Bless Me, Father

It was Monsignor Dolan’s job to do, but one too many holiday dinners with his wealthy parishioners had brought on a case of gout and made it impossible for him to walk. The early December snowfall had already deposited over six inches on Greene Street and showed no sign of letting up, so Msgr. Dolan couldn’t drive his car from the garage at St. Francis Xavier RC Church to the penitentiary a few blocks away on Fairmont. A younger, stronger priest would have to make the walk there, so Dolan’s assistant, Father James McCarthy, the low man on the Philadelphia diocese totem pole, got the call.

McCarthy was accustomed to being the low man and having others make decisions for him. Born in 1904 and the sixth of eight children, and fifth boy, of a lower class, Irish Catholic immigrant family, it was understood from his earliest days that he would become a priest. It was the Irish way of payback to God for granting the family the good fortune to immigrate to America. No one asked McCarthy if he wanted to be a priest; it was just understood by everyone, including him, that he would be. As the family joked, it was pre-ordained that Jimmy would be ordained. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but that’s the way it was.

Now, it being 1930 and him being at St. Francis Xavier for a year, he was becoming used to the life. The country was in the Depression, millions were out of work and thousands were poor, cold, desperate, and hungry. McCarthy did not make much money, but enough to send some to his family, and he had food, warmth and shelter in the church rectory. Three hots, a cot and a roof.

Fr. McCarthy trudged through the snow the five blocks to the Eastern States Penitentiary and rapped the knockers on the courtyard entrance. A guard opened up and led McCarthy across the courtyard to a small room in the corner tower of the block-square prison. “The Warden will be right with you,” said the guard.

The room had two, wooden, straight-backed chairs arranged facing each other, and McCarthy took the one furthest back and facing the door. A moment later Warden Smith entered.

“I’m sorry,” said the Warden. “I was expecting Msgr. Dolan. Who, may I ask, are you/”

“Father McCarthy, his assistant,” replied McCarthy. “The Monsignor has the gout and can’t walk.”

“Just as well,” sighed Warden Smith. “Terrible night all around. Did he tell you about Colletti?”

The Warden went on to explain that Nicola Colletti was to be transferred tonight to Rockford to be executed for the murder of a pregnant mother and her unborn child he had killed in the course of a bank robbery two years ago. Colletti had been put up to do the job by the local mafioso and Colletti had a sick wife and child and needed the money the gang promised to pay. The gang gave him a gun “…just to scare the tellers..” but the bank guard saw the gun in Colletti’s waistband, confronted him, and in the resulting melee the gun went off and killed the woman. Turns out the woman was a Philly police officer’s wife. Kill a cop or his family in Philly and you hang, and that’s what the jury said.

“Colletti was desperate and had no criminal history, and while he’s been here, he has been distraught and remorseful. But he’s going to hang nonetheless,” said the Warden. “that’s the way it is.”

A guard opened the door. “He’s here,” said the guard.

Colletti shuffled in, in handcuffs and leg shackles, and was seated in the chair facing McCarthy. He clasped his cuffed hands together, his elbows resting on his knees, his shoulders slumped and his head down and eyes on the floor. His shoulders were trembling like a child with a fever.

“Are you alright,” asked McCarthy. But Colletti just raised his head and looked away. “Let’s get on with it,” he said.

Fr. McCarthy put on his vestments and quietly prayed the Latin prayers for repentance and the soul while Colletti rocked slowly from side to side and started sobbing.

“I’ll hear your confession now,” said the priest and Colletti cleared his throat. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned….” When Colletti finished, McCarthy asked him to make a “good Act of Contrition,” and gave him absolution, as provided in the Catholic rite.

McCarthy rose to leave but Colletti reached up with a cuffed hand and grabbed his sleeve. “It’s not fair,” said Colletti in an angry voice, “Why me?”

“Mr. Colletti,” consoled the priest, “as sad as it may be for you, God must have you pay for your crime. That’s only fair, and that’s the way it is. But He has now forgiven you, and He will welcome you in heaven tonight.”

“But that’s it!” shrieked Colletti. “I don’t want or need God’s forgiveness. I want my wife to forgive me for the hard life I am leaving to her. I want my son to forgive me for leaving him alone. I want that woman to forgive me for taking her life, and her child to forgive me for never allowing him to see the world. I am forgiven and go to heaven, but my wife and child go on living in hell. If the poor woman missed Mass or died with some other mortal sin blackening her soul, she goes to Hell and could be there now. And the poor child…not baptized so not in heaven, not with his mother…in Nowhere forever. They all suffer but you say a few words, and I go to heaven? It’s not fair!”

The Warden and the guard, hearing the commotion, came into the room “It’s time to go, Mr. Colletti,” said the Warden.

McCarthy turned to Colletti, who was sobbing uncontrollably. “Don’t be afraid, my son,” said the priest, as he put an arm around the shoulders of the prisoner, “I’ll come with you to Rockford, if you want.”

Colletti stopped sobbing. He was resigned to what was happening. ”No, Father. It’s alright,” he said wearily, “there’s nothing for you to do there.”

Colletti was led away and in a short while later the guard brought McCarthy’s coat, hat and boots and escorted him through the prison courtyard back to the gate on Fairmont. The snow was blowing harder than ever. “Good night, Father,” said the guard, “and be careful.”

Fr. McCarthy pulled his collar up around his neck and leaned into the wind and blowing snow. He suspected Msgr. Dolan was now asleep in his favorite chair by the fire while McCarthy was slogging through the snow, chilled to the bone and Colletti, shackled and flanked by two armed guards, was being taken upstate to the gallows.

“It’s not fair,” McCarthy thought to himself. But that’s the way it was.