Authors: David Yallop
The Press Agency UPI discovered that Luciani had been in favour of a Vatican ruling which would allow artificial birth control. Italian newspapers also carried stories referring to the Luciani document sent to Pope Paul by Cardinal Urbani of Venice in which the strong recommendation in favour of the contraceptive pill had been made. The Curia speedily located Father Henri de Riedmatten who had been secretary to the Papal Birth Control Commission. He described the reports that Luciani had been opposed to an encyclical that condemned artificial birth control as ‘a fantasy’. Riedmatten also asserted that Luciani had never been a member of the Commission, which was accurate. He then went on to deny that Luciani had ever
written a letter or a report on the subject that had been sent to Pope Paul.
This denial and the manner of it is an example of the duplicity that abounds in the Curia. The Luciani document went to Rome via Cardinal Urbani and therefore had the Cardinal’s imprimatur upon it. To deny that a document existed, actually signed by Luciani, was technically correct. To deny that Luciani on behalf of his fellow bishops in the Veneto region had not forwarded such a document to the Pope via the then Patriarch of Venice was an iniquitous lie.
Ironically, within the first three weeks of his Papacy, Albino Luciani had already taken the first significant steps towards reversing the Roman Catholic Church’s position on artificial birth control. While those steps were being taken the world’s Press, by courtesy of
L’Osservatore Romano,
Vatican Radio, and off the record briefings by certain members of the Roman Curia, had already firmly established a completely false image of Luciani’s views.
During his Papacy Luciani referred to and quoted from a number of the pronouncements and encyclicals that had come from Pope Paul VI. Notably absent was any reference to
Humanae Vitae.
The defenders of the encyclical had first been alerted to the new Pope’s views when they learned with consternation that the draft acceptance speech, which had been prepared for Paul’s successor by the Secretariat of State’s office, containing glowing references to
Humanae Vitae,
had had all such references excised by Luciani. The anti birth control element within the Vatican then discovered that in May 1978, Albino Luciani had been invited to attend and speak at an International Congress being held in Milan on June 21st–22nd. The main purpose of the Congress was to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the encyclical
Humanae Vitae.
Luciani had let it be known that he would not speak at the Congress and that further he would not attend. Among those who did attend and speak in glowing terms about
Humanae Vitae
was the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla.
Now in September, while the world’s Press unquestioningly repeated the lies of
L’Osservatore Romano,
Albino Luciani was heard in the Papal Apartments talking to his Secretary of State, Cardinal Villot: ‘I will be happy to talk to this United States delegation on the issue. To my mind we cannot leave the situation as it currently stands.’
The issue was world population. The ‘situation’ was
Humanae Vitae.
As the conversation progressed Villot heard Pope John Paul I express a view that many others, including his private secretary Father Diego Lorenzi, had heard many times before. Father Lorenzi is only
one of a number of people who have been able to quote to me Luciani’s exact words:
I am aware of the ovulation period in a woman with its range of fertility from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Even if one allows a sperm life of forty-eight hours the maximum time of possible conception is less than four days. In a regular cycle this means four days of fertility and twenty-four days of infertility. How on earth can it be a sin to say instead of twenty-four days, twenty-eight days?
What had prompted this truly historic conversation had been a tentative approach to the Vatican from the American Embassy in Rome. The American Embassy had been contacted by the State Department in Washington and also by US Congressman James Scheuer. The Congressman headed a House Select Committee on Population and was also Vice-Chairman of the UN fund for population activities, inter-parliamentary working group. The story of the Luciani document to Pope Paul VI on birth control had alerted Scheuer and his Committee to the possibility of change in the Church’s position on birth control. It seemed to Scheuer that it was unlikely that his group would obtain an audience with Luciani so soon in his Papacy but he still considered it worth the effort of putting pressure on the State Department and also, through the Embassy in Rome, on the Vatican. Scheuer was destined to hear some good news.
Villot, like many of the men who surrounded Luciani, was having considerable difficulty in adjusting to the new Papacy. He had developed over the years a close working relationship with Paul VI. He had grown to admire the Montini style. Now the world-weary 81-year-old Hamlet had been replaced by an optimistic Henry VI who at 65 years of age was a relative stripling.
The relationship between Luciani and his Secretary of State was an uneasy one. The new Pope found Villot cold and aloof, full of observations about how Paul VI would have approached this problem or what Paul VI would have said about this particular issue. Paul VI was dead but it became apparent that Villot and a significant section of the Curia had not accepted that the Montinian approach to problems had died with him.
The speech that the new Pope had delivered twenty-four hours after the Conclave had been largely a generalized statement. The real programme began to be formulated only during the early days of
September 1978. He was fired with the inspiration of Pope John XXIII’s first 100 days.
John had been elected Pope on October 28th, 1958. Within the first 100 days he had made a number of crucial senior appointments including filling the post of Secretary of State with Cardinal Domenico Tardini, a post that had been vacant since 1944. Most significant of all had been his decision to call the Second Vatican Council. That decision was made public on January 25th, 1959, eighty-nine days after his election.
Now that Albino Luciani was wearing the shoes of the fisherman he determined to follow John’s example of a revolutionary 100 days. At the top of his list of priorities of reform and change were the need to alter radically the Vatican’s relationship with capitalism and the desire to alleviate the very real suffering he had personally witnessed that had stemmed directly from
Humanae Vitae.
According to Cardinal Benelli, Cardinal Felici and other Vatican sources, the austere Villot listened askance as the new Pope elaborated on the problems the encyclical had caused. It was clear from his attitude during my interviews with him that on this issue Felici was heavily in sympathy with Villot.
Only a few weeks earlier Villot had been extolling the encyclical on the tenth anniversary of its publication. In a letter to Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco, Villot reaffirmed Paul’s opposition to artificial contraception. The Secretary of State had stressed how important Paul had considered this teaching to be, that it was ‘according to God’s Law’.
There was much more in a similar vein. Now, less than two months later, he was obliged to listen to Paul’s successor taking a reverse position. The coffee grew cold as Luciani, rising from his desk, began to pace his study and quietly talk of some of the effects that
Humanae Vitae
had produced over the past decade.
The encyclical which had been designed to strengthen Papal authority by denying that there could be any change in the traditional teaching on birth control, had had precisely the opposite effect. The evidence was irrefutable. In Belgium, Holland, Germany, Britain, the United States and in many other countries there had not only been marked opposition to the encyclical, there had also been marked disobedience. The maxim had rapidly become that if one priest did not take a tolerant attitude within the confessional the sinner shopped around for a more liberated priest. Luciani cited examples of that contradiction he knew of personally in the Veneto region.
The theory of
Humanae Vitae
might well look like an ideal moral viewpoint when proclaimed from within the all-male preserve of the Vatican. The reality Luciani had observed in northern Italy and abroad clearly demonstrated the inhumanity of the edict. In that decade world population had increased by over three-quarters of a billion people.
When Villot demurred to point out that Pope Paul had stressed the virtues of the natural method of contraception Luciani merely smiled at him, not the full beaming smile that the public knew; it was more of a sad smile. ‘Eminence, what can we old celibates really know of the sexual desires of the married?’
This conversation, the first of a number the Pope had with his Secretary of State on the subject, took place in the Pope’s study in the Papal Apartments on Tuesday, September 19th. They discussed the subject for nearly forty-five minutes. When the meeting ended and Villot was about to leave, Luciani walked to the door with him and said:
Eminence. We have been discussing birth control for about forty-five minutes. If the information I have been given, the various statistics, if that information is accurate, then during the period of time we have been talking over one thousand children under the age of five have died of malnutrition. During the next forty-five minutes while you and I look forward with anticipation to our next meal a further thousand children will die of malnutrition. By this time tomorrow thirty thousand children who at this moment are alive, will be dead – of malnutrition. God does not always provide.
The Secretary of State for the Vatican was apparently unable to find an adequate exit line.
All details of the possible audience with a United States delegation, on the subject of population, were kept a carefully guarded secret both by the Vatican and the State Department. Such a meeting coming so early in Luciani’s Papacy would rightly be seen as highly significant if it became known publicly.
Even greater significance would have been attached to this by world opinion if it had become known that this was one reason why Pope John Paul I was not going to attend the Puebla Conference in Mexico. This Conference was to be the follow-up to a most important conference that had taken place in Medellin, Colombia in 1968.
At Medellin, the cardinals, bishops and priests of Latin America had
injected new life into the Roman Catholic Church in the South American continent. Their declaration contained within the ‘Medellin Manifesto’ included the statement that the central thrust of their Church in the future would be to reach out and relate to the poor, the neglected and impoverished. It was a revolutionary change in a Church that had previously been identified with the rich and powerful. The ‘Theology of Liberation’ which came out of Medellin put the various juntas and oppressive regimes in South America on clear notice that the Church intended to work towards an end of financial exploitation and social injustice. It had, in effect, been a call to arms . . . Inevitably, resistance to this liberal philosophy came not only from the various regimes but also from the reactionary element within the Church. The Puebla meeting, a decade later, promised to be crucial. Would the Church continue farther down the same path or would there be a retrenchment to the old invidious position? For the new Pope to decline the invitation to attend the conference underlies just what importance he placed on his meeting with Scheuer’s Committee. He certainly knew the implications of the Puebla meeting,
In the Conclave, less than an hour after he had been elected Pope, Cardinals Baggio and Lorscheider, two key figures in the projected series of meetings in Mexico, had approached Luciani. Puebla had been postponed as a result of the death of Pope Paul VI. The Cardinals were anxious to know if the new Pope was prepared to sanction a new date for the Mexico meeting.
Luciani discussed the issues which would be raised at Puebla, in depth, less than an hour after his election. He agreed that the Conference should take place and the dates of October 12th to 28th were decided upon. During his discussion with Baggio and Lorscheider he astonished both Cardinals with his knowledge and grasp of the central issues which would be explored at Puebla. With regard to his own attendance, he declined to committ himself so early in his Papacy. When Villot advised him that Scheuer’s Committee would like an audience on October 24th he told Baggio and Lorscheider that he would not he attending Puebla. He also told Villot to confirm the meeting with the US delegation. It had been for Luciani the final confirmation that for the next few weeks his place was in the Vatican. There were other very cogent reasons for the decision to stay in Rome. Pope John Paul I had concluded by mid-September that his first priority should be to put his own house in order. The problem of the Vatican Bank and its entire operating philosophy had become of paramount importance to him.
Luciani moved with an urgency that had been noticeably lacking in his immediate predecessor’s last years. The new broom was not minded to sweep right through the Vatican in his first 100 days but he was anxious that within that time the Church should begin to change direction, particularly with regard to Vatican Incorporated.
Within his first week the new Pope had given an indication of the shape of things to come. He ‘assented’ to the desire of Cardinal Villot to be relieved of one of his many posts, the Office of President of the Pontifical Council, ‘Cor Unum’. The job went to Cardinal Bernard Gantin. Cor Unum is one of the great funnels through which pass monies collected from all over the world to be distributed to the poorest nations.