It could happen …

Down a long hall where shifty-eyed clerics in maroon framed oil paintings stare at each other, a series of past prelates from a highly secret sub-office loosely connected with dotted lines to the Vatican through an invisible org chart which appears to be part of the Pontifical Council of Culture, stands a single wooden door. 

There, a confab gathers weekly. A frosted glass nameplate marked “Privite” is imbedded into the wood, just left of a frosted glass door knob. The floor also looks like frosted glass. No, Privite is not misspelled. Privite is a Polish name for “Gift of God,” but everyone assumes it means “Private” in some austere language — like Basque. 

Behind that door, though no longer undisclosed since we found it, each member of the 1,500-year-old oddly named organization grabs a fig danish, an expresso, and a napkin. They then sit at a conference table that seats twelve. It is believed that each seat is filled by a semi-dicastery official, and therefore probably clandestine because we could not find anyone’s name. We do know, however, that they all wear black suits and red socks. Don’t ask why we know that. OK, go ahead and ask. We found a photo taken by a phone camera, probably accidentally, which awkwardly shows half of the feet under the conference table.

No one knows in which order, but we can assume their socks were put on before the suits. The danish is probably grabbed last. We calculate that’s when they sit down.

An agenda for each week pops up in a shared Vatican Dropbox folder that until now has never been revealed because Dropbox is only a couple of years old, and not entirely secure, which should probably be looked into. The first thing we found was that picture of the feet. The other things were encrypted, but likely were emailed or transfered copies of the agendas for the last five years. 

Communication rarely takes place outside of the Privy — which has become short for Privite, because no one is privy to the private members of the Privite. By the way, Privite is pronounced, pree-vee-tay in Romanian, which is the preferred way to say it. Some believe that Privy can also mean an outhouse, but since none of the members are from Kentucky or Utah that reference doesn’t pass the smell test.

The agenda for this week’s meeting, which is always held on Tuesday mornings at 5:27 a.m., or so, lists only three bullets with single worded topics:

• Nettuno
• Sangha
• Rohingya
  
  

At the top of the A4 rectangular sheet found in a balled up, uh … ball … in the hallway is written (upon a lovely lacy vellum in hand-scripted calligraphy, by the way) the title of the day’s discussion as “Novembre 28 Agenda,” which is today. The sheet was found this very day. Not in Dropbox, but on the floor. 

Agenda is Latin for Agenda. Novembre is Spanish for Novembre in Italian. The number 28 is English and French and a bunch of other similarly numeric lingual digits for the non-digital ”bist o hasht” of Farci.

At the bottom of the page, written in French handwriting, which we know because it is so beautiful and poetic in its style, reads, “Do not speak these words.” We have translated the phrase into actual French to support our theory. “Ne prononce pas ces mots.” Since the force of the sentence doesn’t come across with the proper emphasis, we have re-translated the phrase into German. The effect is now clear. “Sprich diese worte nicht!”

So, whatever you do, do not say these three words out loud.

In order to be even more emphatic, we added another phrase, “Sprich diese Worte nicht, verdammt du,” which is hopefully clear to the reader.

We’re not sure what transpired in the discussion, but we’re assuming it went pretty quick since no one was able to actually use any of the words. We do know, however, that Nettuno is the name of the American Cemetery in Italy which the Pope recently visited on November 2. Sangha refers to different religious communities of Buddhists, whom the Pope spoke to also in November. The Rohingya people are Muslims who’ve been “cleansed” in Myanmar. The Buddhists have been summarily killing the Rohingya people and putting them in cemeteries. That’s kind of how we put all the words together, anyway.

Pope Francis has been meeting with the Myanmar people for a few days and gave a talk today — the bist o hasht of November — carefully referring to the Rohingya’s without once mentioning their names.

Unfortunately, journalists were writing out the name “Rohingya” over and over, mostly we assume to be sure of the spelling. Also, commentators listened on the edge of their seat, telling their audiences to watch for the Pope to say, “Rohingya.” He never did. And then, the commentators commented over and over how Rohingya wasn’t said by the Pope.

We can conclude, then, that the Privy meeting was a total failure. Everybody watching the news of Pope Francis, especially in Myanmar, were thinking very hard about the Rohingya people. 

That’s probably why there was a balled up paper in the clandestine hallway which is nefariously connected to the Pontifical Council of Culture. One of the twelve members likely went postal with the only weapon available. He crumbled up the Agenda and threw it into the hallway. 

Or, he threw it at someone and it bounced into the hallway. Or, maybe it was kicked into the hallway soccer style off of the ankle. That part is unlikely since no read fibers were found on the paper.

That kind of angry outburst hasn’t happened with a member of the Privite for 500 years. A crumpled up copy of the 95 thesis was found in that very same hallway. It was totally covered in red fibers, which hints at the presence of red socks in the Privy even 500 years ago. 

Soccer has nothing to do with red socks, but it is interesting to think about.