papers, recite what the Virgin said, about the sin, which offends heaven the most, and because of which the second world war happened, as a punishment!”

First, Pašalić looked for approval from the bishop for Haramina’s proposal, and since the bishop did not give any specific sign of approval or disapproval, he started digging through the paperwork, looking for the exact statements of the Virgin of Kerizinen.

“Yes, yes, here they are. Before the great war, the Virgin appeared to Jeanne Louisa Ramonet, a lonely old woman, who had a sick leg, because of which she could hardly move, and suffered great pain. She saw some kind of glowing ball, which flew into her room, and shortly after that, the apparitions began, which lasted from 1938 to 1963. In the first apparitions, the Virgin Mary warned that the prayers of the righteous postpone, and postpone, the beginning of the great war, which will come as a punishment to mankind, for so many sins that offend heaven, and especially for sins of impurity. Mary said that she would give, with these words, a special, supernatural power that would touch hearts, and prophesied conquered France, the Nazis, because of sin, which came true.” Then Pašalić showed with his hand that he had various messages, from those apparitions, arranged on separate papers, so he sent one of those papers to everyone in the room, which then went around in a circle, from person to person, conveying the message paper to everyone, which was grammatically and linguistically poorly translated from French, but sufficiently comprehensible. Pašalić considered it particularly appropriate, to show, considering the context of the whole meeting. The message said:

 

“Soon Russia will make a useful contribution to the war, and it will be a great shock to your enemies (1) but from that stage pray, pray much, O Christian souls, for this vast country hostile to the Church. Otherwise, the Communists will infiltrate almost everywhere after of war, even in France, and the Church will be severely harassed by them. Pray to Jesus through My Immaculate Heart for the return of sinners and the conversion of Russia. (2) As often as possible, go to Holy Communion on the first Saturday in honor of My Immaculate Heart, something I have asked for a lot of years without anyone paying attention.”

 

Then soon he sent another piece of paper, with another message, equally poorly translated. It was seen that someone from the church was translating those messages himself. The paper also circulated around the room, among those present. Pašalić commented on the second paper, before sending it: “Hmm, these are approved apparitions, but I didn’t know that the French Revolution still haunts us today?!”

 

“O lustful and virtuous souls, have compassion on this multitude of souls who lose their way every day in worldly pleasures without any thought of their eternal destiny.

O pure and generous souls, pray, pray a lot for the legions of souls who are constantly cruelly insulting My Son with very serious sins against purity.

Let every Christian become an apostle for his sinful brothers, searching for and bringing back to the flock the souls that have gone astray so that all united can live with Christ and for Christ.

Only then will humanity – today so terribly under the leprosy of sin – see the beginning of an era of peace that will last until the end of time.

You should all pray the meditated rosary often to protect yourself from the French Revolution and religious persecution. Everyone should do what they can and 1 will do the rest. I will intervene, but if My advice and requests are rejected, as happened in 1939, a convulsion would be inevitable.”

 

While reading the messages, from the paper, Sabina lost herself in her thoughts, it was not possible to tell from her look, whether she was struggling with a poor translation, or whether the content of the messages had erased the joy in her appearance. At one point, she pulled up her gray dress, over her knees, because her knee was exposed when she sat down on the armchair, and the dress rose slightly upwards, revealing a minimal part of her thigh.

“The French Revolution and Communism are one and the same. They cut the heads on the statues of the Virgin Mary, the Jacobins, during the revolution. Did you understand? You did. Let’s move on.” Haramina explained to Pašalić his view of historical events, and after that, he went back a bit, to the Garabandal considerations, it was important to him that everything is conveyed correctly: “Also, I forgot to say, that is, it was wrongly conveyed here, regarding Garabandal, blessed said there that there would be four more Popes, actually, but that she did not count one Pope, and I am not sure that she said that she did not count him, necessarily because he would rule for a short time, I think that people concluded that afterward, that that’s why she said she didn’t count him. We don’t know why she didn’t count it! I say this just in case I’m wrong, and that the blessed one by “this Pope” really didn’t mean the Pope who just died, but the next one, that is, the now reigning Pope Paul VI. does not enter into the calculation. Although I think he’s coming in.”

“There are more of these messages, it looks like the Russians are going to invade France!” Pašalić wanted to send a third paper, with a message, but the bishop interrupted him, signaling with his hand that he was done with that series, from Kerizinen. “We will not talk about Kerizinen anymore. Messages from heaven are often conditional, even if they are true apparitions. Mary tells us what will happen if there is not enough prayer and penance, and conversion from sin. Let’s underline the “if”. This should also be taken into consideration. Let’s remember many biblical prophets, they announced dangers that were avoided, because they were obeyed.”

The bishop began to rhythmically tap the table with his fingers, from the palm of his hand, so that all four fingers hit the table in waves in a burst, one after the other, without moving his palm, which he held on the table, and in the rhythm of tapping his fingers, he began to repeat the words: “Krakarakakaus, krakarakakaus, krakarakakaus!”

Sabina looked at the bishop, thinking he was saying something to her, to which he just waved her off; “It’s really nice for me to say that, I don’t know why. It sounds symphonic, I will speak it again; Krakarakaus, krakarakaus, krakarakaus!” Sanchez briefly looked at Sabina’s thighs, while she looked towards the bishop, and returned his gaze, after her gaze left the bishop, and looked away, but he found that Sister Ankica noticed that he looked at Sabina’s thigh, who turned her gaze away from Sanchez at the same time, one hundredth too late for him not to notice.

“Don’t listen to his croaking, he is calling the devil, stimulating you! Throwing mantras at us!” While speaking, half asleep, Haramina put his finger in his ear, and Sabina was the only one who did not understand what he was talking about, while the others did not pay attention to the usual elegies of Eugenije, about the bishop, but to the word “devil” Sanchez, in his thought, immediately created three black devils, and saw them emerge from his heart. From the heart, they went down to the floor of the room, and formed a circle, and spinning, in that circle, started talking, holding hands: “Top thigh, now she needs to have her fat ass filmed when the bitch gets up! Five cocks in the room are ready for that moment! All as one!” In his thoughts, Sanchez immediately called one devil Krakarakakaus, which he was instinctively inspired by Eugenijev  immediate monologue about the bishop, the second devil represented his promiscuous temptation, and he did not have time to think about the third devil.

Haramina slowly opened his eyes and stared at Sabina, holding his finger in his ears for a while longer, watching her with sleepy eyes, mentally preparing to speak to her.

“What is your scarf?”

“Please, I didn’t understand you?” Sabina answers him.

“What is your scarf?” Haramina repeats.

Sabina was again not clear about what Harmina was questioning her about, and sister Ankica, for the first time at the meeting, decided to come forward, regarding some question, unrelated to the narrower issue, regarding her apparitions: “Think of the veil that Christian women wear on their heads. Today it can still only be seen in the countryside, in the city, the girl’s clothing has changed. Haramina has not left the monastery for years, due to his age and difficulty moving, so he did not notice that his youth had changed. But I was recently in the countryside, in Slavonia, in the village of Bogdanovci, and I can tell you that all the girls had veils on their heads. It was so nice to see our Croatian youth faithfully serving the Lord. When I was leaving that village, I saw that one day it would play a big role in the defense of our religion and homeland!”

“Well, I guess someone in the church would have warned me, by now, that this is a sin!” Sabina picked up the strings and explained.

“Well, it is not a sin, but it is a question of God’s inspiration, which is clearly stated in the Holy Scriptures, that it is ugly for women to walk without their heads covered. There is a short path between rejecting God’s inspiration and the path of sin.”

Sister Ankica answered Sabina, without looking at her, giving advice.

“To make a long story short, there’s a short way between a bare head and a bare ass.” Haramina blurted out and instilled discomfort in Sabina, who now, retroactively, felt uncomfortable with all the earlier questions Haramina had asked her.

“Apparitions in San Nicholas, Argentina, our mother says that two-thirds of humanity is lost!” Haramina continued, now in a tearful voice, in which sadness and anger were mixed, and shortly after that, he would drop his head again, half asleep.

Sanchez decided to continue towards Sabina, taken aback by what Haramina started talking to her, seeing that Haramina was sleeping sitting up again.

“Sabina, the bishop still forgot to ask you something. You say you have this man, you call him boyfriend. Have you felt in your society, in which you move, you call it Christian society, have you felt any pressure, from young people, or any people, around you, that you have to have that man, whom you call a boyfriend?”

Sabina started scratching her nose with one hand, not understanding the Spaniard’s question enough: “Your question sounds strange to me, nowadays everyone has girlfriends and boyfriends, I don’t understand what kind of pressure you are talking about?”

“Okay, from your answer it can be concluded that there was no pressure on you to enter into that relationship with that man. Thanks for the answer, and I have one more question.” Sanchez replied, then continued with a sub-question: “Before that man, whom you call your boyfriend, did you have another man who was also your boyfriend, or is this current boyfriend the only person in your life with whom you are seriously prepared for marriage? If you had previous relationships, did you feel, at any point, that society tried to force you into those relationships, in any way, or did you, personally, really want to be in all those relationships?”

Instead of itching her nose, Sabina now waved her hand in front of her nose, as if she was hot, or as if there wasn’t enough air in the room: “I had several relationships, he wasn’t my only boyfriend? I wanted to be in all these relationships, except maybe the first one, then my uncle kept repeating to me; “How come I still don’t have a boyfriend, at twenty years old.”

“Was your uncle an Ustasha or a communist partisan in World War II, if he was in the war?”

“He was in the war, and he was Tito’s partisan.”

“Thanks for the answer, I have no more questions.” Sanchez had many more questions, but he decided to stop, feeling that he might make Sabina uncomfortable and that she was already uncomfortable, to answer questions. She was constantly fixing her hair, but now out of nervousness, not out of the great mood she had upon arriving at the meeting.

“I have questions!” Haramina woke up again. 

“This one turns on and off like a radio,” Sanchez commented, and for the first time, Ankica also showed a small smile on her face.

“Anyway, I ask better questions than you, listen to him, “was he an Ustasha or a Partisan”. Well, the Ustashas forbade women to swim together with men, there on the river beach, in Zagreb.” Haramina first replicated to Sanchez, and then moved towards Sabina: “Were you loyal, to all your boyfriends, in all your relationships, like you are now loyal to your current boyfriend, and future husband?

“I was loyal, yes!”

“So, you were loyal to everyone, the way you will be loyal to your future husband?”

“Well, Darko and I are still not sure that we will get married?”

“Ah, then you plan to be just as loyal to the future ones, as you were loyal to these before, and as you will, one day, be loyal to your husband, in marriage?

At that moment, Sabina accidentally hit a cup of tea on the table with her hand and spilled it on herself. She stood up to wipe the tea from her fur coat, which had already soaked her shoes and began to wipe it quickly with her hands, and then she stopped, turned once around her axis, picked up her bag, and rushed out of the room. She tried to close the door loudly, on her way out of the room, but she realized at that moment its weight, and just staggered helplessly, almost falling to the floor.

“Whore!” Haramina stiffened and closed his eyelids.

Sanchez nodded reluctantly, at the old man’s words about Sabina, but did not warn him. He knew Haramina well, and he knew that he was not serious, with all those verbal horrors that he kept uttering, and that his seriousness was always mixed with frivolity, and in that frivolity, he completely lost his compass.

He also knew Haramina that Sanchez was thinking about him, at that moment, but he said more for the sake of others: “And what can I say about her, that girl is lost, like most of our youth. She is not aware that she is lost. She is not aware that she has sold her faith. She came here and talked for half an hour about how she is an honest girl, so she doesn’t admit her sin at all. I listen to that crap every day in confession. The enemy has won her over!”

“The bishop immediately reached for the telephone receiver with his hand; “TKLAK!” And began to turn his fingers on the dial, again allowing ten seconds of time, for each selected number, with its full rotation, to turn backward, into its place, before choosing the next number; Zvizzzzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! “I’m calling sister Agata, to catch up with Sabina, and tell Sabina to remember what I told her, about the old man, and tell her that we all think well of her and that there’s no reason to be offended!” He hangs up; “TKLAK!”

“And let Agatha tell her that Mary, in Fatima, warned against unchaste dressing, which will greatly offend the Lord, and that she herself is an example of that dressing, with her thighs exposed.” Haramina quipped cynically.

“And while we’re at it, the information about the clothes, from the visions of sister Ankica, as a sign of belonging to the Red Dragon, is a big plus of the truth of these visions, because Mary warned about it, in the Fatima apparitions, and I doubt that sister Ankica, had that information known from somewhere, so that she would, apparently, copy the statements. I remember that information very well because it was something that was talked about right at the beginning, in 1917, but later there was no more mention of it, and as the whole thing about Fatima died, I am one hundred percent sure that Ankica never heard about it. About the information. That is also my final judgment, related to the visions of sister Ankica.” Haramina was the first, in the council, to make the decision that he considered the sister’s visions to be true, and continued his concluding considerations: “Also, it is obvious that information about everything has reached the secret service, and that they are now considering the case, so I think that it is necessary, at this moment, to protect sister Ankica, and the easiest way to do that is for the church to confirm the authenticity of her visions, because I think that, after what they did to Stepinac, the atmosphere in Yugoslavia is not such that they would do it again, to someone else from that sphere, especially someone who would be declared holy or blessed. They have to calculate which line they can go to, they can’t all the time. and completely go against the people. They saw the reaction of the people in the square today, and that worries them, but it is also a protective shield, for us, at this moment. Let’s be wise!”

“Yes, Haramina, I follow you on this and agree with you entirely. Considering the situation in Yugoslavia, I think that we must, first of all, protect sister Ankica, and if the apparitions are authentic, I would say that at this moment it is less important. Whatever decision we make, we can always change it later, but if we were to declare the apparitions inauthentic now, with such a decision we would actually ease the pressure of the secret services on Sister Ankica. It is important that the church stands behind the sister, at this moment.” Sanchez expressed great agreement with Eugenio’s view.

“If you will not declare these apparitions to be authentic, and if you will not acknowledge them, then we will immediately send Sister Ankica and Sister Agata out of Yugoslavia, on the first train. Send them directly to Rome, not somewhere else in Eastern Europe, to some other monasteries, no no.” Haramina woke up completely and devised a plan of action.

The nurse, listening to the last considerations, again assumed a worried posture, sat on the chair stiffly, as if she could not keep her abdominal muscles under control, and quickly sank into her thoughts. The last sentences particularly disturbed her, especially the premonition that she would have to leave her homeland and go into the unknown because unlike the fatal scenarios, this seemed very real to her, and something that was coming into her life quickly, and then she spoke up: “I’m not going anywhere from Croatia, no matter what the decision is!” And she sounded determined, in her fright.

“Haha, you remind me of my grandmother, she never left the street! A couple of times her son, my uncle Jorge, drove her out of the street in his car. Apart from that, she never crossed the center of the street on foot alone. Don’t worry sister, everything will be fine.” Sanchez took the opportunity to sound comforting, he found only the memory of his grandmother funny, nothing about Ankica was really funny to him, although he tried to break the seriousness of the situation with humor.

“If we declare the apparitions to be credible, then she is the future blessed woman, and then the people stand behind us, and we stand behind her. We are becoming a fortress.” Haramina clenched his old fist tightly, and raised it in the air, symbolizing a strong fortress with it. It was seen that he was doing it with great effort and that it was a problem for him to make a clenched fist, but he was clenching it from the heart.

“And blessed Ankica is safe in that fortress!” Sanchez grabbed his fist with his hand, and with his strength, he lifted it a little higher, in the air, and supported it, because it was difficult for Haramina to keep it in the air. The always collected sister Ankica could not remain indifferent to the emotion, and one of her eyes watered.

While the atmosphere of acceptance of the sister’s apparitions was created in the room, the bishop rhythmically tapped his fingers on the table, from the palm of his hand, and repeated: “Krakarakaus, krakarakaus, krakarakaus! I really like saying that, I have to repeat it; Krakarakaus, krakarakaus, krakarakaus! The point is that it’s hard to say, but once you get into the right rhythm, it becomes a pleasure, and then it becomes a habit. Try repeating, and you will see. I really like it, I still have to say: Krakarakaus, krakarakaus, krakarakaus!

Sanchez took in the bishop’s words and saw in his mind how the devil, whom he called Krakarakaus, took the information the bishop was saying and took shape of it. At that moment, in his heart, he still did not say “I repent”, for the tip of the thigh that he looked at, and he immediately saw that his devil was also growing.

“I repent!” He said softly, and the devil disappear from his thoughts.

“What did you say?” Haramina asked him, already of weak hearing, while the latter lowered his hand back to him because he had kept it raised for a long time, as a sign of determination and encouragement to his sister.

“I have repented of my sin, Haramina, pray for me!”

“Always brother, I’m always praying for you! Always fight!” Haramina answered him, only now taking his lowered hand back to himself.

The bishop began to turn the pages, in his notebook, towards the back, coming all the way to the end of the notebook, to the last pages, where he stayed, concentrating on some notes, quickly underlining them with a ballpoint pen. “Yes, I agree with the Spaniard, that first of all it is necessary to protect the sister!” The bishop showed that he was still present in his thoughts, in the last conversation, between Sanchez and Haramina, despite the information he was looking for in the notebook: “Sister, I want to ask you one specific thing! Here, I’m reading it in my notebook. You say that on one occasion, “Our Lady of the upper town” prayed the rosary with you and that she laughed when you came to the part of the prayer that says “always a virgin”. Is that correct?”

The nurse changed her position in the chair and answered: “Well, you say that somehow strangely, that she laughed as if she burst into laughter at once. She simply had a smile on her face when we prayed that part of the rosary.”

“And how did you notice that she had a smile on her face just then? Does that mean she didn’t normally have a smile on her face?”

“No, she was always smiling, except when she was speaking to me about the souls that are getting lost.”

“Okay, and then how did you notice that she had a smile on her face then, related to that part of the prayer if she was always smiling otherwise? Did she smile a little harder, or what? Or maybe this, what is written here in the notebook, is untrue?

“It’s true, I noticed that she was smiling while we were praying!”

The bishop continued to underline the lines in the notebook with a ballpoint pen: “Pašalić, I give you the floor!”

Pašalić was prepared in advance for this move by the bishop. He opened the magazine, with Raquel Welch on the cover, and took out additional paperwork, which on the first page contained headlines about Marian dogmas. He first turned to Haramina: “I put this thin papyrology in a magazine, which I found in a coffee shop so that it would be separated from the rest of the paperwork so that everything would not get mixed up so that it would be easier for me to find my way.” 

After he used the opportunity to justify himself for the magazine he had brought to the meeting, he began to present the four Marian dogmas, explaining that Mary had always remained a virgin and that she had never had sexual relations with Joseph. In the end, he briefly presented that the rejection of dogma is heresy, which leads to automatic ex-communication from the church.

“I’m really interested, where was it entrusted to us by heaven, that Mary never had sexual relations with Joseph? I’m not saying that she had, but I’m saying that I’m really interested in where exactly it was entrusted to us?” Sanchez was curious.

“Surely there are some heavenly insights on this. There was Protoevangelium, which is the most important early source on the subject, and that source was condemned by Pope Innocent I, and then later they agreed that it was definitely so!” Haramina sounded cynical.

“Dogmas are not always supernaturally entrusted, but they require the absolute consent of faith!” Pašalić answered the Spaniard, and Haramina began to intervene, while the latter was still speaking: “There is also a dogma that says – membership in the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation – but the church today preaches that dogma in a different light, in the sense that this dogma has it’s a deeper meaning, that is, the truth is not exactly like that, as the dogma says, in its rigid form, but a deep knowledge of the Catholic faith is still needed for it to be so. That is, they can also be saved without membership. That’s how we have to be open-minded, and toward every other dogma, without creating obstacles to the truth. But to bypass the bishop and Pašalić, Marija was smiling, more or less, the whole time, so we can’t say that she asserted something, because she was smiling, more or less.”

“That’s the problem.” The bishop notified.

“Actually, it’s not a problem, if Virgin hasn’t asserted anything definitive about that issue. So, ask your sister, did she specifically tell her anything about that? Haramina opened his hand towards his sister, looking for an answer, to which his sister nodded her head, as a sign of confirmation of his words.

“There, the case is over!” 

Then he added: “Still, I have something to confess to you, bishop. Dogmas, by their very nature, should not be the object of deeper interpretation. But if the church itself chose the path of deeper interpretation, where are we now? Tell me, tell me…”

The bishop, through his impeccably maintained calmness, radiated escape from Haramina, and avoiding further confrontation with arguments, he turned to the black telephone and began dialing with his fingers, on the white dial; Zvizzzzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzz! “Sister Agata, more tea please!”

At the moment when Sister Agata was opening the door, Jakubec started to put on his coat, with which he exuded tiredness and a desire to go to sleep as soon as possible, and at the same time, this meant that he would not have anything different to say, from the dominant course of thought, at the meeting, determined by Sanchez and Haramina. Pašalić exuded a reluctance to exchange arguments, outside of theological frameworks. Sister Agata whispered something in the bishop’s ear as she left the room.

“Jakubec, the meeting is not over yet, but if you are tired you can go home, and the rest of us will decide. The voice of the tired is not the right voice.” The bishop let him decide.

“Jakubec, stay here, otherwise we are two against two. Me and Sanchez, against the bishop and Pašalić. And since Pašalić was brought in as the bishop’s henchman, it’s not even a draw.” Haramina cut, as if with a knife, the frame of reality, after which Jakubec decided to stay, while the bishop briefly explained that he was not against these apparitions.

“The Pope, looking at his reflection in the mirror, that is the same vision that Sister Lucia had, from Fatima!” Haramina went back to the Fatima apparitions. This is another piece of information, that sister Ankica could not possibly have known, and that she could not have heard about anywhere. Sister Ankica, how old is she?”

“I’m thirty-nine years old.”

“Well, at the age of thirty-nine, you couldn’t possibly hear the information that circulated in the twenties, and that mainly among the clergy. You were born sometime around 1930. You also had that vision, of Pope, looking at his reflection in the mirror, is that right sister, we mentioned it earlier?”

The nurse confirmed again but did not want to talk about it further.

The bishop was drinking tea and tapping his fingers rhythmically on the table: “Krakarakakaus, krakarakakaus, krakarakakaus!” All the while maintaining a hypnotic calmness, he radiated resistance to mood swings. “Krakarakakaus, krakarakakaus, krakarakakaus, sister, that person that you saw, that managed the meeting in Minsk, and that he was very important, you mentioned to Sister Joana, your roommate in the monastery, that you saw that this person was a Spaniard? Is that correct?”

The nurse changed her sitting position again, and answered, after a short pause: “Yes, that’s how I perceived it, that he is Spanish!”

“Yes, you didn’t mention that to us today, at the meeting, at the beginning I mean. Because maybe it wasn’t even important, but it wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the main paper, with the visions.” The bishop touched further.

The sister silenced his comment, and the bishop again took hold of his notebook, which he began to underline with a ballpoint pen: “Sister Joana says that you told her that this Spaniard is hanging around Zagreb?”

Silence filled the room, as the nurse did not answer the question. And then she still said: “No no, I heard the bishop, what he asked!” Informing that she is not silent because she did not hear the question.

“Well, I don’t know, in the visions everything around him was confused.” She muttered briefly to herself, continuing to be silent, not indicating that she would talk about him again.

“What do you mean he was going around Zagreb?” The bishop had to ask, and someone else would have asked if he hadn’t asked.

“I saw he was here.” It was a silent answer, spoken to himself. 

“You mean as he lives here? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes!”

The bishop asked for a few more clarifications, sub-questions, the same in nature, with which he tried to clearly shape, in front of those present, what the sister was saying. After establishing this, he began to describe his appearance, about which he had an information: “You said that this Spaniard is bald, that is, he has only a little hair, which still remains on the edges of his head. Can you describe his hairstyle in more detail? Bald in what sense? Bald like Sanchez?

“Exactly ike that.”

“What?”

“He has the same hairstyle as Sanchez! A little black short hair, the rest on the sides, and completely bald in the middle.” The nurse answered.

The bishop continued to underline with the ballpoint pen, on the notebook, he drew lines, then he circled something with the ballpoint pen, and then he poked hard with the ballpoint pen, in the middle of what he circled.

“This is the last thing we have to investigate. However, let no one think that we can leave something undetermined here. We have to clean this up completely!” The bishop notified those present, who were now attentively listening to every word from the bishop’s mouth, as well as Sister Ankica’s answers. Jakubec didn’t feel like sleeping anymore. He took off his coat back, and stared stiffly at sister Ankica and the bishop.

“You said that, by the looks of it, he is about fifty years old?

“Yeah, sort of.”

“You told Sister Joana that this Spaniard is a Jesuit?”

“Yes, he was a Jesuit.”

At this moment there was a slight commotion in the room. Haramina would have given those present, if they had paid attention to him at that moment, a rare sight of himself, with eyes wide open, which were always sleepily half-closed. It was only now that you could see that his eyes were slightly green, not just brown. He had a green pigment, in the middle of the watery, brown eyes of old age. He looked towards Ankica.

“Sister, I must warn you that there is only one Spaniard in Zagreb, who is a Jesuit, and that is Alfonso Maria Sanchez, present next to you! If you have something against him, please don’t involve it in such important matters!”

“Well, I didn’t say it was him!” The nurse answered in a low voice, it seemed like a redundant answer.

“He even tells these details, describes his physically identical appearance, in terms of age and hairstyle.” The bishop now turned to Haramina, who was still staring in disbelief, his eyes wide open.

After a short pause, and silence in the room, the bishop continued to draw lines, using a chemical pencil, calmly. He was the calmest person in the room because he was the only one who knew that it all came down to this: “There’s more, but I don’t know if you want me to read it.”

“I am not accusing priest Sanchez of anything! God is my witness! You can read everything!” The nurse asserted loudly.

“Before that, I would like to take a moment to ask Sanchez if you and your sister were in some kind of conflict, of any kind, about anything?” The bishop now wanted to hear the person, who at that moment acted as the opposing party, in the lawsuit.

“No, no conflict at all! I was barely in contact with my sister, even though we had met. We had several meetings and conversations. Sister was very interesting on those few occasions, and I enjoyed listening to her stories. All this surprises me.”

“Sanchez, I’m not speaking about you!” Sister replied, to the last sentence.

“I trust you sister, that you are not speaking about me! I don’t know what you saw in the visions, I’m helpless here.”

“Now I’m going to sound rude, but I have to ask you this, Alfonso! I also apologize in advance to my sister, if she finds herself offended by the question. We also understand her, but we have to bring this commission examination, of an informal type, to an end, in a thorough and high-quality manner, with true judgments. Have you ever noticed that sister Ankica might have liked you, physically or romantically? And did you maybe reject her, in any sense, and did you notice that maybe she was jealous of you?” The bishop listed the questions.

“Heh, this is getting a little funny!” Sanchez made it clear that all such questions would be superfluous.

The bishop went back to his brown notebook, and stared deeply into it, again leaving silence for a while in the room, which was now a pure uncomfortable silence, for the time of the initial shock had passed.

“I don’t even want to read the last one!” The bishop closed his notebook, and laid it aside, with a strong suggestion, so that the disposal would be definite.

“It wouldn’t even make sense to articulate it any other way than in a conversation with you, as the only actor!” The bishop gave an introductory explanation, then continued: “So, you wrote that you saw a Spanish priest, from Zagreb, ending up in hell!”

Sister Ankica already knew that someone would ask her this, so there was not even a second of silence when asked, but she immediately answered readily: “Well, I wrote down that we must pray for him so that something like that would not happen because he is a good man!”

“Could you possibly answer the question, which priest is that, if you know for sure who exactly you are referring to? Or did it remain undefined for you, in your visions?” The bishop gave her a chance.

“No, I saw that completely clearly! And I know very well who it is. It is about the priest sitting here with us, in this room. This is Alfonso Maria Sanchez.” The nurse clarified the last point exactly.

The bishop reached for the black telephone. Picks up the phone: “TKLAK!” He begins to dial numbers with his fingers, at intervals of ten seconds, each time letting the selected number, on the large white dial, in the middle of the black phone, turn backwards all the way through a full rotation; Zvizzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzz, zvizzzzzzzzzz! “Sister Agata, the meeting is over, you can go back to the monastery, to sleep, I know that the sick sister, on the verge of death, is waiting for you now, so that you pray the Divine Mercy Rosary for her before sleep.

After that, the bishop turned to sister again and told her briefly that he could not stand behind the accusations against one of the priests from his curia. After that, he got up from the chair and started to get dressed, followed by the other members of the council, as well as the sister herself, and they all went out of the room of the archbishop’s office together.

                                                                           

                                             2.

While they were going out, from the archbishop’s office, Pašalić held Haramina intimately, under his arm, because Jakubec did not want to hold him anymore. Sister Ankica spontaneously lagged behind the others, trailing behind them, at the end of the group. She acted as if she didn’t know which way to go, and she kept walking and stopping. 

“And where are you going after us, since you are sleeping here in the monastery?” Only Jakubec question made her realize that she didn’t even know where she was going and that she didn’t know why she was following them at all. Sanchez and sister Ankica lived in a convent, next to the cathedral, although they rarely met, because the sister lived in a part of the monastery with the nuns, which was completely separated from the other part of the monastery, where some priests and monks lived, although, from the outside, it was all one and the same, a large monastic building, which could be entered from the common courtyard, the cathedral and the monastery, in which they were currently located. Haramina and Jakubec, like the bishop himself, lived in the premises of the archbishop’s office, but on the other side of the cathedral, which was not connected to this part by a courtyard, and they necessarily had to cross a large clearing, in front of the cathedral, in order to reach their quarters.

“The sister is confused now, let her go!” Sanchez, of all people, said that, after everything that was said about him, just before, in the archbishop’s office, from the mouth of Sister Ankica, and thus at the same time publicly noticed that he also saw, that the sister did not know where she was going right now. Sanchez remained completely calm. He didn’t seem shocked.

“Look how big Sanchez is!” Haramina immediately noticed. “He knows in his heart that he is pure, and immediately, instinctively, he cares for the other!”

“Maybe Sanchez confused her, so she’s following him, as he also should have turned from the courtyard to the monastery!” Jakubec actually asked Sanchez where he was going, because he did not see that, just before, the bishop had signaled something with his hand to Sanchez, and that the Spaniard was actually following the bishop a little, to the side of that area, a little further from the rest of the group, towards a large clearing, in front of the cathedral. The bishop was actually pulling him out of the group to say something to him privately.

“Know that the Archdiocese of Zagreb fully stands behind you, that we have full confidence in you, and that this confidence is completely undisturbed by this information and accusations that have been made against you. We have been following the case for a long time, and the real truth is that we have already thoroughly analyzed it, before this commission, with all these details, which some people have heard for the first time today. There are the opinions of several dozen, the most experienced, from our diocese, who know you, who have testified for you, and who think the same thing that I am telling you. Nevertheless, I had to testify to all of this, and in front of these brothers today, who were not yet fully aware of this information, and a lot of it was hidden from them because it would not be good if the information, against you, got in the air. We are not entirely sure what is happening, but there is also another sister, Agata, who had apparitions in the monastery, and there is also the option that Sister Agata had in fact true apparitions, and that this, the other sister, intervened in some way into all that, and created a total mess, with false stories. Because it all went on for a long time, between them in the monastery, and only God knows what developed there, between the sisters, what kind of relationship. It is possible that Sister Agata was even deceived by Sister Ankica, and that, receiving true apparitions, she, therefore, believed Sister Ankica, that she also receives such apparitions, and confirmed her story in front of us. I think that sister Ankica is not straight in her mind. Now the most important thing is to prevent information against you from spreading around Zagreb, you have to understand that some fool could harm you because people got attached to this, you saw the events in the square today. Likewise, the most important thing is to remove the influence of Sister Ankica from Sister Agata, so that we can further observe the development of events, with the apparitions to Sister Agata, but without the influence of Sister Ankica, to see how the matter will develop further, by itself.” The bishop recited quickly to Sanchez, constantly looking back, lest someone from the group should approach them and hear them. Sanchez was roughly able to understand what the bishop was telling him, and nodded his head, confirming that he understood, while the bishop continued quickly; “The situation is delicate, there is information that Sister Agata confirmed, related to Sister Ankica’s statements, about events in Yugoslavia and the world, but you saw today, from Pašalić’s presentations, that this is information leaking from all other apparitions, around the world, and it is possible that Sister Ankica partially copied those statements, and partially mixed them with her lies, so Sister Agata confirms Sister Ankica’s half-true statements because they sound true to her!” Sanchez let the bishop know that he understood what he was saying by tapping him on the sleeve, as a sign of confirmation that he understood, which the bishop needed because the Spaniard still sometimes got lost in the language, when someone would quickly recite Croatian to him. The bishop went on to instruct Sanchez: “It’s better for you to move away for a while, from this monastery, everyone knows you here, and that’s why I’m sending you to the city district of Trnje, a workers’ settlement, which is outside the city center, to help them there, around their problems. You can continue to sleep here, in the monastery, if you want, and I can find you accommodation there, but in any case, don’t be constantly present here, in the cathedral area. I’m talking about the work plan, for the next year or two, you don’t have to disappear overnight, I know you’re used to it here. By the way, you can examine those allegations there, in Trnje, regarding the visions of Sister Ankica, about the socialist settlements of Savica and Folnegovićevo, and the people who moved there, because that is one of the information that Sister Agata confirmed, and as I said, I do not know if she really confirmed it, or if she was deceived!”

“Ah, that’s why last week you gave me that list of people from Trnje who have various problems and are asking for help from the church. Just so you know, I’ve already started with that job, right now I’m going to a meeting in the evening with one of those people, we’re constantly trying to establish contact this week!” Sanchez concluded, and gesturally shook his black leather bag, with one hand, which he was holding, so that the materials he held inside could be heard clattering.

“That’s right!” The bishop confirmed, still looking around. “Then go faster, and take care!”

At the bishop’s signal, Sanchez immediately moved on to his meeting, feeling that the bishop was hurrying him, and looking away from the bishop, through the fog, he noticed a yellow van, parked on the other side of a huge clearing, in front of the cathedral. He moved in the direction of the van, and when he got close to it, he saw two men, strangely dressed, like chimney sweeps, but not in black, but in completely yellow suits. They were some kind of hospital uniforms. As he got closer to them, even more, he saw that they had dark yellow suits, and they were dressed in big black shoes. One was sitting in the driver’s seat, and the other was in the passenger’s seat, but with the door open, and he was actually standing outside, on the road, just leaning against the inside of the passenger’s seat, humming:

 

“Sweet child in time

You’ll see the line

The line that’s drawn between

Good and bad

See the blind man

Shooting at the world

Bullets flying

Oh, taking toll

If you’ve been bad

Oh, Lord, I bet you have

And you’ ve not been hit

Oh, by flying lead

You’d better close your eyes

Oh

Bow your head

Wait for the ricochet

Sweet child in time

You’ll see the line

The line that’s drawn between

Good and bad

See the blind man

Shooting at the world

Bullets flying

Oh, taking toll

If you’ve been bad

Lord, I bet you have

And you’ve not been hit

Oh, by flying lead

You’d better close your eyes

Oh

Bow your head

Wait for the ricochet”

 

Descending from the kaptol, towards Zagreb’s main square, he also saw a man in a tight yellow coat who matched Pašalić’s description, and immediately registered him in his mind as a member of OZNA. He was standing in the company of several other men, but these were wearing heavy, wide cream-colored raincoats, and short cream hats, on their heads, which hid their faces, as did the thick collars, on the raincoats, which were tight-pressed against them, tightly around their heads and necks, so that their faces were almost unrecognizable. They were all wearing heavy black shoes. They exuded a spylike behavior, as if they were investigating something, or as if they were securing something. They were silent, the hazy breath from their mouths would betray them, if, now and then, they exchanged a word. They didn’t pay attention to him. There was no one else, in that whole area, who was there, because of the night and the thick fog, even though they were in the center of the city. Sanchez calmly walked past them, and went further, into Gajeva Street. 

Through the fog, he slowly left the deserted area, on Kaptol and the surrounding area, and entered the area of Ban Jelačić square, where there were still people, mostly individuals, mostly drunks and beggars, who were wandering around, aimlessly, because it was foggy and the night was setting in, as well did today’s gathering event, in the square, dispersed ordinary people from the square, and attracted the attention of certain groups. It was known, it was felt in the air, that the attention of those groups further diverts everything that is normal, away from them, changing the atmosphere of the entire space, creating a cold and threatening ambience. As he crossed, across the square, he noticed smaller groups of people, and smaller companies, standing mostly in circled formations.

One of the people, from such a group, separated himself, and with a staggering gait, as if he were drunk, moved in the same direction in which Sanchez crossed the square, in order to reach Gajeva Street, and the jazz bar “Simphony”, in which had an appointment. As they both left the square, in the same direction, each step brought them closer to each other, coming from opposite directions. When they got closer, at a distance of ten meters, Sanchez felt, in the body language of the approaching person, that the stranger was about to make contact with him. The closer he got to him, the stranger babbled less and less, and his gait became completely straight. He had a brown coat on, and the usual brown hat. The face is additionally obscured by a brown-black scarf.

“I don’t have any change! You have to move towards the cathedral, the sly ones work there and pick everything up! But I’ll give it to you another time, I will remember you!” The Spaniard refused to give change, before the stranger said anything, neither stopping nor slowing his pace. He had paper Yugoslavian dinars with him, only in large bills, and from his experience with beggars around the cathedral, he knew that if he took them out, in order to exchange them for smaller bills, in the end he would give all the money, and he did not know how much money will he spent at tonight’s meeting. He needed money.

“When we are too focused on theology, we often quarrel! That is why I am less and less present around the cathedral, and in the church in general!” The stranger sounded collected, nothing like the usual beggars he met there. As he continued to approach him, he saw that he had a beard, and longer hair, which was half sticking out of his coat, and under his hat, in an untidy manner. With his hand, which he had kept in his pocket until then, he half-tied his hair under his coat, tucked it somewhere between the scarf and the coat, in the same time rhythm as he straightened his gait, from bulging to a normal gait, and so the Spaniard noticed that the stranger had in the palm of his hand a big hole.

“What’s your name, son?” The Spaniard estimated that he was about thirty years old, so he called him son, even though he might have been much older. He could not judge him well, because of his thick beard, which obscured his face, which seemed to him extremely noble. He had deep blue eyes, and Sanchez, rushing to the meeting, wanted to stay in his company in a second.

 

“Are you Jesus?”

 

“The situation is getting nasty!” The stranger said, putting his hands back in his pockets, and continued walking, next to Sanchez, moving in the same direction, and as he put his hands back in his pockets, it seemed to the Spaniard that he also had a big hole in his other palm, or was it a play of shadows, and his thoughts.

“They don’t give you change anymore? I don’t know why, in the newspapers they write that Yugoslavia is growing economically!” The Spaniard answered, although he never read the articles in the newspaper, he only looked at the pictures and read the headlines. For him, the grammar of the Croatian language, difficult to understand, was never mastered to the extent that he could read more than the simplest texts. He avoided more complicated texts from newspapers.

“Agent Jesus Christ responds to orders. Don’t trust anyone, about anything, only to UNS agents. They are the only ones who have accurate information. They are dressed like this, like me. Brown coats, brown hats, these are our uniforms. But watch our shoes, they must be black, and they must be spearlike, like this! Look down, and remember the sound they make as they hit the ground!”

The Spaniard was looking down anyway, all the way, so he could clearly see the shoes in which the stranger was walking, which made a striking sound in every step he made. With each step the stranger would take, they could be heard touching the ground, especially now, when, with the correct posture, he was walking much faster, and making more steps per second. It was as if they were stinging the ground, while the elegant material, on the heels, sang on the asphalt.

“Jesus, that’s what they call you because of these wounds, on the palms of your hands? What happened to you to earn such wounds, son?” But the stranger was already walking away, he might not even have heard the last question.

“Spearlike shoes, remember the sound they make!” He repeated briefly, and as he walked away his step again assumed a lurching, distorted form of movement through space, giving the impression, to Sanchez, that he was pretending to be drunk, and the elegant sound of his shoes disappeared, stretched into wide-spread steps, which again became too slow for the ear to register the sound of footsteps in shoes. He did not take into account what he was saying, although some priests hid some UNS agents after the war, because the Yugoslav government persecuted them but he seemed too young to be a member of UNS – the NDH – “Independent state of Croatia” secret service in 1968. now non-existent state, which disappeared in the whirlwind of a great war, and his thoughts were already devoted to a meeting with a person in “Symphony”.

 

 

The bishop took Haramina, and led him under his arm to his bedroom, on the premises of the archdiocese. Jakubec and Pašalić were left alone, with sister, who was still standing outside, alone, in her thoughts. Two men from the yellow van, in their yellow uniforms, got out of the van and headed toward the group. 

“You are chimney sweeps? How can we help you?” Pašalić asked, while he still did not feel the threatening energy.

“Is that sister Ankica Horvat?” One of the two, in yellow uniforms, asked Jakubec, pointing towards his sister, who was standing seven meters away from them.

“We are from a psychiatric hospital. We’re taking the sister to Jankomir!” Another said.

“Ich spreche deutsch!” Jakubec said as it was the first thing that came to his mind after he felt the threatening energy…

They continued past him, without saying a word, and headed toward sister, who noticed that they were coming to get her.

 

“Oh God, they’re taking her to a madhouse!”

 

The thought was simultaneously created in the heads of Jakubec and Pašalić, who could not immediately agree with themselves on whether they should physically defend the sister. Pašalić gestured towards Jakubec, and then Jakubec gestured towards him in the same way. “Are you Mrs. Horvat?” One of them asked, and he already took her hand, before she answered anything. 

“Don’t think I’m going somewhere with you!” She pulls his hand away from him because everything is clear to her immediately.  

At the first sign of resistance, another uniformed employee started moving toward Sister Ankica. However, the first one is still closer to her, so he began to bend her hand, and from his busy attitude, it was clear that this was his job. Now the other one joined in and began to bend her other hand just as heartily. Both of them, each from their side, tried to bend her arm, in order to gain physical control over her body, in a standing position, and at the same time, they started dragging her towards the yellow van.     

“Oh, what an unpleasant situation this is!” The sister still didn’t know whether she was fighting physically, or if she was only fighting in her thoughts, so at the same time, with the abduction, she was saying something to herself.    

Jakubec noticed that one of the two uniformed employees had a smile of satisfaction on his face. He was amused by violently dragging Ankica’s sister into the van, using the arm-twisting method.

“He rapes in his heart!”

“Call the bishop! Jakubec, call the bishop!” The nurse wailed, as she wrestled with all her strength the whole way, and then at one point, she began to moan, in pain, because of both of her twisted arms.

“Brothers, help!” She called out to Jakubec and Pašalić, but they just stood there embarrassed.

Together, all three of them, step by step, approached the yellow van, in a strange semi-curled formation. Every now and then they would stop, because of the sisters’ resistance, and then an energetic move would follow, with a stronger twist of the hand, after which they would continue to move further in this formation. It seemed as if, with such a move, they corrected her every time.

The clatter of diving fins can be heard through the fog. The “sick guy” suddenly appeared in front of the cathedral. He was attracted by this event. Waddling like a duck, he approached the three in formation, which had already reached the yellow van. The chase was accelerating, rapidly, as he felt that his opportunity would pass him by after they put sister in the van.

“Crazy sister Ankica, I heard about her!” Grinning, he commented on the scene of the paramedic’s struggle with the nurse. He reached with his fins all the way to the van, at the moment when the sister was still, with the last atoms of strength, fighting not to be pulled into the van, and approached her from behind. She was helpless because her hands were being held, so the “suck guy” put his hands on her breasts from behind and squeezed them tightly.

“You have great tits!” He said, almost in her ear, while sister Ankica screamed so that the whole kaptol was torn by her loud screams.

As the two uniformed workers struggled with her hands, the “patient” stood calmly behind them, holding her breast. 

At this sight, Jakubec and Pašalić came very close to the crowd, and Jakubec began, with an open palm, to hit the “sick guy” quickly, but these were not the real man strikes on the “sick guy” body, but protest hitting on his back, like when a judge beats the table with his hand in a courtroom, that calms the parties down so that the “sick guy” did not even notice that someone was hitting him on the back. Jakubec hit the “sick man’s” back as quickly as possible, with protest punches, so that he would fire almost five of such punches in one second, repeating the words: “Bastard! Wir rufen die Polizei und gehen dann ins Gefängens! We’ll call the police, and you’ll go to jail! Bastard!”

Finally, one of the two uniformed employees, the one who did not smile while they were dragging her away, pushed the “sick guy” away with a wave of his hand and took him off the nurse. But the “sick man” did not surrender. He started moving towards her again, and the uniformed employee held him back with one hand, while the “sick guy” was kicking his diving fins in place, as a sign of protest, and yelled, enumerating:

“I know where they’retaking you, Ankice!”

“They are taking you to my empire!”

“Where they take you, I have free entry!”

“I’ll come to you there!”

“I’m going to fuck you in the ass, Ankice!”

They threw the sister into the back of the van, like a sack of potatoes. The one who was smiling, as they dragged her away, got into the back of the van with her, while the one who was the first to get back into the driver’s seat, started to start the vehicle.

Sister Ankica’s screams woke up many residents of the monastery and the neighboring archbishop’s complex, and many sisters and monks came out of the monastery, but all too late, to visually grasp what was just happening. Jakubec and Pašalić were later telling them the story until morning. The yellow van took a long time to start, and the sister was moaning out of it all the time.

If you want to read the rest of the story CONTAINING PICTURES just  google: “Đavolja noć, Smashwords, Adam Medvidović”

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