Chapter 30 Rafael
RAFAEL
ARCHBISHOP DE VECCHI didn’t knock. He never did on his occasional visits back to St. Andrews. After peering around the door and seeing I was alone, he stepped inside my office like it still belonged to him.
The holy man looked the same after all these years, though his hair had thinned on top and gone silver on the sides. His brown eyes were as warm and all-seeing as ever behind thin wire frames, and a soft smile curved his normally serious mouth when he saw me.
“Father Vitale,” he said, and I stood and rounded my desk to greet him.
I bowed and kissed his ring. “Your Grace.”
By now, we could greet each other more informally, but no matter how many years had passed, I could never bring myself to call him by name.
He was the man who’d baptized me and half the congregation.
He’d heard my first confession…all of my confessions.
He’d watched me grow up, and somehow, he always knew when something was wrong before I said a word.
Like he did now.
He placed his hand on my shoulder, studying me with that stare that had made so many of us cower when we were younger, and I felt that same urge now.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I’ve been busy.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
My insides were already twisted up in knots about what I’d called him here for today. He wouldn’t be expecting it, and I had no idea how I was going to manage to tell him about Alessio, even though I’d thought about how to say it for the last week.
I took a deep breath, pictured Alessio standing there beside me, giving me some of his strength.
He was fearless, and I needed some of that to rub off on me now.
Even when we were young, I knew if he was with me, everything would be okay.
I could hear the words he’d spoken, etched into my heart forever: “You’re the other half of my heart, the other half of my soul, and I haven’t felt complete until this moment right here. ”
The tension in my shoulders eased and I exhaled.
“Rafael,” the archbishop said, guiding me away from my desk. “Sit.”
I nodded and started to do that when I saw the door was still open and—
He was already there, closing the door and then coming back over to sit in the chair across from me. He was almost as tall as I was, his knees nearly touching mine as he settled back and laced his hands over his stomach.
Maybe this would’ve been easier behind a confessional screen.
No. I needed to look him in the eyes, not hide away.
“Lay down your burden,” he said gently, and for a moment, it struck me how odd this was. I’d said those words, in the same tone, so many times, and now here I was on the receiving end.
I smoothed my hands over my cassock and met the archbishop’s eyes. “I’ve recently run into Alessio again.”
He arched a brow. “Recently?”
That wasn’t where this needed to start. “No. Not recently. He’s…”—brought his brothers around but never wanted anything to do with me until now—“been coming in for confession for years.”
His expression unchanging, he said, “I see.”
“I…told myself it was the best thing I could do for him. Be there. Listen. Give him guidance if he asked. I thought it was a boundary I could maintain.”
“And?”
“And it wasn’t.”
Silence filled the space between us, and to his credit, he waited for me to continue, as long as it took.
“His last confession,” I said slowly, ignoring the way my voice shook just a little. “It forced me to confront something I’ve kept buried for a very long time.”
“And what is that?”
I closed my eyes and pictured Alessio’s face. “That I never stopped loving him.”
I waited for the shocked gasp or admonishment. I waited for the archbishop to tell me he didn’t believe me, but when seconds continued to tick by in silence, I opened my eyes to see his head cocked to the side like he was waiting for me to continue.
“I thought if I buried myself in my studies and seminary textbooks, if I focused on strengthening my relationship with God, if I gave myself over to others, to hearing their needs and if I stayed disciplined”—I was rambling now—“then eventually I’d forget about him and about how much it hurt to be apart from him.
I was already so deep in grief over my parents, and I thought I’d drag him into my despair too.
” I swallowed and met the archbishop’s eyes again.
“I was wrong. I never forgot him. I never stopped loving him. And I still do.”
He studied me as he steepled his fingers, resting his chin on them. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, could only feel the mix of relief and anxiety swirling through my body as I waited for him to speak.
“Do you remember the Easter vigil your first year serving?” he asked.
I blinked, surprised at the turn in conversation.
“You both were so young, and Alessio… He hated the incense. Complained about it the whole time.”
I smiled at the memory. “He said it reminded him of a hippie store. I didn’t even know where he’d heard that.”
“Yes,” the archbishop replied dryly. “And then you elbowed him so hard you nearly knocked the thurible out of his hands.”
Oh, I remembered. I’d been trying so hard not to laugh at him, and my parents had noticed and given me an earful on the way home.
“You thought I didn’t notice,” he continued. “The way you watched Alessio during mass. The way he watched you back.”
My chest began to tighten, and I found it suddenly hard to speak.
“You were boys, but there was affection there.” He dropped his hands, one of them patting down the pectoral cross he wore.
“When you chose the seminary, I told him to let you go. Not because I was trying to separate you two or because what you felt was wrong. But I believed you needed the space to decide for yourself what you wanted.”
My mouth parted as his words hit me. He’d never spoken about this before.
“Alessio came to me in the garden. He was so angry, angrier than I had ever seen him. He said God had taken you from him and he hated both me and Him for it.”
“I could’ve…handled things better.” Every second of that day had replayed in my mind for years after that. Alessio’s confusion, followed by shock and then outrage when I told him I was leaving. For him, it must’ve seemed like the wrong choice, and looking back, maybe it had been too rash.
“He still came,” the archbishop continued. “To church. Showed up every Sunday after you left. Glared at me the whole time, but he was there. I didn’t take it personally, of course. He loved you fiercely—”
“He still does.”
“Yes.” Archbishop De Vecchi nodded. “And you love him equally.”
“Yes.”
“What troubles you is not that you love him…”
I shook my head. “It’s that I promised my life to God.”
“And you believe those loves cannot coexist?”
“I don’t know how they can.”
He nodded slowly, no disapproval or disappointment in his expression. “You stood in this very office years ago and told me you were entering the seminary.”
“I remember.”
“You were grieving. And you were afraid.”
“I was.”
“Tell me, Rafael. When you made that choice, were you running toward God? Or away from loss?”
There it was. What I hadn’t wanted to face or voice to Archbishop De Vecchi out loud, but he’d found it anyway.
“I…needed solid ground,” I admitted. “Structure.”
“Yes.”
“I needed peace.”
He nodded. “And did you find it?”
“Yes. For a time.”
“But now?”
“Now I feel divided.”
“Between God and Alessio?”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Between who you were and who you are becoming.”
I sat with that for a minute, let it sink in. It hadn’t occurred to me to think of it that way. With one sentence he’d given me more clarity on the situation than I’d gleaned for myself—but he wasn’t done yet.
“There are other ways to serve, Rafael. You know this. A priest who seeks laicization does not cease to be Catholic. He does not cease to believe. Stepping out of active ministry doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to be of service.”
I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes, but they weren’t from regret or fear.
They were from relief. And guilt.
“I’m afraid I’ve failed,” I whispered. “I’ve broken the most sacred promise—”
“You broke your expectation of yourself.” He reached out to me, covering my hand with his, a move so out of character for him that I couldn’t help but feel touched.
“You were sincere in that promise, yes? You meant it. But vows made in grief are not the same as vows made when you’re whole.
Forgive yourself, Rafael. You are only human, as we all are. ”
His words had me coming undone, and I bowed my head as a tear escaped, falling down my cheek.
The enormity of this decision hit me then, but I knew without a doubt that it was the right one.
There was no world for me that didn’t have Alessio at the center of it, but I’d needed to hear the permission I couldn’t seem to grant myself.
I’d prayed, asked for forgiveness so much that I wasn’t sure God wanted to hear from me anymore.
To move on, I needed absolution. I’d needed that from my mentor, the man who’d been there my whole life.
The archbishop gently lifted my chin, a soft expression on his face, like that of a father trying to give comfort to his son.
“Do you believe God to be so fragile that He cannot withstand your choice?”
The idea of that was so ridiculous that I smiled and brushed away the wet trail of tears from my cheek. “That would be incredibly self-righteous of me.”
Archbishop De Vecchi raised a brow. “It would, wouldn’t it?”
It was as close to teasing as he got, and it broke the tension I’d been feeling leading up to this meeting. Like a balloon bursting, it all rushed out of me then in a long exhale, the weight off my shoulders, my decision and my path never more clear.
“One more question,” he said. “What can you not live without?”
Alessio’s face immediately came to mind. The quiet way he’d chosen me year after year, with no promise, no hope of a future together. Loving me in secret. Watching me and watching after me. Believing I was someone worth choosing, someone worthy of him.
He was the best man, the best person, I’d ever known.
The way I knew he protected his loved ones, his brothers, without hesitation.
The way he was unmovable, unshakable, so certain about who he was and what he wanted.
There were so many things to love about him that I could’ve spent endless days counting them off, but I would save those days for when I could tell him myself.
So instead I smiled softly and answered, “Alessio. I can’t live without him.”
Archbishop De Vecchi nodded once and sat back in his chair. “Then your path is clear. Go love him as the man you have become. You have made your choice, and I absolve you.”
It finally hit me then, as I sat across from the man who’d once told Alessio to let me go, and bowed my head as he began to pray over us, that I was not betraying God after all.
I was finally choosing honestly, without fear or grief or pressure, because my faith wasn’t diminished by my loving Alessio and choosing to spend the rest of my life with him.
It was completed.
The way it always should’ve been.