73.OR [EWE], June 29, 1981, pp. 1, 12; author’s interview with Daniella Carozza, May 26, 1998.
74.Author’s interview with Jan Nowak, August 19, 1998; Novak said that the Pope had mentioned “reading your book” while he was in the hospital during a subsequent personal conversation.
75.Ibid.
76.See Szajkowski, Next to God… Poland, p. 132.
77.Frossard and John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid!,” p. 240, 249.
78.The feast is also known as the feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, built on Rome’s Esquiline Hill on the spot where Mary is said to have caused a miraculous snowfall on August 5, 353.
79.Szajkowski, Next to God… Poland, p. 135.
80.Ibid.
81.Józef Tischner, “Polish Work Is Sick,” in Józef Tischner, The Spirit of Solidarity (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 96–100.
82.John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 4.2, in Miller, Encyclicals.
83. Ibid., 25.3.
84.Ibid. 6.5.
85.Ibid., 9.3 [emphasis in original].
86.Ibid., 12.1 [emphasis in original].
87.Ibid., 14.2.
88.Ibid., 15.1.
89.Ibid., 15.2.
90.Ibid., 19.3.
91.Ibid., 8.5, 20.3.
92.Ibid., 8.5, 20.3.
93.Ibid., 20.6.
94.Ibid., 25.3–25.4.
95.Ibid., 26.1.
96.Ibid., 27.7 [emphasis in original].
97.On this point see “Editor’s Introduction to Laborem Exercens,” in Miller, Encyclicals, p. 152.
98.Miłosz, History, p. 274.
99.Laborem Exercens, 1.3, in Miller, Encyclicals.
100.Details of the trial and the citation from Judge Santiapichi are taken from Paul B. Henze, The Plot to Kill the Pope (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983).
101.See, among many other examples, Joseph Kraft’s column in the Washington Post on May 19, 1981, in which he writes that “the root of this terrorist attempt against the Pope is a turbulent Islamic society, pregnant with nasty surprises.” [Cited in ibid., p. 6.]
102.Miss Geyer’s column was in the Washington Star of May 15, 1981; cited in ibid., p. 5.
103.Cited in ibid., pp. 158–159, 172–173.
104.Variants include the prime contractor being the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), operating under Andropov’s supervision, and the Stasi, the East German intelligence service, as a possible intermediary between the Soviets and the Bulgarians. In any event, the plot was certainly highly compartmentalized and super-secret. The likelihood is that very few people involved knew all the details of an extremely complex operation.
105.See Henze, The Plot to Kill the Pope, pp. 170–172.
106.OR [EWE], May 25, 1981, p. 10.
107.See Henze, The Plot to Kill the Pope, pp. 15–17.
108.The trial of alleged Bulgarian conspirators that ended in Rome on March 29, 1986, confused matters far more than it clarified them, and may itself have been affected by a Soviet disinformation campaign. But the trial certainly did not, as press coverage at the time suggested, “disprove” the “Bulgarian connection” to Agca. [See Paul Henze, “The Plot to Kill the Pope: A Balance Sheet in the Wake of the Rome Trial,” memorandum prepared for the RAND Corporation, June 1986.]
In 1988, a KGB agent posing as a staff member of the Novosti Press Agency asked to see Paul Henze, an American who had published a book in 1983 arguing for a likely Soviet connection to the assassination attempt, and who was then visiting Moscow for the first time. After ten minutes of chatter about international cultural exchange, his ostensible interest, the Soviet visitor asked, “So, do you still hold to your analysis in The Plot to Kill the Pope?” [Author’s interview with Paul Henze, August 20, 1998.] That the Soviet intelligence service was still so interested in denying its involvement in the late 1980s, two years after many Western analysts and commentators had decided that the “Bulgarian (and thus Soviet) connection” had been disproven, is instructive.
109.On the changes in Jesuit formation, see Joseph M. Becker, SJ, The Re-Formed Jesuits: A History of Changes in Jesuit Formation During the Decade 1965–1975, 2 vols. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992, 1997).
110.Years later, it was made clear that one of the reasons that the Society’s highest authorities did not take action against Drinan was that they were never truthfully informed of the situation by Drinan’s superiors in the United States. See James Hitchcock, “The Strange Political Career of Father Drinan,” Catholic World Report, July 1996, pp. 38–45.
When he first ran for Congress in 1970, Father Drinan explained that while he accepted the Church’s teaching that abortion was an intrinsically evil act, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom proscribed his imposing his religious views on others. This was disingenuous at best, as the Church’s moral teaching on abortion was based on a natural-law moral analysis accessible to anyone willing to engage the argument. Father Drinan’s tacit suggestion that he agreed with those who charged pro-life Catholics with promoting a sectarian position, and his proposal that Catholic religious leaders should withdraw from the legal and political debate over abortion law, ill befit a man positioning himself as a defender of human rights on precisely the same natural-law moral grounds on which the Church based its opposition to abortion. [See Robert F. Drinan, SJ, “The State of the Abortion Question,” Commonweal, April 17, 1970, pp. 108–109.]
111.The examples are many and various, for example, the public dissent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration on the ordination of women signed by virtually the entire faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (a pontifical faculty chartered by the Holy See) and published in Commonweal (April 1, 1977, pp. 204ff.), or Georgetown President Timothy Healy’s essay, “The Pope and American Catholic Universities,” in America (December 8, 1979, pp. 362ff.).
112.Author’s interview with Vincent O’Keefe, SJ, September 16, 1997. Father O’Keefe said that John Paul I’s talk had been prepared by Father Paolo Dezza, SJ, who had been Pope Paul VI’s confessor, and who would figure prominently in the drama to follow.
113.Ibid.
114.Ibid.
115.Prior to the meeting, Arrupe’s general assistants had learned that the Holy See had requested that each nunciature or apostolic delegation report on the condition of the Society in its country, but the matter did not come up in the January 17 discussion.
116.Author’s interview with Vincent O’Keefe, SJ, September 16, 1997.
117.Ibid.
118.Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi write that O’Keefe’s letter “gave advance notice of a general congregation to elect Arrupe’s successor.” [His Holiness, p. 421–422.] O’Keefe said that his letter simply laid out the current situation and the need for a general congregation as he had explained it to the Pope; the former vicar general denied that he had attempted to “convoke a general congregation,” stating that “I would have to be crazier than I am to do something like that.” [Author’s interview with Vincent O’Keefe, SJ, September 16, 1997.]
119.Author’s interview with Vincent O’Keefe, SJ, September 16, 1997.
120.Author’s interview with Giuseppe Pittau, SJ, December 17, 1997. Father Pittau says that this was precisely what John Paul had told him and Father Dezza at a meeting shortly after the intervention.
121.Ibid.
122.Ibid.
123.Cited in Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, p. 317.
124.John Paul’s meeting with Geremek, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Jerzy Turowicz, and others is described in ibid., p. 316, drawing on Geremek’s memories of the meeting.
125.Author’s interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, April 7, 1997.
126.John Paul II, The Theology of Marriage and Celibacy, p. 1.
127.Letter to the author from Monsignor Piero Marini, February 17, 1997.
128.See Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, pp. 329–330.
129.See Szajkowski, Next to God… Po
land, pp. 140–141.
130.Ibid., pp. 155–156.
131.Ibid., pp. 156, 155.
132.See OR [EWE], December 21–28, 1981, p. 20.
133.See Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, p. 267–268.
134.Cited in Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, p. 345.
135.See OR [EWE], January 4, 1982, p. 3.
136.John Paul II, “Christmas Greetings to Polish People,” OR [EWE], January 4, 1982, p. 10.
137.See OR [EWE], January 11, 1982, p. 1.
138.Author’s interview with Zbigniew Brzeziński, February 7, 1997.
139.See OR [EWE], January 25, 1982, pp. 1–4, especially section 7.
140.Cardinal Hume, who did not know whether others had previously suggested visiting both Great Britain and Argentina or whether the Pope was already considering the possibility, “thought of it on the spur of the moment when I was with others discussing with the Pope whether he should come to England” under the political circumstances. [Letter to the author from Cardinal Basil Hume, OSB, June 9, 1998.]
141.Citations are from “Papal Times,” a supplement to The Catholic Times (June 1, 1997) on the fifteenth anniversary of John Paul’s visit to the United Kingdom.
142.Memorandum to the author from Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, November 24, 1997.
CHAPTER 13
Liberating Liberations: The Limits of Politics and the Promise of Redemption
1.Author’s interview with Archbishop Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, November 28, 1997.
2.Author’s interview with Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo, SDB, November 24, 1997.
3.See, for example, Szulc, Pope John Paul II.
4.See, for example, Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness.
5.See, for example, Kwitny, Man of the Century.
6.John Paul II, remarks on arrival at Fatima, May 12, 1982, in Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1982.
7.Author’s interview with Richard V. Allen, November 26, 1996.
8.Ibid.; author’s interview with Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998. Reagan had given instructions that the Pope was to be informed of the U.S. government’s intelligence sources, as well as of their “product.” [Ibid.]
9.Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 10, 1996.
10.The conspiracy theory is most aggressively promoted by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi in His Holiness.
11.See ibid., pp. 319 ff. Bernstein and Politi write that CIA director William Casey and U.S. special ambassador Vernon Walters met with John Paul II “about fifteen times over a six-year period”: an average of 2.5 times per year. Fifteen or twenty hours of conversation over six years is not what one usually understands by a conspiracy.
12.Ibid., pp. 270–271. Richard V. Allen characterizes this suggestion, in reference to the intermediate nuclear forces deployment, as “bulls—t.” [Author’s interview with Richard V. Allen, November 26, 1996.]
13.Sometime after the Bernstein “holy alliance” proposal first appeared in Time magazine, John Paul responded to a reporter’s question about it on a 1992 flight to Africa. The “holy alliance,” he said, was an “a posteriori deduction.” Then the philosopher-Pope drew the logical conclusion: “One cannot construct a case from the consequences. Everybody knows the positions of President Reagan as a great policy leader in world politics. My position was that of a pastor, the Bishop of Rome, of one with responsibility for the Gospel, which certainly contains principles of the moral and social order and those regarding human rights…. The Holy See’s position, even in regard to my homeland, was guided by moral principle….” [OR (EWE), February 26, 1992, p. 12.]
14.On Ratzinger’s early life and career, see his book-length interview with the German journalist Peter Seewald [Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), pp. 41–80], and his autobiography [Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998)].
15.Ratzinger’s description of why he found Wojtyła attractive is interesting:
The first thing that won my sympathy was his uncomplicated, human frankness and openness, as well as the cordiality that he radiated. There was his humor. You also sensed a piety that had nothing false, nothing external about it. You sensed that here was a man of God. Here was a person who had nothing artificial about him, who was really a man of God and, what is more, a completely original person who had a long intellectual and personal history behind him. You notice that about a person: he has suffered, he has also struggled on his way to this vocation. He lived through the whole drama of the German occupation, of the Russian occupation, and of the communist regime. He blazed his own intellectual trail. He studied German philosophy intensely; he entered deeply into the whole intellectual history of Europe. And he also knew the crucial points in the history of theology that lead far from the usual paths. This intellectual wealth, as well as his enjoyment of dialogue and exchange, these were all things that immediately made him likeable to me. [Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, p. 85.]
16.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 12, 1996. Ratzinger was concerned that the prefecture would require him to abandon his own theological work and publishing, to which he felt a vocational obligation. John Paul II said he didn’t see any problem with the prefect publishing his own work privately, and that settled the matter. [Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, p. 85–86.]
17.See Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth.
18.Author’s interviews with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 12, 1996 and December 18, 1997.
19.Author’s interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, September 12, 1996; see also Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, p. 108.
20.Author’s interview with Archbishop Zenon Grocholewski, January 13, 1997. Archbishop Grocholewski was a member of the review group, and at the time of our meeting was Secretary of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s appellate court. On October 5, 1998, John Paul II named Grocholewski the Prefect, or head, of the Signatura.
21.Ibid.
22.Ibid.
23.The citations are from Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, in The Code of Canon Law: A Text and Commentary, eds. James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Gren, and Donald Heintschel (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. xxiv–xxvi. Interestingly, this edition translates the Latin title of the apostolic constitution as “The Laws of Its Canonical Discipline.”
24.Author’s interview with Jean Duchesne, August 20, 1997.
25.The phrase “saint of the abyss” is André Frossard’s; see “Forget Not Love”: The Passion of Maximilian Kolbe, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 15.
26.See Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, 1982 [emphasis in original].
27.On the controversy over Kolbe’s canonization as a martyr, see Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 144–147.
28.Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Introduction” to “Thérèse of Lisieux” in Two Sisters in the Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), p. 24.
29.On this point, see Woodward, Making Saints, p. 3.
30.Woodward sums up the changes in ibid., pp. 90–95.
31.See ibid., p. 95.
32.See Joan Estruch, Saints and Schemers: Opus Dei and its Paradoxes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Estruch, a scholarly critic of the Work who concedes the movement’s key role in Spain’s democratic transition, also argues that the transition had effects that Opus Dei did not anticipate, for example, the sharp decline of Catholic practice in a rapidly modernizing Spain.
33.See Presbyterorum Ordinis [Decree on the ministry and life of priests], 10.
34.Monsignor del Portillo was ordained a bishop by John Paul II on January 6, 1991. For a study of Opus Dei’s quest for a distinctive canonical status in the Church, written from within the movement, see Amadeo de Fuenmayor, Valentin Gómez-Iglesias, and Jose Luis Illanes, The Canonical Path of Opus Dei: The History a
nd Defense of a Charism (Princeton/Chicago: Scepter Publishers/Midwest Theological Forum, 1994).
35.This was a point stressed in the author’s interview with the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez, November 14, 1997. Bishop Echevarría succeeded Bishop del Portillo in 1994.
36.See Woodward, see Making Saints, pp. 8–12, 384–387.
37.Author’s interview with Cardinal Pio Laghi, January 16, 1997; Cardinal Laghi was recounting a conversation he had had with Pope John Paul II in the early 1980s.
When he came to Washington 1981 as apostolic delegate, Laghi used to discuss Central America with President Ronald Reagan. On one occasion, the president asked, “What is this damned theology of liberation?” Laghi, who knew that Reagan had been to an Italian-American function the night before, replied that “The spaghetti is good, but the sauce is poisoned.” The “spaghetti” was the Church’s work with the poor; the “sauce” was “Marxist analysis” leading to revolutionary violence in the name of the Gospel— “putting a rifle into the hands of the crucified Lord,” as Cardinal Laghi once put it.
38.See Teresa Whitfield, Paying the Price: Ignacio Ellacuría and the Murdered Jesuits of El Salvador (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), pp. 102–109. The question of the degree of influence the Jesuits exercised over Archbishop Romero remains controverted almost two decades after Romero’s death, and ten years after Father Ellacuría and five other Jesuits were brutally murdered in 1989 by the Salvadoran army. Ms. Whitfield’s book, while quite sympathetic to both the archbishop and Father Ellacuría, provides ample evidence that Ellacuría, Sobrino, and their colleagues were influential in shaping Romero’s views and actions. Father Ellacuría’s theological and political views are outlined in ibid., chapter seven. Piers Paul Read, reviewing Paying the Price in the Times Literary Supplement [March 24, 1995], praised it as a “scholarly work… that manages to remain objective on a theme that still provokes passions of a violent kind” still, he concluded, “Despite [the author’s] sympathies, the information imparted in Paying the Price is more than enough to lead us to question whether Romero, Ellacuría, and the other priests murdered in El Salvador were Catholic martyrs rather than just casualties in a cruel civil war.”
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