Chapter 63: The Monsignor and His Sin

MATEO – POV

Rome is a city that never sleeps, even when the silence of its streets is deceiving. The bells mark every hour like pulses from heaven, and I walk among basilicas, columns, and domes that seem to crush me with their millennia-old grandeur.

I am a monsignor. A title that opened the doors to this world of marble and gold, of respect and solemnity. Here no one calls me Mateo. I am Your Excellency. I am the promising shepherd. I am Mexico’s chosen one.

But I know the truth. Beneath this purple cassock, I am still a man stained by forbidden desire.

The morning began with a solemn Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Incense rose like sacrificial smoke, and the faithful listened with devotion. Their eyes looked at me as if I spoke in God’s own name.

I pronounced every word with firmness, my voice echoing beneath the vaults painted by Michelangelo, yet inside I was suffocating. Every Amen reminded me of her voice moaning in my ear. Every gaze of faith fixed upon me was a slap that sent me back to San Cristóbal—to her naked skin beneath the storm, to the night I stopped being a priest and became a man.

After the ceremony, Cardinal Bernardi summoned me to his office in the Apostolic Palace. His voice was grave, measured, heavy with authority:

“Monsignor Mateo, the Holy Father is pleased with your work. Your story has touched hearts around the world. He wants you to visit one of Rome’s poorest neighborhoods. It’s important that people see you, feel you close to them. You represent the hope of a renewed Church.”

I nodded solemnly, as if a storm were not raging inside me.

“It will be an honor, Your Eminence.”

A renewed Church. If only he knew that the only thing renewed in me each night is my desire for a woman.

I left the Vatican that same afternoon, accompanied by a group of volunteers and two television cameras. We walked through Tor Bella Monaca, one of Rome’s poorest neighborhoods, where imperial marble crumbles and poverty throbs like an open wound. Barefoot children ran toward me, elderly women kissed my ring, men embraced me as if I could save them from their personal hells.

“Bless me, Father. You are a saint.”

Their words struck me like punches. A saint?

I am no saint. I am a sinner who carries in his chest the burning memory of a woman.

We spent hours distributing food, hearing improvised confessions on dark corners, praying with people who clung to my hands. I spoke to them of faith, of hope, of God’s transforming power. They looked at me as if they truly believed it, as if my voice were that of a heavenly envoy.

But all I could think about was her. Lucía.

As I stroked the head of a hungry child, I remembered the way she caressed my face with tenderness. While handing bread to the poor, I wondered whether she had anything to eat in Vancouver. Surrounded by people calling me a saint, I heard the cruelest voice of all inside me:

You are a hypocrite. A fraud. They don’t know that that woman’s body was your profane altar. They don’t know you broke the most sacred vows, that you moaned her name like a blasphemous prayer. They don’t know that while you preach purity, your body burns for her every night.

As evening fell, one of the journalists approached me with a camera.

“Monsignor, people love you. I’ve never seen so much faith gathered in one man. You are a true example for the modern Church. Would you grant us an interview?”

I smiled. I thanked them. I feigned humility. Inside, I felt nauseated.

Because while they see me as an example, I see myself as a filthy man, burning for a memory I cannot erase.

Back at the Vatican, the grandeur of the walls felt like mockery. The gleaming marble, Raphael’s celestial frescoes, the angelic choirs—everything was a perfect stage to hide my rotting truth.

I knelt in my room before the ivory crucifix.

“Lord, if You truly chose me, free me from this. Take away this desire that consumes me. Make me worthy of the title I bear.”

But my mind betrayed me.

I did not see the cross. I saw her mouth searching for mine in desperation.

I did not hear sacred silence. I heard her stifled laughter, her broken gasps, her voice whispering “Mateo” as I took her against the wall.

My body reacted violently. I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms. I ground my teeth until my jaw ached. I felt sweat run down my neck, soaking the clerical collar.

I couldn’t control it.

I sprang to my feet and paced the room like a caged animal. The window overlooked Saint Peter’s Square, brightly lit, tourists still strolling and taking photos of God’s glory. No one could imagine that the man they called monsignor was being consumed by desire in the half-light of his cell.

Faith sustains me in public.

Sin sustains me in private.

And that double life destroys me slowly, like an incurable disease.

That night I attended a banquet with Vatican diplomats at the Palazzo della Cancelleria. Political smiles, elegant speeches, toasts with Italian wine. They surrounded me, praised me, told me my charisma was a divine gift. Some looked at me as if they already saw the cardinal’s red hat upon my head.

I nodded, drank Chianti, feigned joy and gratitude.

Inside, every compliment was a bloody lash.

If only they knew the truth. If only they knew my body belongs to a woman and not to God. If only they knew that while they speak of my holiness, I pleasure myself thinking of her every night like a desperate adolescent.

“Monsignor Mateo,” an elderly bishop told me, “you are the future of our Church. An example of devotion for young priests.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” I replied firmly. “I only try to serve God with humility.”

A lie. All of it is a lie.

Back in my room, exhausted from pretending, I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. It seemed to tilt toward me, threatening to crush me. I tried to pray the rosary, but the only thing that left my lips was her name.

“Lucía…”

I closed my eyes and let the memory drag me under. Her body beneath mine on the narrow bed of my room, her nails clawing my back and leaving marks that took days to heal, her voice breaking as she said, “I love you, Father,” while I thrust into her in desperation.

Need consumed me like hellfire.

My hand moved before I could stop it. I hated myself for it, but I didn’t stop. Because in that moment, in the darkness of my Vatican cell, I was not a monsignor. I was just Mateo—the man who had known paradise in the arms of a battered woman.

Afterward, guilt fell upon me like molten lead.

I am a monsignor in Rome—admired, respected, photographed, interviewed. But I am her slave.

And though the whole world may see me as a saint, I know I am a sinner who only wants to feel her again, to kiss her, to make her mine one more time.

At dawn, I was summoned again. Cardinal Bernardi awaited me with a satisfied smile.

“Monsignor, your visit to Tor Bella Monaca has been a resounding success. The images are circulating across all social media. Your name is everywhere—throughout Rome, throughout Italy. People see you as a man sent by God. The Holy Father wishes to receive you personally next week.”

I lowered my head, feigning Christian humility, feeling the unbearable weight of his mistake.

Because I am not sent by God. I am a man trapped by a desire that will never die, that grows each day like a spiritual cancer.

And every time they call me a saint, my guilt grows. Because the only truth that sustains me is that my soul, my faith, and my body no longer belong to me.

They belong to her.

To Lucía.

To the woman I carry etched into my chest like an invisible scar.

To the only truth in a world of sacred lies.