Ripbrownjr
CH 3 Monastery -- the new Abbot arrives
Smiling, the new Abbot stood in the shaded courtyard of the Monastery with his head tilted toward heaven. He breathed in the scent of the pink bougainvillea in the shade of a purple Jacaranda tree. The daily life of the monks bounded around him; a choral chanting morning vigils in the Cathedral, the keeper of the garden removing dead branches -- one brushed the blue-tiled floors with a broom of dried reeds – shish-shish-shish.
Wearing his white poncho and huaraches, carrying a bible, the Pastor of his flock strolled under the portals. He watched as a pair of monks slid out of cartons gilded-framed portraits of Popes he had smuggled out of the Vatican, those responsible for the Inquisition: Gregory IX, its creator in the age of Dante, Clement VIII, Alexander IV, Innocent IV and Pope Sixtus IV, founder of the Spanish Inquisition for Isabele and Ferdinand, which later followed the Conquistadores to Mexico with the mission of wiping out heresies in the new world. They targeted secret jews and the Indigenous population, who practiced witchcraft with hallucinogenic medicines, who they then enslaved for five centuries.
The Abbot ordered the portraits to be hung upside in the hall leading to his private library so he would always be reminded of their evil. If he could in another life, he’d torture them. Instead, he would settle for torturing men like them in Mexico, those responsible for evil deeds against the innocent. For this purpose, he had under construction a secret torture chamber in the forgotten catacombs of this Monastery built in 1803 by the Viceroys -- how many other secrets did it contain?
The Abbot himself was a Mayan from Chiapas, orphaned at a young age when his parents were murdered in cold blood for their meager plot of land. Taken by a Jesuit to Rome to serve in the Vatican as an altar boy he rose to the level of novitiate. But his destiny he knew was not to stay in Italy. He had his own mission to fulfill, whispered to him in a dream by an Angel: one day the Virgin Mother of Guadalupe would call him back to Mexico, the land of his ancestors, where he would be the instrument of the Lord’s wrath. Now, as the Abbot of this unassuming humble monastery hidden in the mountains above Mexico City, he could start to enact his plan. But first he would have to find a boy he could mold to become the leader of a new world order.