The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [24]
“The pope wants to talk with you, too, but he wants to talk with you after you meet with Father Bartholomew.”
“Okay.” Castle agreed. “I will do that. But I have one last concern.”
“What’s that?”
“You are sure the pope doesn’t want to have it both ways?” Castle asked cynically.
“What do you mean?”
“If I conclude Bartholomew has a mental illness, the Vatican could always just say, ‘Castle is not a Catholic and he doesn’t believe in God. What did you expect him to find?’”
“In the final analysis,” Morelli said seriously, “you’re the doctor and the public will believe you, regardless of what the archbishop, the pope, or me—the used-to-be devil’s advocate, as you put it—has to say.”
“Okay, then. I will agree to see Father Bartholomew as a patient.”
“Thank you,” Morelli said in conclusion, reaching out to shake Dr. Castle’s hand. “I look forward to working with you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Tuesday
Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City
Day 6
Morelli brought Father Bartholomew to Dr. Castle’s office in a wheelchair. The priest was dressed in a full-length hospital robe, not his black priest’s suit and black shirt with its Roman collar.
Scrutinizing Bartholomew carefully, Castle realized how deceptive were the wheelchair, the hospital robe, and the heavy bandages on the priest’s arms. Far from being weak, Bartholomew had an athletic build.
Judging the priest to be less than six feet tall, Castle could see that Bartholomew, a mature man in his early forties, was still very strong, fully muscled in the upper body and shoulders. Though he was sitting in the wheelchair, the hospital robe appeared to cover well-exercised legs. If Bartholomew had ever played football, Castle was sure he had been a guard or a tackle, not the quarterback. Castle guessed the priest was no stranger to the gymnasium and he wondered if the priest had a history of weight lifting. Castle immediately suspected Bartholomew’s physical strength and stamina had been critical to his ability to survive the violent car accident that had nearly killed him, as well as the stigmata that were afflicting him now.
After Morelli excused himself to the waiting room, Castle settled into his chair. “I assume you know why you are here, Father Bartholomew,” Castle said.
“Archbishop Duncan asked me to see you,” he replied, “and you can call me by my first name, Paul, since I assume we are going to get to know one another pretty well.”
“Very well, Paul,” Castle began, taking Bartholomew’s file from the coffee table and paging through his notes. “You can call me Dr. Castle.”
Castle was not interested in his patients becoming his friends. Besides, he knew from decades of experience that the process psychiatrists call “transference” would begin almost immediately. Once transference began, most patients would begin imagining the psychiatrist understood their inner thoughts and feelings, believing the psychiatrist was the only person in the world who could truly understand them and help them.
Both Bartholomew’s forearms were heavily bandaged. Long white gloves with the fingers cut out had been drawn over his hands to help mask the sight of the bandages that reached from the fingers of both hands up the forearms to his elbows.
In person, the impression that Bartholomew looked remarkably like images of Jesus Christ was unavoidable. Bartholomew’s long brown hair and thick reddish beard framed a long, thin face with prominent cheekbones. The beard ended with a double-pointed fork at the chin, just as Father Morelli pointed out with the man in the Shroud. Bartholomew’s mouth was well defined by a neatly trimmed mustache. His hair was twisted in a braid that trailed down his back to beyond his waist. Bartholomew’s soft brown eyes looked out from beneath bushy eyebrows that also appeared to need a serious trimming. In the two thousand years since the death of Christ, the image of Jesus had become an icon. Now something resembling that icon was sitting across from Castle as a patient in his treatment