Authors: David Yallop
If by some miracle Albino Luciani were to drop dead before Marcinkus was removed, then Calvi would have time. Only a month, it was true. But much can happen in a month. Much could happen in the next Conclave. Surely to God it would not produce another Pope who wanted to reform Vatican finances? He turned as he always did to Licio Gelli and confided his worst fears. As they conversed in a
variety of South American cities, Roberto Calvi felt some relief. Gelli had reassured him. The ‘problem’ could and would be resolved.
Meanwhile the daily routine within the Papal Apartments rapidly settled down to a pattern around the new incumbent. Maintaining the habit of a lifetime Luciani rose very early. He had chosen to sleep in the bed used by John XXIII in preference to that used by Paul VI. Father Magee told Luciani that Paul had declined to sleep on John’s bed ‘because of his respect for Pope John’.
Luciani responded: ‘I will sleep in his bed because of my love for him.’
Though his bedside alarm clock was habitually set for 4.45 a.m. in case he overslept, the Pope would be awakened by a knock on his bedroom door at 4.30 a.m. The knock informed him that Sister Vincenza had left a flask of coffee outside. Even this simple act had been subjected to Curial interference. In Venice the nun had been accustomed to knock on the door, call out a ‘Good morning’ and bring the coffee directly into Luciani’s bedroom. The busy monsignors in the Vatican considered this innocent gesture to be a breach of some imaginary protocol. They remonstrated with a baffled Luciani, who agreed that the coffee could be left in his adjoining study. The habit of a coffee consumed immediately upon waking derived from a sinus operation performed many years previously. The operation had left Luciani with an unpleasant taste in his mouth when he awoke. When travelling, if coffee was not available, he would suck a sweet.
Having drunk his coffee, he would shave and take a bath. From five to five-thirty he practised his English with the aid of a cassette course of instruction. At five-thirty, Luciani would leave his bedroom and go to the small private chapel nearby. Until 7.00 a.m. he prayed, meditated, and said his Breviary.
At 7.00 a.m. he would be joined by the other members of the Papal Household, particularly secretaries Father Lorenzi and Father Magee. Lorenzi, like himself a new boy within the Vatican, had asked the Pope if Magee, previously one of Pope Paul’s secretaries, could stay on at his post. The Pope, who had been particularly impressed with Father Magee’s ability in procuring cups of coffee during the first two days of his Papacy, readily agreed. The three men would be joined for Mass by the nuns from the Congregation of Maria Bambina, whose duties were to clean and cook for the Pope. The nuns, Mother Superior Elena, Sisters Margherita, Assunta, Gabriella and Clorinda were augmented, at Father Lorenzi’s suggestion, by Sister Vincenza from Venice.
Vincenza had worked for Luciani since his Vittorio Veneto days and she knew his ways, his habits. She had accompanied him to Venice and had been the Mother Superior of the Community of four nuns who looked after the Patriarch. In 1977 she suffered a heart attack and had been hospitalized. The doctors told her she must never work again, that she should sit and merely give instructions to the other nuns. She had ignored the advice and continued to supervise Sister Celestina’s cooking and had fussed over the Patriarch, reminding him to take his medicine for his low blood pressure.
For Albino Luciani, Vincenza and Father Lorenzi represented his only link with the homelands of northern Italy, a home he would now see but rarely, and never live in again. It is a sobering thought that when a man is elected Pope he immediately begins to live where he will, in all probability, die and, in all certainty, be buried. Premature residence in one’s own cemetery.
Breakfast of
café latte,
a roll and fruit, was taken immediately after Mass at 7.30 a.m. As Vincenza was to tell the other nuns, feeding Albino Luciani was a considerable challenge. He was usually oblivious to what he ate and his appetite was like a canary’s. Like many who had known acute poverty he abhorred waste. The remnants of a special dinner for invited guests would form one of his meals for the following day.
At breakfast, Luciani would read a variety of Italy’s morning papers. He had the Venice daily
II Gazzettino
added to the list. Between 8.00 a.m. and 10.00 a.m. the Pope would work quietly in his study preparing for the first of his audiences. Between 10.00 a.m. and 12.30 p.m., with men such as Monsignor Jacques Martin, the prefect of the Pontifical Household, attempting to keep people moving in and out on time, the Pope met visitors and conversed with them on the Second Floor of the Apostolic Palace.
Martin and other members of the Curia soon discovered that Luciani had a mind of his own. Despite muttered objections, the Pope’s conversations with his guests had a habit of over-running and throwing the schedule into confusion. Men like Monsignor Martin epitomize a very prevalent attitude within the Vatican which runs along the lines that, if it were not for the Pope, they could all get on with their jobs.
A lunch of minestrone or pasta, followed by whatever Vincenza had created for a second course, was served at 12.30 p.m. Even this was cause for comment. Pope Paul had always lunched at 1.30 p.m. That such a trivial event could inspire excited comment within the Vatican is indicative of just how much a village the place is. Tongues wagged
even faster when the word went around that the Pope had introduced members of the female sex to his dinner table. Pia his niece and his sister-in-law probably entered the Vatican record books.
Between 1.30 p.m. and 2.00 p.m., Luciani took a short siesta. This would be followed by walks on the roof garden or in the Vatican gardens. Occasionally he was accompanied by Cardinal Villot; more frequently Luciani read. Apart from his Breviary he found light relief with works by authors as diverse as Mark Twain and Sir Walter Scott. Shortly after 4.00 p.m. he would be back at his office, studying the contents of a large envelope received from Monsignor Martin, containing a list of the following day’s visitors with a full briefing.
At 4.30 p.m., while sipping a cup of camomile tea, the Pope received in his office ‘The Tardella’, the various cardinals, archbishops, secretaries of Congregations, his inner cabinet. These were the key meetings ensuring that the nuts and bolts of running the Roman Catholic Church were all in place.
The evening meal was at 7.45 p.m. At 8.00 p.m., while still eating, Luciani would watch the news on television. His dinner companions, unless augmented by guests, were Fathers Lorenzi and Magee.
After dinner there was further preparation for the audiences of the following day, then with the final part of the daily Breviary said, the Pope would retire for the night at approximately 9.30 p.m.
Dinner, like the lunch that had preceded it, would be a simple unsophisticated meal. On September 5th he entertained a Venetian priest, Father Mario Ferrarese. Luciani’s excuse for inviting the priest to the Papal Apartments was that he wished to repay the hospitality that Father Mario had shown to him in Venice. The fact that the rich and the powerful of Italy were attempting to get Albino Luciani to their dinner tables was an irrelevance; he preferred the company of an ordinary parish priest. That particular meal was served by two members of the Papal staff, Guido and Gian Paolo Guzzo. The Pope asked his guest for news of Venice, then quietly remarked, ‘Ask the people there to pray for me because it’s not easy being a Pope.’
Turning to the Guzzo brothers the Pope said, ‘As we have a guest we must serve him a dessert.’ After some delay bowls of ice cream arrived on the Papal table. For others at the table wine was freely available. Luciani was content with mineral water.
This was the daily routine of Pope John Paul I – a routine that he took delight in occasionally disturbing. Without reference, he would go for walks in the Vatican gardens. A simple diversion, one might think, but an impromptu stroll threw Vatican protocol and the Swiss
Guards into total confusion. He had already caused consternation within the ranks of the senior officers of the Guards by talking to men on sentry duty and also requesting that they should refrain from kneeling at his every approach. As he observed to Father Magee: ‘Who am I that they should kneel to me?’
Monsignor Virgilio Noe, the Master of Ceremonies, begged him not to talk to the Guards and to content himself with a mute nod. The Pope asked why. Noe spread his hands wide in amazement. ‘Holy Father, it is not done. No Pope has ever spoken to them.’
Albino Luciani smiled and continued to talk to the Guards. It was a far cry from the early days of Paul’s reign when priests and nuns would still drop to their knees to converse with the Pope even when they were carrying on a telephone conversation with him.
Luciani’s attitude towards telephones also provoked alarm among many of the Curial traditionalists. They now had to contend with a Pope who considered he was capable of dialling numbers and answering phones. He phoned friends in Venice. He phoned several Mothers Superior, just for a chat. When he advised his friend Father Bartolomeo Sorges that he would like the Jesuit priest Father Dezza to hear his confession, Father Dezza phoned within the hour to arrange his visit. The voice on the telephone informed him, ‘I’m sorry the Pope’s secretary isn’t here at the moment. Can I help?’
‘Well, to whom am I speaking?’
‘The Pope.’
It simply was not done this way. It never had been and perhaps never will be again. Both of the men who functioned as Luciani’s secretaries strenuously deny it ever happened. It was unthinkable. Yet it definitely happened.
Luciani began to explore the Vatican with its 10,000 rooms and halls, with its 997 stairways, 30 of them secret. He would suddenly take off from the Papal Apartments, either alone, or with Father Lorenzi for company. Equally suddenly he would appear in one of the Curial offices. ‘Just finding my way about the place’, he explained on one occasion to a startled Archbishop Caprio, the Deputy Head of the Secretariat of State.
They did not like it. They did not like it at all. The Curia were accustomed to a Pope who knew his place, one who worked through the bureaucratic channels. This one was everywhere, into everything, and worse he wanted to make changes. The battle over the wretched
sedia gestatoria,
the chair on which previous Popes had always been carried during public appearances, began to assume extraordinary
proportions. Luciani had it banished to the lumber room. The traditionalists began a fight to have it brought back. That issues so petty should take up a Pope’s time is an illuminating comment on the perspectives of certain sections of the Roman Curia.
Luciani attempted to reason with men like Monsignor Noe as one does with a child. Their world was not his and he was clearly not about to join theirs. He explained to Noe and to others that he walked in public because he considered that he was no better than any other man. He detested the chair and what it epitomized. ‘Ah but the crowds cannot see you,’ the Curia said. ‘They are demanding its return. All should be able to see the Holy Father.’ Luciani doggedly pointed out that he was frequently on television, that he came to the balcony every Sunday for the Angelus. He also said how much he detested the idea of being carried virtually upon the backs of other men.
‘But Holiness’, the Curia said, ‘if you seek an even deeper humility than you already clearly have, what could be more humiliating than to be carried in this chair which you detest so much?’ Faced with this argument the Pope conceded defeat. At his second public audience he was carried into the Nervi Hall on the
sedia gestatoria.
While some of Luciani’s time was occupied on Curia trivia, the majority of his waking hours were given to more serious problems. He had told the diplomatic corps that the Vatican renounced all claims to temporal power. Notwithstanding, the new Pope rapidly discovered that virtually every major world problem passed through his in-tray. The Roman Catholic Church, with over 18 per cent of the world’s population owing spiritual allegiance to it, represents a potent force; as such, it was obliged to take a position and have an attitude on a wide range of problems.
Apart from his attitude towards Argentina’s General Videla, what would be Albino Luciani’s response to the plethora of dictators who presided over large Catholic populations? What would be his response to the Marcos clique in the Philippines with its 43 million Catholics? To the self-elected Pinochet in Chile with its over 80 per cent Catholic population? To General Somoza of Nicaragua, the dictator so much admired by Vatican financial adviser Michele Sindona? How would Luciani restore the Roman Catholic Church to a home for the poor and underprivileged in a country like Uganda where Amin was arranging fatal accidents for priests as an almost daily event? What would be his response to the Catholics of El Salvador, where some members of the ruling junta considered that to be a Catholic was to be the ‘enemy’? This, in a country with a 96 per cent Catholic population, promised to
be a recipe for genocide, and a problem slightly more serious than the Vatican debate about the Pope’s chair.
How would the man who had uttered harsh words about Communism from his pulpit in Venice speak to the Communist worlds from St Peter’s balcony? Would the Cardinal who had approved of a ‘balance of terror’ with regard to nuclear weapons hold to the same position when the world’s unilateral disarmers came seeking an audience?
Within his own ranks there was a multitude of problems inherited from Pope Paul. Many priests were urging the end of the vow of celibacy. There was pressure to allow women into the priesthood. There were groups urging reform of the Canon Laws covering divorce, abortion, homesexuality, and a dozen other issues – all reaching up to one man, demanding, pleading, urging.