Opinion by Rebecca Thornfield
Editor’s Note: Rebecca Thornfield is an investigative journalist who has been exposing leaders of power since 2000. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for her articles covering the development of the Iron Corridor. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.
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Pope Peter the Second was dying, and it seemed pretty certain that a Cardinal from the Eastern Federation would rise to lead the Catholic church in the new decade. At first, the sense around the world was that he'd marshal in a new era of peace.
The era of Pope Peter the Second was a promising one that was never quite fulfilled. Given his namesake, most would imagine some important or impactful figure. But Peter the Second's crowning achievement was merely that the church hadn't fallen apart under his watch, after the numerous scandals it suffered in the ‘90s and 2000s.
While Russia itself was still dominated by the Eastern Orthodox church, the Archbishop of Moscow, Lubenz Clemens was seen by many as an obvious successor.
The man was an advocate for peace and had brokered several agreements with the Allied Nations following the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Clemens had met with US presidents for over two decades. He'd welcomed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and helped usher in the new era of the Eastern Federation. In a sense, he gave the new government a legitimacy it might not otherwise have had, which would have been difficult without the support of his foreign friends.
However, the US support for Clemens as an opposition leader within the Eastern Federation did not translate when he stood to gain international influence. The aversion by the American bishops was also obvious, and opposition quickly solidified in America.
Up until this point, the Eastern Federation had given quite a lot of leeway to the Archbishop's quirks. Quirks like promoting pacifism. Or attempting to find diplomatic solutions to conflicts with the West. Or even trying to find a way to ensure the Iron Corridor didn't suffer the kinds of famine he'd seen more than once in his life under the Soviet Union. But despite nominally staying out of religious matters, even they saw the glaring threat to their authority in having Clemens atop the Catholic Church.
The possibility of a Slavic pope became a highly polarized topic that divided Europe. But despite that, it seemed likely that enough Cardinals would elect Clemens as the next pope, and turn the tide of growing tensions around the world.
Then Peter the Second died, and the whole thing seemed to be up in the air.
Lubenz Clemens spent the next few days in St. Petersburg and Moscow meeting with the bishops of the Orthodox Church and high-ranking communist party members to ease tensions. He got on board a private jet traveling to Rome when the doors to the Sistine Chapel had already swung shut. The ballots had begun and no conclusion to the conclave was in sight. A vote was taking place during his flight.
As the plane was passing over Poland, it suffered some sort of failure in both engines and dropped out of the sky. The Eastern Federation said it was sabotage. They blamed Poland and they blamed the Americans.
The Americans blamed the Eastern Federation. They called it a false flag attack. They said that the Eastern Federation never wanted peace.
No one knows for sure what happened. We may never know. But one thing is for certain. The smoke coming from the Vatican was white. Clemens had been selected as the next pope.
But the smoke coming from his plane as it smoldered in the countryside was dark black.
Sources:
Dr. Jeremiah Cimmerian
Ignota IronShears
