The Accidental Pope by Ray Flynn

Author:Ray Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250090287
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

29

DINNER WITH THE KIRBYS

The holiday spirit of the Christmas season in Rome is far less intrusive than the commercial circus to which the average citizen is subjected back in America—more about family and tradition and less about gifts and parties.

It was on a mid-December morning that Ed Kirby, his wife, Kathy, and their daughter, Maureen, now a senior at Marymount International High School in Rome, drove to the da Vinci Airport to meet the other Kirby daughters: Julie, twenty-three, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, working part-time at a Chicago law office; Nancy, twenty-one, a senior at Salve Regina College in Newport, Rhode Island; and Kate, nineteen, a sophomore at Providence College. All were arriving on TWA from Chicago via Boston. Their two sons, Ed Jr., twenty-seven and a navy officer, and Ray, twenty-five, owner of a Chicago pizza restaurant and an avid Cubs fan, would not be arriving until just before Christmas Day.

The Kirby girls greeted the household staff at Villa Richardson upon their arrival, updating everyone about how they were doing in school. Nancy said she had nothing to wear a couple of evenings from now to the big U.S. Marine Corps Birthday Ball at the Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto, and had to buy a new dress.

When three Marines stationed at the Rome embassy had met Maureen a few weeks back at a popular nightspot—Ned Kelly’s Australian Bar—they asked if her sisters were coming over for the Christmas holiday season and invited them to go to the ball as their dates. The ball was a very special event, with the Marines dressed in their formal blue uniforms, swords and all. The talented Italian Carabinieri Band, with some sixty members, provided music annually.

Ambassador Kirby enjoyed a very special relationship with the marines, always attending their events and regularly playing basketball with them to keep fit. The Kirby girls had attended the big ball in the past and knew that they were in for a real treat. As a matter of fact, Ed Kirby was scheduled to receive the U.S. Marine Corps’s “outstanding service” award, for upholding the very professional relationship that existed between the old U.S. embassies and the Marine Corps. When the State Department decided to cut back on security and downsize the marines at the Vatican embassy, it was Kirby who strongly protested against it. The Rome embassy and all the other embassies throughout the world had marines guarding them, and so should the embassy to the Vatican. The State Department responded, “Our budget was cut, and the Vatican embassy is less important than the Italian embassy.” That comment provoked open resentment at the Holy See, despite the special, personal relationship Ambassador Kirby and his wife had established with the pope himself. United States and Vatican relations, as important as they were, were not a priority at the State Department.

Now, when Nancy said she needed a new dress, the other three girls chimed in as well. “Let’s go now before the stores close for supper,” said Katie.

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