Authors: David Yallop
Albino Luciani’s generation of priests had to cope with the full force of the
Syllabus of Errors
and anti-modernism mentality. Luciani himself might easily have become, under such dominant influences, yet another priest with a closed mind. A variety of factors saved him from that fate. Not the least was a simple but great gift, a thirst for knowledge.
Despite his mother’s exaggeration about his early health there was one considerable bonus in her over-protectiveness. By refusing to let
the boy enjoy the rough and tumble of his friends and by replacing the ball with a book she opened the entire world to her son. He began to read voraciously at an early age the complete works of Dickens and Jules Verne. Mark Twain, for example, he read at the age of seven, unusual in a country where still nearly half the adults could not read at all at that time.
At Feltre he absorbed every book they had. More significantly he remembered virtually everything he read. He was endowed with an astonishing memory. Consequently, though provocative questions might be frowned upon, Luciani would from time to time have the temerity to ask them. His teachers considered him diligent but ‘too lively’.
In the summers the young seminarian would return home and, dressed in his long black cassock, work in the fields. When not helping with the harvest he could be found ‘re-organizing’ Father Filippo’s library. The school terms would be enlivened from time to time by a visit from his father. The first act performed by Giovanni upon returning home in the autumn was always a visit to the seminary. He would then spend the winter campaigning on behalf of the Socialists.
From Feltre, Luciani graduated to the major seminary at Belluno. One of his contemporaries recalled for me the regime at Belluno:
We were woken up at 5.30 a.m. No heating, indeed the water would often be solid ice. I used to lose my vocation every morning for five minutes. We had thirty minutes to get washed and make our beds.
I met Luciani there in September 1929. He was then sixteen. He was always amiable, quiet, serene – unless you stated something that was inaccurate – then he was like a spring. I learned that in front of him one had to speak carefully. Any muddled thinking and you were in danger with him.
Among the books Luciani read were a number of works by Antonio Rosmini. Conspicuous by its absence from the seminary library was
The Five Wounds of the Church.
In 1930 it still remained on the Index of Forbidden Books. Aware by now of the furore that the book had caused, Luciani quietly acquired his own copy. It was to have a deep and lasting influence upon his life.
To Luciani’s teachers the
Syllabus of Errors
proclaimed in 1864 by Pius IX was to be considered in the 1930s as the ultimate truth. The toleration ofa non-Catholic opinion in any country where Catholics were
in a majority was inconceivable. Mussolini’s version of Fascism was not the only one being taught in Italy in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. Error had no rights. The exception apparently was if it was the teacher who was in error, then its rights were absolute.
Luciani’s vision, far from being expanded by his teachers, began, in certain respects, to shrink. Fortunately he was subjected to influences other than his teachers. Another former class-mate at Belluno recalled:
He read Goldoni’s dramas. He read French novelists of the nineteenth century. He bought a collection of the writings of the seventeenth century French Jesuit, Pierre Couwase and read them from cover to cover.
So strongly did the writings of Couwase influence him that Luciani began to think seriously of becoming a Jesuit. He watched as first one, then a second, of his close friends went to the Rector, Bishop Giosué Cattarossi, and asked for permission to join the Jesuit order. In both instances the permission was granted. Luciani went and asked for permission. The Bishop considered the request then responded, ‘No, three is one too many. You had better stay here.’
At the age of twenty-three he was ordained priest, on July 7th, 1935 in San Pietro, Belluno. The following day he celebrated his first mass in his home town. His delight at being appointed curate in Forno di Canale was total. The fact that this is the humblest clerical position within the Church was of no consequence to him. In the congregation of friends, relations, local priests and immediate family was a very proud Giovanni Luciani, who now had a permanent job relatively close to home as a glass-blower on the island of Murano near Venice.
In 1937 Luciani was appointed Vice-Rector at his old seminary in Belluno. If the content of his teaching at this time differed little from that of his own tutors, his manner certainly did. He lifted what was often dull and tedious theology to something fresh and memorable. After four years he felt the need to expand. He wanted to gain a doctorate in theology. This would mean moving to Rome and studying at the Gregorian University. His superiors in Belluno wanted him to continue teaching there while he studied for his doctorate. Luciani was agreeable but the Gregorian University insisted on at least one year’s obligatory attendance in Rome.
After the intervention of Angelo Santin, the director at Belluno, and Father Felice Capello, a renowned expert on Canon Law who taught at the Gregorian and ‘happened’ to be related to Luciani, Pope Pius
XII personally granted a dispensation in a letter signed by Cardinal Maglione and dated March 27th, 1941. (The fact that the Second World War was in full flood at the time is not apparent from the Vatican correspondence.) Luciani chose for his thesis, ‘The origin of the human soul according to Antonio Rosmini’.
His experiences during the war were an extraordinary mixture of the sacred and the profane. They included improving his German as he listened to the confessions of soldiers from the Third Reich. They included meticulous study of Rosmini’s works, or that part of them that was not banned. Later when Luciani became Pope it would be said that his thesis was ‘brilliant’. That at least was the view of the Vatican newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano,
which they had not expressed in the pre-conclave biographies. It is not a view shared by teachers at the Gregorian. One described it to me as ‘a competent piece of work’. Another said, ‘In my opinion it is worthless. It shows extreme conservatism and also lacks scholarly method.’
Many would say that Luciani’s interest in and involvement with the works of Rosmini were clear indications of his liberal thinking. The Albino Luciani of the 1940s was far from being a liberal. His thesis attempts to refute Rosmini on each point. He attacks the nineteenth-century theologian for using second-hand and incorrect quotations, for his superficiality, for ‘ingenious cleverness’. It is a scathing demolition job and a clear indication of a reactionary mind.
In between establishing that Rosmini had misquoted St Thomas Aquinas, Albino Luciani trod a delicate path when teaching his students at Belluno. He told them not to intervene when they saw German troops rounding up local resistance groups. Privately he was in sympathy with the resistance but he was aware that among the trainee priests in the classroom were many who were pro-Fascist. He was equally aware that the resistance movement was provoking reprisals by the Germans against the civilian population. Houses were destroyed; men were taken out and hanged on trees. In the latter part of the war, however, Luciani’s seminary became a haven for members of the resistance. Discovery by the German troops would have resulted in certain death, not only for the resistance fighters but also for Luciani and his colleagues.
On November 23rd, 1946 Luciani defended his thesis. It was finally published on April 4th, 1950. He obtained a
magnum cum laude
and became a Doctor of Theology.
In 1947, the Bishop of Belluno, Girolamo Bortignon, made Luciani Pro-Vicar-General of the diocese and asked him to organize the
approaching Synod and inter-diocesan meeting of Feltre and Belluno. The increase in responsibility coincided with a broadening outlook. While still unable to come to terms with Rosmini’s ‘Origins of the Soul’ Luciani had begun to appreciate and agree with Rosmini’s view of what ailed the Church. The fact that the same problems still obtained a hundred years later made the factors of social remoteness, an uneducated priesthood, disunion among bishops, the unhealthy interlocking of power between Church and State and most of all the Church’s preoccupation with material wealth, even more pertinent.
In 1949, Luciani was made responsible for catechetics in preparation for the Eucharistic Congress that was taking place that year in Belluno. This, plus his own experiences of teaching, prompted his first venture in authorship, a small book embodying his views entitled
Catechsi in Briciole
(Crumbs from the Catechism).
Catechism classes: possibly these are the earliest memory of most adult Catholics. Many theologians would dismiss them but it is precisely this stage of growth that the Jesuits refer to when they talk of ‘catching a child for life’. Albino Luciani was one of the best teachers of this subject the Church has had in this century. He had the simplicity of thought that comes only to the highly intelligent, and added to this was a genuine, deep humility.
By 1958, Don Albino, as he was known by all, had a settled life. His mother and father were both dead. He paid frequent visits to his brother, Edoardo, now married and living in the family home, and to his sister, Antonia, also married and living in Trento. As Vicar-General of Belluno he had more than enough work to occupy him. For leisure there were his books. He had little interest in food, eating whatever was put in front of him. His main forms of exercise were cycling around his diocese or climbing the nearby mountains.
This small, quiet man succeeded, apparently without trying, in having an extraordinary and lasting effect on people. Again and again as I talked to those who knew him I could see a remarkable change happen within the person recalling Albino Luciani. Their faces would soften, quite literally relax. They would smile. They smiled a great deal as they recalled the man. They grew gentler before my eyes. He clearly touched something very deep within them. Catholics would call it the soul. Happily oblivious, Albino Luciani was already leaving a unique legacy as he cycled around Belluno.
In the Vatican there was a new Pope, John XXIII, a man born at nearby Bergamo, which was also the birth-place of the man from whom Albino acquired his Christian name. John was busy shuffling
episcopal appointments. Urbani to Venice to replace himself, Carraro to Verona. In Vittorio Veneto there was a vacancy for a bishop. The Pope asked Bishop Bortignon for a name. The response made him smile. ‘I know him. I know him. He will do me fine.’
Luciani, with that disarming humility that so many would later totally fail to comprehend, declared after his appointment as Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, ‘Well, I have taken a couple of train journeys with him, but he did most of the talking. I said so little he could not have got to know me.’
The 46-year-old Luciani was ordained Bishop by Pope John in St Peter’s Basilica two days after Christmas, 1958.
The Pope was fully aware of the pastoral activities of the young man from the north and he praised him warmly. Picking up a copy of
The Imitation of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis Pope John read aloud Chapter 23. In it the four elements that bring peace and personal liberty are quoted:
My son, try to do another’s will rather than your own. Always choose to have less rather than more. Always choose the lowest place and to be less than everyone else. Always long and pray that the Will of God may be fully realized in your life. You will find that the man who does all this walks in the land of peace and quietness.
Before his ordination, Luciani had written of the coming event in a letter to Monsignor Capovilla, the Pope’s private secretary. One phrase he used strikingly demonstrates how closely he was already attempting to lead a life that embraced the ideals of Thomas à Kempis, ‘Sometimes the Lord writes his works in dust’.
The first time the congregation gathered to hear their new bishop in Vittorio Veneto, he elaborated on this theme:
With me the Lord uses yet again his old system. He takes the small ones from the mud of the streets. He takes the people of the fields. He takes others away from their nets in the sea or the lake, and he makes them Apostles. It’s his old system.
As soon as I became consecrated a priest I started to receive from my superiors tasks of responsibility and I have understood what it is for a man to be in authority. It is like a ball that is pumped up. If you watch the children who play on the grass outside this Cathedral when their ball is punctured they don’t
even bother to look at it. It can stay with tranquillity in a corner. But when it is pumped up the children jump out from all sides and every one believes that they have the right to kick it. This is what happens to men when they move up. Do not therefore be envious.
Later he talked to the 400 priests who were now answerable to him. A number of them had offered him gifts, food, money. He declined these. When they were all gathered he attempted to explain the reason: ‘I come without five lire. I want to leave without five lire.’
He continued:
My dear priests. My dear faithful. I would be a very unfortunate bishop if I didn’t love you. I assure you that I do, and that I want to be at your service and put at your disposal all of my poor energies, the little that I have and the little that I am.