In God's Name (12 page)

On nuclear weapons:

People say that nuclear weapons are too powerful and to use them would mean the end of the world. They are manufactured and accumulated, but only to ‘dissuade’ the enemy from attacking and to keep the international situation stable.

Look around. Is it true or not that for 30 years there has not been a world war?

Is it true or not that serious crises between the two great powers, the USA and the USSR have been avoided?

Let’s be happy over this partial result . . . A gradual, controlled and universal disarmament is possible only if an international organization with more efficient powers and possibilities for sanctions than the present United Nations comes into being and if education for peace becomes sincere.

On racism in the USA:

In the United States, despite the laws, Negroes are in practice on the edge of society. The descendants of the Indians have seen their situation bettered significantly only in recent years.

To call such a man a reactionary nostalgic may have validity. He
yearned for a world that was not largely ruled by Communist philosophies, a world where abortion was not an every minute event. But if he was a reactionary he had some remarkably progressive ideas.

Early in 1976 Luciani attended yet another Italian Bishops’ Conference in Rome. One of the subjects openly discussed was the serious economic crisis Italy was then facing. Linked with this subject was another which the bishops discussed privately: the Vatican’s role in that economic crisis and the role of that good friend of Bishop Marcinkus, Michele Sindona. His empire had crashed in spectacular fashion. Banks were collapsing in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the USA. Sindona was wanted by the Italian authorities on a range of charges and was fighting his extradition from the United States. The Italian Press had asserted that the Vatican had lost in excess of 100 million dollars. The Vatican had denied this but admitted that it had sustained some loss. In June 1975 the Italian authorities, while continuing their fight to bring Sindona to justice had sentenced him
in absentiato
to a prison term of three-and-a-half years, the maximum they could give for the offences. Many bishops felt that Pope Paul VI should have moved Marcinkus from the Vatican Bank when the Sindona bubble burst in 1974. Now, two years later, Sindona’s friend was still controlling the Vatican Bank.

Albino Luciani left Rome, a city buzzing with speculation about how many millions the Vatican had lost in the Sindona affair, left a Bishops’ Conference where the talk had been of how much the Vatican Bank owned of Banca Privata, of how many shares the Bank had in this conglomerate or that company. He returned to Venice where the Don Orione School for the handicapped did not have enough money for school books.

Luciani went to his typewriter and wrote a letter which was published in the next edition of the diocese magazine. It was entitled ‘A loaf of bread for the love of God’. He began by appealing for money to help the victims of a recent earthquake disaster in Guatemala, stating that he was authorizing a collection in all churches on Sunday, February 29th. He then commented on the state of economic affairs in Italy, advising his readers that the Italian bishops and their ecclesiastical communities were committed to showing practical signs of understanding and help. He went on to deplore:

The situation of so many young people who are looking for work and cannot find it. Of those families who are experiencing the
drama or prospect of sacking. Those who have sought security by emigrating far away and who now find themselves confronted by the prospect of an unhappy return. Those who are old and sick and because of the insufficiency of social pensions suffer worst the consequences of this crisis . . .

I wish priests to remember and frequently to refer in any way they like to the situation of the workers. We complain sometimes that workers go and seek bad advice from the left and the right. But in reality how much have we done to ensure that the social teaching of the Church can be habitually included in our Catechism, in the hearts of Christians?

Pope John asserted that workers must be given the power to influence their own destiny at all levels, even the highest scale. Have we always taught that with courage? Pius XII while on the one hand warning of the dangers of Marxism, on the other hand reproves those priests who remain uncertain in face of that economic system which is known as capitalism, the grave consequences of which the Church has not failed to denounce. Have we always listened to this?

Albino Luciani then gave an extraordinary demonstration of his own abhorrence of a wealthy, materialistic Church. He exhorted and authorized all of his parish priests and rectors of sanctuaries to sell their gold, necklaces, and precious objects. The proceeds were to go to the Don Orione centre for handicapped people. He advised his readers that he intended to sell the bejewelled cross and gold chain which had belonged to Pius XII and which Pope John had given to Luciani when he had made him a bishop.

It is very little in terms of the money it will produce but it is perhaps something if it helps people to understand that the true treasures of the Church are, as St Lorenzo said, the poor, the weak who must be helped not with occasional charity but in such a way that they can be raised a little at a time to that standard of life and that level of culture to which they have a right.

He also announced that he intended to sell to the highest bidder a valuable pectoral cross with gold chain and the ring of Pope John. These items had been given to Venice by Pope Paul during his September visit of 1972. Later in the same article he quoted two Indians. Firstly, Gandhi: ‘I admire Christ but not Christians.’

Luciani then expressed the wish that the words of Sandhu Singh would perhaps one day no longer be true:

One day I was sitting on the banks of a river. I took from the water a round stone and I broke it. Inside it was perfectly dry. That stone had been lying in the water for a very long time but the water had not penetrated it. Then I thought that the same thing happened to men in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity but Christianity has not penetrated, does not live within them.

The response was mixed. Some of the Venetian priests had grown attached to the precious jewels they had in their churches. Luciani also came under attack from some of the traditionalists of the city, those who were fond of recalling the glory and power that was interwoven in the title of Patriarch, the last vestige of the splendour of the Serenissima. This man who was pledged to seeking out and living the essential, eternal truth of the Gospel met a deputation of such citizens in his office. Having listened to them he said:

I am first a bishop among bishops, a shepherd among shepherds, who must have as his first duty the spreading of the Good News and the safety of his lambs. Here in Venice I can only repeat what I said at Canale, at Belluno and at Vittorio Veneto.

Then he phoned the fire brigade, borrowed a boat and went to visit the sick in a nearby hospital.

As already recorded, one of the methods this particular shepherd employed to communicate with his flock was the pen. On more than one occasion Luciani told his secretary that if he had not become a priest he would probably have become a journalist. To judge by his writings he would have been an asset to the profession. In the early 1970s he devised an interesting technique to make a variety of moral points to the readers of the diocesan magazine: a series of letters to a variety of literary and historical characters. The articles caught the eye of the editor of a local newspaper, who persuaded Luciani to widen his audience through the paper. Luciani reasoned that he had more chance of spreading the ‘Good News’ through the press than he did preaching to half-empty churches. Eventually a collection of the letters was published in book form,
Illustrissimi
– the most illustrious ones.

The book is a delight. Apart from providing an invaluable insight into the mind of Albino Luciani, each letter comments on aspects of modern life. Luciani’s unique ability to communicate, unique that is for an Italian Cardinal, is demonstrated again and again. The letters are also a clear proof of just how widely read Luciani was. Chesterton and Walter Scott receive a letter from the Patriarch, as do Goethe, Alessandro Manzoni, Marlowe and many others. There is even one addressed to Christ which begins in typical Luciani fashion.

Dear Jesus,

I have been criticized. ‘He’s a Bishop, he’s a Cardinal,’ people have said, ‘he’s been writing letters to all kinds of people: to Mark Twain, to Péguy, to Casella, to Penelope, to Dickens, to Marlowe, to Goldoni and heaven knows how many others. And not a line to Jesus Christ!

His letter to St Bernard grew into a dialogue, with the Saint giving sage advice, including an example of how fickle public opinion could be.

In 1815 the official French newspaper,
Le Moniteur,
showed its readers how to follow Napoleon’s progress: ‘The
brigand
flees from the island of Elba’; ‘The
usurper
arrives at Grenoble’;
‘Napoleon
enters Lyons’; ‘The
Emperor
reaches Paris this evening’.

Into each letter is woven advice to his flock, on prudence, responsibility, humility, fidelity, charity. As a piece of work designed to communicate the Christian message it is worth twenty Papal encyclicals.

Spreading the ‘Good News’ was one aspect of Luciani’s years in Venice. Another was the recalcitrance constantly demonstrated by some of his priests. Apart from those who spent their time evicting tenants or complaining about having to sell Church treasures there were others who embraced Marxism as wholeheartedly as yet others were preoccupied with capitalism. One priest wrote in red paint across the walls of his Church, ‘Jesus was the first socialist’; another climbed into his pulpit in nearby Mestre and declared to his astonished congregation, ‘I shall do no more work for the Patriarch until he gives me a pay rise.’

Albino Luciani, a man with a highly developed sense of humour,
was not amused at such antics. In July 1978 from the pulpit of the Church of the Redemptor in Venice he talked to his congregation of clerical error: ‘It is true that the Pope, bishops and priests do not cease to be poor men subject to errors and often we make errors.’

At this point he lifted his head from his manuscript and looking directly at the people said with complete sincerity:

‘I am convinced that when Pope Paul VI destined me to the See of Venice he committed an error.’

Within days of that comment Pope Paul VI died; at 9.40 pm on Sunday, August 6th, 1978. The throne was empty.

*
At the time of Albino Luciani’s birth the village was called Forno di Canale. It was changed to Canale d’Agordo in 1964 at the instigation of Luciani’s brother, Edoardo. The village thus reverted to its original name.

*
Here and throughout, monetary figures are expressed in values at the time in question.

*
Richard Hamer,
The Vatican Connection,
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982.

The Empty Throne

Within twenty-four hours of Paul’s death, with his body unburied and his Papacy unevaluated, Ladbrokes, the London bookmakers, had opened a book on the Papal election. The
Catholic Herald,
while carrying a front-page article criticizing the action, took care to let its readers know the current odds.

Cardinal Pignedoli was favourite at 5–2. Cardinals Baggio and Poletti were joint second favourites at 7–2, followed by Cardinal Benelli at 4–1. Also strongly fancied was Cardinal Willebrands at 8–1. Cardinal Koenig was quoted at 16–1. England’s Cardinal Hume was 25–1. These surprisingly long odds on the Englishman could perhaps be attributed to a statement Hume had made to the effect that he did not have the qualities for the job. Longest odds were quoted for Cardinal Suenens. Albino Luciani did not appear in the list of Papal runners.

Condemned by some for displaying lack of taste, Ladbrokes defended themselves by pointing out that with regard to the empty throne the ‘newspapers are full of speculation about front-runners, contenders and outsiders.’