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The election of the new pontiff had taken place just a few weeks ago, yet it already felt like the new normal. Most of the exhausting logistics were behind them, and Lawrence had eased back into the dull, familiar rhythm of his life. He still hadn’t contacted any monasteries or taken steps toward his next chapter, despite His Holiness - Vincent - assuring him it was all right just after the conclave.
For now, Lawrence felt he was needed here, at least during these early days. “He could use a friend or two” Aldo had said to him, hurrying up the steps to the balcony above Saint Peter's Square to tell the public of their new pope. Lawrence agreed.
There had been plenty of confusion at first. Some even accused him of being a fraud. “This is the Bishop of Kabul” hadn’t sat well with many, despite official press statements and proof of the young man's work. But overall, the public was content. A young, progressive pope who had already accomplished more good than most during his time - he was exactly what the Church needed. In Lawrence’s view, it was the only way to truly honor the legacy of the old man who came before him.
The old man. It still felt strange calling him that. The previous pope had only been two years older than Lawrence was now when they first met. He often forgot he was already 62 - an old man himself, at least in the eyes of many, and especially compared to Vincent.
Lawrence thought back to when he was Vincent's age, thirty-eight. It felt like a century had passed since then - twenty-four long years.
He glanced up from his desk at the clock above the door. Just past 6 p.m. He had been invited to dinner at 6:30 and figured he should probably start to get going. Rising from his chair, he smoothed out the folds in his robes.
Like his predecessor, Vincent had declined the opulent papal quarters in the Apostolic Palace, choosing a modest apartment in the Domus Sanctae Marthae instead. A small kitchen, a simple bathroom— doing his own laundry when time permitted. It was the kind of quiet humility the world had quickly come to admire.
Lawrence stepped out of his office and made his way through the corridors toward the Holy Father’s rooms. The building still carried the memory of the old man. Sometimes, in the quiet between footsteps or around certain corners, Lawrence could almost see him - just for a moment. But it was always no one, or someone else entirely.
He sighed, coming to a stop outside the Holy Father’s door. Then, with a practiced gentleness, he knocked.
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Vincent beamed with genuine warmth as he opened the door. “Thomas! Come in,” he said with a smile, stepping aside to let the older man into his modest living room.
“I’ve made tamales,” he added, gesturing proudly toward the neatly set table. The aroma was rich and comforting, the food looking every bit as good as it smelled. Lawrence had learned that the new Pope enjoyed cooking when time allowed, though it still felt a little strange. In the twenty-three years he’d known the last pope, he couldn’t recall a single time he’d seen him cook.
Lawrence took a seat. “Thank you for inviting me,” he said sincerely.
Vincent sat across from him and gave a gentle nod. “Let us pray, Thomas,” he murmured, closing his eyes and folding his hands.
Lawrence followed suit.
“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. And let us not forget those who are without food or shelter - may we hold them in our minds and in our hearts. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lawrence echoed quietly, and the two of them began to eat.
As they began to eat, Lawrence couldn’t shake a faint pang of guilt. The tamales were delicious—clearly made with care—and knowing the weight Vincent already carried, it felt wrong somehow, being served by the busiest man in Christendom.
“You shouldn’t have gone through the trouble,” Lawrence said softly, glancing up from his plate. “With everything you have on your shoulders... it feels like I should be cooking for you.”
Vincent chuckled, taking a bite before responding. “It wasn’t trouble, Thomas. I miss caring for people.”
Lawrence looked at him, surprised by the quiet honesty in his voice.
“I spent so many years in the barrios, cooking for families, washing feet, wiping tears. Then this.” He gave a small shrug, not bitter, just contemplative. “Now I speak to crowds, hold meetings, write statements. Important things, yes. But I miss the small things—the ones that let you show love without saying a word.”
Lawrence nodded slowly, feeling a lump rise unexpectedly in his throat. He looked down at his food, then back up at the man across from him.
“It’s good,” he said, and meant more than just the meal.
Vincent smiled. “I’m glad.”
After a pause, he added, “It feels as if I abandoned my flock, back in Kabul.”
Lawrence looked up from his plate. “I don’t think you have. You were brought here by God’s will.”
Vincent gave a slight shrug. “I believe that too. But I still miss my people. I miss it - not the terror, certainly, but the people.”
Lawrence sat with that for a moment. He couldn’t imagine missing a place like that, where every step could cost you your leg - or worse. And yet, in some quiet part of himself, he understood. The attachment wasn’t to the place, but to the lives shared within it.
“It must be different here,” he said thoughtfully.
“It is,” Vincent nodded. “Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and... it’s just too quiet. It freaks you out, after a lifetime of laughter and footsteps, of screaming... and bombs.”
He said it calmly, matter-of-fact, but still a chill ran down Lawrence’s spine.
Lawrence studied the man across from him. So young, by papal standards. So composed. And yet there was something behind his eyes—a weariness, maybe, or something older than his years.
“I suppose quiet can be its own kind of burden,” Lawrence murmured, more to himself than anything.
Vincent looked at him and nodded. “Yes. It makes you think too much. About the things you couldn’t fix. The ones you left behind.”
There was no bitterness in his voice, only sorrow, worn down at the edges. Lawrence recognized that kind of grief - it didn’t shout anymore. It whispered.
“I’ve never lived in a war zone,” Lawrence admitted. “I’ve visited, yes, but never truly lived among it. I don’t know if I could have. It takes a different kind of strength.”
Vincent gave a small smile. “Or desperation. Or faith. Often both. Sometimes I’m not sure which it was that kept me going.”
Lawrence nodded slowly. “Still. You made it out. And you brought something with you.”
Vincent tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
Lawrence gestured lightly between them. “This. Tamales and prayer and memory. You didn’t come empty-handed. You brought your heart.”
Vincent looked down for a moment, lips parting as if to speak, but nothing came. Instead, he let out a breath that sounded a bit like a laugh and a sigh tangled together.
“You’re kinder than you know, Thomas,” he said softly.
Lawrence smiled faintly. “Only to popes who feed me.”
That drew a laugh from Vincent—genuine and light, chasing some of the heaviness from the room.
They ate in silence for a while, not the awkward kind, but the comfortable quiet that settles between people who don’t need to fill every gap with words. Just the sound of utensils and the soft evening light slipping through the windows.
After a moment, Vincent said, “You should come with me sometime. Back to Kabul.”
Lawrence blinked. “You’d go back?”
“When the time is right,” Vincent said. “And yes. I have to. I miss it too much to stay away forever.”
Lawrence studied him for a moment, brows slightly drawn. “I’m sorry, Vincent, but it’s hard for me to grasp… missing a place like that. The people, yes, of course. But the place itself?”
Vincent nodded slowly, as if he expected the question. “I think… it’s something you have to live through to understand. When I remember Kabul, I don’t just see the rows of dead or the blood in the streets. I remember how the light touched the rooftops in the early morning. I remember people dancing in bombed-out halls, playing music in cellars by candlelight.”
He paused, his eyes distant but not cold.
“There’s goodness in everything,” he continued softly. “Even in the darkest places. That’s how God reminds us He’s still there. Not in the silence after the bomb, but in the laughter that follows. In a child sharing bread like jesus. In someone risking their life just to teach a poem.”
Lawrence felt his chest tighten with something he couldn't quite name—shame, admiration, reverence, perhaps all at once. For a moment, he saw Kabul not as a headline, but as a heartbeat. And as a heartbreak.
“I never thought of it like that,” he admitted.
Vincent offered a gentle smile. “Most people don’t. That’s not their fault. But it’s why I’ll always carry it with me—not as a wound, but as a reminder.”
Lawrence was quiet for a moment, chewing over Vincent’s words. Then, almost without thinking, he asked, “How did you become a priest to begin with?”
Vincent looked up, surprised at first—but then he smiled, as if the question touched something old and familiar.
“I—” he began, then chuckled. “I grew up with six siblings in a single-room hut. We all slept in three beds, my parents included. There was barely enough space to breathe, let alone dream.”
He paused, glancing at his plate, then back at Lawrence.
“When the preacher came and offered me three warm meals a day and a bed of my own in exchange for prayer and celibacy… well, it seemed like a very good deal. What was I really giving up, after all?”
Lawrence raised an eyebrow, half-smiling. “That’s not exactly the sacred calling I was expecting.”
Vincent grinned. “It wasn’t sacred at first. It was survival. But God has a way of slipping into even the smallest cracks. One day I was just repeating Latin words I barely understood, and the next… I realized I believed them.”
Lawrence nodded slowly, letting the simplicity of it sink in. “So you didn’t set out to become the Pope.”
Vincent laughed—genuinely, warmly. “God, no. I just wanted to eat.”
He leaned back slightly, studying Lawrence with curiosity. “And you?” he asked, his tone softer now. “What made you become a priest?”
Lawrence hesitated. The question shouldn’t have been difficult—it was one he’d answered a hundred times before. But now, sitting across from a man who’d joined the priesthood to escape hunger, it felt harder to dress the truth in neat, pious words.
“I suppose…” He paused, searching for honesty. “I think I wanted order. Purpose. My family was well-off, but cold. Everything had its place, but love wasn’t one of them. The Church was the first place where people looked at me like I mattered.”
Vincent nodded slowly, not interrupting.
“I liked the routine. The ritual. And I liked feeling needed. I thought, maybe if I followed the rules closely enough, I’d become... good.”
A faint smile tugged at Vincent’s lips. “And did you?”
Lawrence let out a breath through his nose - something between a laugh and a sigh. “Sometimes I think I did. Other times, I think I just became very good at following rules.”
Vincent met his eyes. “I think wanting to be good is already halfway there.”
Lawrence smiled to himself. The young man really saw the good in everyone and everything.
“What did your parents say when the news broke?” Lawrence asked suddenly, his voice gentle but curious.
Vincent looked up, his expression dimming slightly. He shook his head. “My mother passed two years after I entered the priesthood.”
He paused, then added, “My father… I suppose he heard. We were never close. There were too many mouths to feed, and not enough patience to go around. He used to strike us if we spoke out of turn. Not out of cruelty, I think, but exhaustion. Survival makes men hard.”
Lawrence said nothing, letting the words settle.
“I haven’t seen him in decades,” Vincent continued, quieter now. “Sometimes I wonder if he’s still alive, or if he too laid in rows of dead, just an unclaimed body. Other times, I wonder if it matters that I don’t know.”
The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable -
“I’m sorry,” Lawrence said at last.
Vincent gave a small smile, thin but sincere. “Don’t be. We all come from something. Even the bad parts shape us.”
Lawrence nodded slowly. “You turned out alright.”
“Well, I suppose I did,” Vincent said quietly. “Sometimes I think my father knew I was different. I didn’t understand it myself until I was older, obviously. But I think… I think he knew. At least about my condition.”
Lawrence looked up, surprised. “Did he?” The words left his mouth before he could soften them.
Vincent gave a small smile, not offended. “It’s not hard to notice something like that on your child, not when you had 4 boys. Of course, no one talked about things like that where I grew up. Not in the village. Not in church. Definitely not in my family.”
Lawrence was quiet listening to him, absorbing the weight of it. “We didn’t have that kind of education when I was young either. I wouldn’t have known what to look for. Honestly…” He hesitated, then pressed on. “I avoided anything that made me uncomfortable. Bodies, sex, identity - it all just made me feel like I was already doing something wrong. I joined the order and let celibacy cover over all of it, until i was injured”
“What happened?” Lawrence asks. “I stepped on a landmine. an old one, lucky. Burst my appendix and dislocated my leg” he touched his hip, careful. Lawrence remembered that he saw the young man limping every once in a while. He just had never thought about it.
“They cut me open, and well, when i woke up and the doctors asked to speak to me…They asked me about my hormone levels, and my medical history. I barely knew what hormones where to begin with. I had been to the doctor a handful times in my life. So it all unraveled from there” He shook his head.
“I remember thinking, I’m too old to be learning this now. But I think part of me always knew something didn’t quite line up.”
He gave a faint laugh, one without humor.
“I spent the next week in the chapel, not praying—just sitting. Like I could outrun it with silence. By the end i felt as if i was living a lie. I came here to resign. But then i spoke to his holiness, and I realised: I was who I had always been. God just waited until I was ready.”
Lawrence didn’t respond right away. He just looked at Vincent—really looked at him, not as the Pope, not even as a priest, but as a man who had carried more than most, and had dared to name it.
“You’re brave,” Lawrence said at last, his voice low. “Braver than I’ve ever been.”
Vincent smiled, though there was something tired in it. “I’m just trying to live without shame. That’s not bravery. That’s survival.”
Lawrence nodded. He understood that now.
Outside, the bells began to chime the hour. Eight, maybe. He wasn’t sure.
Vincent stood and began gathering the plates. “Let me help,” Lawrence offered, rising too.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know,” Lawrence said. “But I want to.”
They moved quietly in the small kitchen, the clatter of dishes and running water filling the space. It was an ordinary rhythm, domestic and soft, and somehow, it felt just as sacred as Silence did in a church.
As they finished, Lawrence glanced at Vincent again.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For dinner?” Vincent asked.
“For the truth.”
Vincent looked at him and nodded, solemn and kind. “Thank you for listening.”