Authors: David Yallop
The thoughts of the Pope, and mine, go especially to the sometimes grave difficulties of married couples. May they not lose heart, for goodness sake. May they remember that for everyone the door is narrow and narrow the road that leads to life (cf Matt 7:14). That the hope of the future life must illuminate the path of Christian couples. That God does not fail to help those who pray to Him with perseverance. May they make the effort to
live with wisdom, justice and piety in the present time, knowing that the fashion of this world passes away (cf 1 Cor 7:31) . . . ‘And if sin should still have a hold on them, may they not be discouraged, but have recourse with humble perseverance to God’s mercy through the sacrament of Penance’.
This last quotation, direct from
Humanae Vitae,
had been one of the few crumbs of comfort for men like Luciani who had hoped for a change. Trusting that he had his flock with him in a ‘sincere adhesion to the teaching of the Pope’, Luciani gave them his blessing.
Other priests in other countries took a more openly hostile line. Many left the priesthood. Luciani steered a more subtle course.
In January 1969 he returned yet again to this subject that the Vatican would have him make a one-line dogmatic pronouncement upon. He was aware that some of his priests were denying absolution to married couples using the contraceptive pill and that other priests were readily absolving what Pope Paul had deemed a sin. Dealing with this problem Luciani quoted the response from the Italian Bishops’ Conference to
Humanae Vitae.
It was a response he had helped to draft. In it priests were recommended to show ‘evangelical kindness’ towards all married people, but especially, as Luciani pointed out, towards those ‘whose failings derive . . . from the sometimes very serious difficulties in which they find themselves. In that case the behaviour of the spouses, although not in conformity with Christian norms, is certainly not to be judged with the same gravity as when it derives from motives corrupted by selfishness and hedonism.’ Luciani also admonished his troubled people not to feel ‘an anguished, disturbing guilt complex’.
Throughout this entire period the Vatican continued to benefit from the profits derived from one of the many companies it owned, the Istituto Farmacologico Sereno. One of Sereno’s best selling products was an oral contraceptive called Luteolas.
The loyalty Albino Luciani had demonstrated in Vittorio Veneto was not lost on the Holy Father in Rome. Better than most the Pope knew that such loyalty had been achieved at a heavy price. The document on his desk that bore Cardinal Urbani’s signature, but was in essence Luciani’s position on birth control, was mute testimony to the personal cost.
Deeply impressed, Pope Paul VI observed to his Under-Secretary of State, Giovanni Benelli, ‘In Vittorio Veneto there is a little bishop who seems well suited to me.’ The astute Benelli went out of his way to
establish a friendship with Luciani. It was to prove a friendship with far-reaching consequences.
Cardinal Urbani, Patriarch of Venice, died on September 17th, 1969. The Pope remembered his little bishop. To Paul’s surprise Luciani politely declined what many saw as a glittering promotion. Entirely without ambition he was happy and content with his work in Vittorio Veneto.
Pope Paul cast his net farther. Cardinal Antonio Samore, as reactionary as his mentor Ottaviani, became a strong contender. Murmurings of discontent from members of the Venetian laity, declaring they would be happier if Samore remained in Rome, reached the Pope’s ears.
Pope Paul then gave yet another demonstration of the Papal dance he had invented since ascending to the throne of Peter: one step forward, one step back – Luciani, Samore, Luciani.
Luciani began to feel the pressure from Rome. Eventually he succumbed. It was a decision he regretted within hours. Unaware that its new Patriarch had fought against accepting the position, Venice celebrated the fact that ‘local man’ Albino Luciani was appointed on December 15th, 1969.
Before leaving Vittorio Veneto, Luciani was presented with a donation of one million lire. He quietly declined the gift and after suggesting that the people should donate it to their own personal charities reminded them what he had told his priests when he had arrived in the diocese eleven years earlier: ‘I came without five lire. I want to leave without five lire.’ Albino Luciani took with him to Venice a small pile of linen, a few sticks of furniture and his books.
On February 8th, 1970, the new Patriarch, now Archbishop Luciani, entered Venice. Tradition decreed that the entry of a new Patriarch be a splendid excuse for a gaily bedecked procession of gondolas, brass bands, parades and countless speeches. Luciani had always had an intense dislike of such pomp and ceremony. He cancelled the ritual welcome and confined himself to a speech during which he referred not only to the historic aspects of the city but acknowledged that his diocese also contained industrial areas such as Mestre and Marghera. ‘This was the other Venice,’ Luciani observed, ‘with few monuments but so many factories, houses, spiritual problems, souls. And it is to this many-faceted city that Providence now sends me. Signor Mayor, the first Venetian coins, minted as long ago as A.D. 850, had the motto “Christ, save Venice”. I make this my own with all my heart and turn it into a prayer, “Christ, bless Venice”.’
The pagan city was in dire need of Christ’s blessing. It was bulging with monuments and churches that proclaimed the former glories of an imperial republic, yet Albino Luciani rapidly learned that the majority of the churches within the 127 parishes were continually nearly empty. If one discounted the tourists, the very young and the very old, then church attendance was appallingly low. Venice is a city that has sold its soul to tourism.
The day after his arrival, accompanied by his new secretary, Father Mario Senigaglia, he was at work. Declining invitations to attend various soirées, cocktail parties and receptions, he visited instead the local seminary, the women’s prison of Giudecca, the male prison of Santa Maria Maggiore, then celebrated Mass in the Church of San Simeone.
It was customary for the Patriarch of Venice to have his own boat. Luciani had neither the personal wealth nor the inclination for what seemed to him an unnecessary extravagance. When he wanted to move through the canals he and Father Mario would catch a water bus. If it was an urgent appointment Luciani would telephone the local fire brigade, the carabinieri or the finance police and beg the loan of one of their boats. Eventually the three organizations worked out a roster to oblige the unusual priest.
During a national petrol crisis the Patriarch took to a bicycle when visiting the mainland. Venetian high society shook its head and muttered disapprovingly. Many of them enjoyed the pomp and ceremony they associated with the Patriarchship. To them a Patriarch was an important person to be treated in an important manner. When Albino Luciani and Father Mario appeared unannounced at a hospital to visit the sick they would immediately be surrounded by the administrators, doctors, monks and nuns. Father Senigaglia recalled for me such an occasion.
‘I don’t want to take up your precious time. I can go round on my own.’
‘Not a bit of it, Your Eminence, it’s an honour for us.’
Thus a large procession would begin to make its way through the wards with an increasingly discomfited Luciani. Eventually he would say, ‘Well, perhaps it’s better if I come back another time, it’s already late.’
He would effect several false exits in an attempt to shake off the entourage; without success.
‘Don’t worry, Your Eminence. It’s our duty.’
Outside he would turn to Father Senigaglia, ‘But are they always
like this? It’s a shame. I am used to something different. Either we shall have to make them understand or I shall lose a good habit.’
Slowly some of the messages got across, but it was never the same as at Vittorio Veneto.
His fresh approach was not confined to his technique for visiting the sick. A considerable number of monsignors and priests whose behaviour did not accord with Luciani’s view that ‘the real treasures of the Church are the poor, the weak who should not be helped with occasional charity but in such a way that they can really benefit’, found themselves parish priests in a far province.
One such priest, a property owner, received from Luciani a personal lesson in social justice that left him bemused. The priest, having increased the rent on one of his houses, discovered that the tenant, an unemployed schoolteacher, could not afford the increase. He promptly served an eviction notice. Luciani, hearing of the incident through his secretary, remonstrated in vain with the priest, who shrugged his shoulders at this whimsical Patriarch who quoted Christ to him. ‘My kingdom is not of this earth.’ He proceeded with the eviction of the schoolteacher and his family. Luciani immediately wrote out a cheque for 3 million lire, enabling the family to live in a pensione until they found a permanent residence. Today the teacher has a photocopy of the cheque framed and hanging in his living room.
On another occasion Senigaglia inadvertently interrupted a visit Luciani was making to a sick priest. He discovered Luciani emptying his wallet on the priest’s bed. Later the secretary gently remonstrated with the Patriarch. ‘You can’t do this.’ Albino Luciani’s response sums up much of the man: ‘But it was all I had on me at the time.’
Senigaglia explained that the Curia had a special fund so that the Patriarch could help his priests, in silence. This, Senigaglia explained, was how the previous Patriarch had performed these various acts of charity. Luciani listened, then told his secretary to make the same arrangement with the Curia.
He discovered that as Patriarch he had unwittingly acquired a house at San Pietro di Fileto. He attempted to give it to the unfortunate schoolteacher but the Vatican objected. After a battle with the Curia they finally conceded that Luciani could allow the retired Bishop Muchin to live there.
Within a short while of becoming Patriarch his offices were continuously over-flowing with the poor. ‘The door of the Patriarch is always open, ask Don Mario and whatever I can do for you I will always willingly do it.’ The strongly smelling crowd murmured their thanks.
Don Mario spoke to his superior, gritting his teeth, ‘Your Excellency, you are ruining me, they will never leave me in peace.’
Luciani smiled and replied, ‘Someone will help us.’
The offices of the Patriarch were frequently filled with ex-prisoners, alcoholics, poor people, abandoned people, tramps, women who could no longer work as prostitutes. One such unfortunate still wears the pyjamas Luciani gave him and writes ‘thank you’ letters to a man no longer here to read them.
During his first year in the city he showed his concern for those who lived in what he had described on his first day as ‘the other Venice’. When strikes and violent demonstrations erupted in Mestre and Marghera he urged workers and management to seek a middle position. In 1971, when 270 workers were made redundant at La Sava factory, he reminded the bosses of the paramount need to remember personal human dignity. Certain sections of the traditional Catholic establishment in Venice could be heard expressing the wish for a Patriarch who would content himself with sermons to uncomprehending tourists. Pope Paul VI, however, was clearly delighted with Luciani. In 1971 he nominated him to attend the World Synod of Bishops. Items on the agenda were priestly ministry and justice in the world. One suggestion of Luciani’s at the Synod showed the shape of things to come:
I suggest, as an example of concrete help to the poor countries, that the more fortunate churches should tax themselves and pay one per cent of their income to the Vatican aid organizations. This one per cent should be called the ‘brothers’ share’ and should not be given as charity, but as something that is owed, to compensate for the injustices being committed by our consumer world against the developing world, and to make up in some way for social sin, of which we should all be aware.
One of the injustices that Luciani continuously worked to eliminate in Venice concerned a widely prevalent attitude towards the subnormal and the handicapped. Not only the mayor and city officials showed indifference, but Luciani found the same prejudice among some of his parish priests. When he went to give First Communion to a large group of handicapped people at St Pius X in Marghera he had to cope with a delegation of protesting priests who argued that he should not do such a thing. ‘These creatures do not understand.’ He instructed the group that he was personally ordering them to attend the First Communion.
Alter the Mass he picked up a young girl suffering from spina bifida. The congregation was completely silent.
‘Do you know whom you have received today?’ he asked the little girl.
‘Yes. Jesus.’
‘And are you pleased?’
‘Very.’
Luciani turned slowly and looked at the group of protesting priests. ‘You see, they are better than we adults.’
Because of the reluctance of the City Council to contribute to Special Work Centres, Luciani was obliged initially to rely on diocesan funds and the bank known as ‘the priests’ bank’, Banca Cattolica del Veneto. Soon after he had been made a Cardinal he became aware that it was no longer the priests’ bank. Joining the regular crowd in his outer office who required help, he now found bishops, monsignors and priests. In the past the bank had always loaned money to the clergy at low interest rates. It was a bank founded for the diocese which had previously contributed to the vital work for that section of society which Luciani described in the following words: ‘They have no political weight. They cannot be counted on for votes. For those reasons we must show our sense of honour as men and Christians towards these handicapped people.’