The Madonna on the Moon by Rolf Bauerdick

handwriting was long since on the wall, legible for everyone, but his Austrian homeland had deteriorated into a land of the blind. His countrymen were bedazzled by their pride in knowing that pure
Aryan blood flowed in their veins, drunk on the idea of being part of the Germans’ Thousand-Year Reich. Instead of resisting this madness of the blood with all the power of papal authority,
the Vatican was eating humble pie before the German gangsters and courting the goodwill of the Führer so he would treat the church kindly.
    “But I’m telling you, the Lord God didn’t permit his Son to be nailed on the cross so that something like this could happen. Not for a church that’s asking the devil to
be nice to the clergy and leave its priests alone. If you do business with Satan, you’ve already got one foot in hell. Just like the people here in the village who sit in front of their
radios in the evening listening to that loudmouth from Berlin promise to bring them home to the Reich.”
    Grandfather told me the young Saxons Karl Koch, Anton Zikeli, and Schneiders’ Hans got all hot under the collar when he said that, smashed their glasses against the wall, and came that
close to laying hands on the priest. Which they would all come to bitterly regret later, after the war. Back then, however, the ethnic Germans accused Pater Johannes of getting mixed up in worldly
affairs instead of looking after people’s souls as a priest should. An accusation Johannes Baptiste let go unanswered.
    “Either you’re a Catholic or a Hitlerist! They’re mutually exclusive. Heaven or hell, it’s your choice! Either we love our neighbors as ourselves, or we destroy those
we’ve declared to be our enemies. And mark my words, the Hitlerists are going to be the worst destroyers that evil has ever brought forth. First the Germans will kill the Jews, then the
Gypsies, and then anyone else who isn’t like them. The Catholics won’t cry out in protest when the killing begins. They’ll keep going to Mass on Sunday, crossing themselves, and
singing ‘Praise the Lord.’ But not me. I’ll keep reminding everyone that our Lord Jesus Christ himself was a Jew. If his people had not taken on the heavy burden of nailing him to
the cross, how could he have redeemed us? Without Golgotha, no Ascension. History will show if I’m right or wrong. And believe me, I pray every day that the good Lord will make me wrong. Even
if I have to pay for my disobedience toward the Holy Father in Rome with eternal damnation.”
    After these words, my grandfather Ilja never again doubted the honesty of the man of God. Anybody who raised his voice against the Benedictine was banned from Ilja’s tavern on the spot.
And that’s how Johannes Baptiste became the most respected priest who ever preached from the pulpit in Baia Luna, even though in my youth he had already lost a lot of his Bible knowledge.
Unforgotten among the congregation was the previous year’s Christmas sermon in which he placed Judas among the three Wise Men from the East and sent him hurrying to Bethlehem where the
repentant traitor paid back the thirty pieces of silver with interest.
    The Gypsies loved their Papa Baptiste. It was thanks to him they hadn’t been driven out of Baia Luna. Dimitru’s people turned up in the village late in the summer of 1935, just when
the rumors about Pater Johannes were particularly rank. Their
bulibasha,
Dimitru’s father Laszlo, had asked the village council to permit his tribe to stay. As their leader, he
proposed that they could move into a location below the village, on the banks of the Tirnava, where a few tumbledown stalls had fallen prey to high water in earlier years. As compensation for a
residency permit the Gypsy men offered to help the farmers with their harvest in the fall. In addition, they knew everything about horses of all breeds. And last but not least, he, Bulibasha Laszlo
Carolea Gabor, personally guaranteed that no one from his