The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  Five weeks before he signed Novo Millennio Ineunte, John Paul II told a lunch guest that the response to the Great Jubilee had “exceeded my expectations completely.”52 At the end of the meal, the Pope could be found in his private chapel—appropriately enough, for in a true sense he had prayed the entire Church through the Great Jubilee of 2000. His dreams of a celebration of the two thousandth anniversary of the Incarnation had been met with skepticism at first from those to whom he might have normally looked for enthusiastic support. Yet he had persevered, because of his faith and because of his conviction that the Church ought to think of itself, as in apostolic times, as being a mission, not having a mission. That mission was at once evangelical and humanistic: for if Christ was in fact the key to man and to human history, then a deepened encounter with Christ would lead to what he had called at the United Nations in 1995 a “new springtime of the human spirit.” That had been the message of the pontificate for twenty-three years; that had been the message of the Great Jubilee of 2000: Christ is the key to the mystery of humanity and its destiny.

  Among many other things, the Great Jubilee of 2000 had been a year-long demonstration of the extraordinary diversity of the Catholic world. There had been national pilgrimages to Rome from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Lithuania, Mexico, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Venezuela. There had been diocesan pilgrimages from all over the world, with virtually every Italian diocese celebrating a special jubilee pilgrimage to Rome. In addition to the vocational jubilee days, which underscored the striking plurality of ways in which the Christian life was being lived, other organized pilgrimage groups came from a remarkable diversity of occupations, hobbies, and communities: campers, Cursillo veterans, devotees of St. Rita of Cascia (“the saint of the impossible”), doctors, firemen, Italian municipal police, motorcyclists, the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, pizza makers, Rotary International members, streetcar conductors, teachers in public schools. The Catholic Church’s rich diversity of liturgical traditions was marked throughout the year by celebrations of the Mass or Divine Liturgy in the Alexandrine-Ethiopian Rite; the Ambrosian Rite; the Chaldean Rite; the Coptic Rite; the Mozarabic Rite; the Syrian-Antiochene Rite; the Syro-Malabarese Rite (which traces its origins to the work of St. Thomas the apostle in India); and the Syrian-Malankara Rite. The Irish writer James Joyce may or may not have said that the Catholic Church means “here comes everyone,” but that was certainly Rome’s experience of the Great Jubilee of 2000. Yet amidst that stunning diversity of human experiences and cultures, there was, throughout the year, a clear focus. It had been defined by John Paul II six years before, in Tertio Millennio Adveniente. It was given powerful expression in the antiphon within prayer the Pope composed for the jubilee year, in the free-verse style he had used in his literary work and his Christmas and Easter messages Urbi et Orbi:

  1. Blessed are you, Father,

  who, in your infinite love,

  gave us your only-begotten Son.

  By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate

  in the spotless womb of the Virgin Mary

  and was born in Bethlehem

  two thousand years ago.

  He became our companion on life’s path

  and gave new meaning to our history,

  the journey we make together

  in toil and suffering,

  in faithfulness and love,

  towards the new heaven and the new earth

  where You, once death has been vanquished,

  will be all in all.

  Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity,

  you alone are God most high!

  2. By your grace, O Father, may the Jubilee Year

  be a time of deep conversion

  and of joyful return to you.

  May it be a time of reconciliation between people,

  and of peace restored among nations,

  a time when swords are beaten into ploughshares

  and the clash of arms gives way to songs of peace.

  Father, grant that we may live this Jubilee Year

  docile to the voice of the Spirit,

  faithful to the way of Christ,

  diligent in listening to your Word

  and in approaching the wellsprings of grace.

  Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity,

  you alone are God most high!

  3. Father, by the power of the Spirit,

  strengthen the Church’s commitment

  to the new evangelization

  and guide our steps along the pathways of the world,

  to proclaim Christ by our lives,

  and to direct our earthly pilgrimage

  towards the City of heavenly light.

  May Christ’s followers show forth their love

  for the poor and the oppressed;

  may they be one with those in need

  and abound in works of mercy;

  may they be compassionate towards all,

  that they themselves may obtain indulgence

  and forgiveness from you.

  Praise and glory to You, Most Holy Trinity,

  you alone are God most high!

  4. Father, grant that your Son’s disciples,

  purified in memory

  and acknowledging their failings,

  may be one, that the world may believe.

  May dialogue between the followers

  of the great religions prosper,

  and may all people discover

  the joy of being your children.

  May the intercession of Mary,

  Mother of your faithful people,

  in union with the prayers of the Apostles,

  the Christian martyrs,

  and the righteous of all nations in every age,

  make the Holy Year a time of renewed hope

  and of joy in the Spirit

  for each of us and for the whole Church.

  Praise and glory to you, Most Holy Trinity,

  you alone are God most high!

  5. To you, Almighty Father,

  Creator of the universe and of mankind,

  through Christ, the Living One,

  Lord of time and history,

  in the Spirit who makes all things holy,

  be praise and honor and glory

  now and forever. Amen!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Turbulence of History

  2001–2002

  February 21, 2001 John Paul II creates forty-four new cardinals at his eighth ordinary consistory.

  March 11, 2001 Beatification of 231 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War.

  May 4–9, 2001 Papal jubilee pilgrimage “in the footsteps of St. Paul” to Greece, Syria, and Malta.

  June 23–27, 2001 John Paul II in Ukraine.

  August 1, 2001 John Paul II’s one thousandth general audience.

  September 11, 2001 Jihadist terrorism kills thousands in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

  September 22–27, 2001 John Paul II in Kazakhstan and Armenia.

  September 30- Synod of Bishops on the ministry of the bishop in the

  October 27, 2001 twenty-first century.

  December 16, 2001 John Paul II’s three hundredth Roman parish visitation.

  January 6, 2002 Boston Globe reveals former priest John Geoghan’s extensive sexual abuse of minors.

  February 11, 2002 Four Catholic dioceses canonically erected in Russia.

  April 22–23, 2002 U.S. cardinals meet in Rome to discuss sexual abuse crisis with John Paul II and leaders of the Roman Curia.

  May 22–26, 2002 John Paul II in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria.

  June 16, 2002 Canonization of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

  July 23-August 2, 2002 John Paul II in Toronto (World Youth Day-2002), Guatemala City, and Mexico City.

  August 16–19, 2002 John Paul II in Poland for consecration of the Shrine
of Divine Mercy in Kraków-Łagiewniki.

  October 4, 2002 Ecumenical Vespers in St. Peter’s for the seventh centenary of the birth of St. Bridget of Sweden.

  October 6, 2002 Canonization of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, founder of Opus Dei.

  October 7–13, 2002 Romanian Orthodox Patriarch Teoctist visits John Paul II in the Vatican.

  October 16, 2002 Beginning the twenty-fifth year of the pontificate, John Paul II issues apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae and adds “Mysteries of Light” to the Rosary.

  October 31, 2002 John Paul II is named honorary citizen of Rome.

  November 14, 2002 John Paul II addresses the Italian parliament.

  December 13, 2002 Cardinal Bernard Law resigns as archbishop of Boston.

  Over the twenty-three years of his papacy, Pope John Paul II had come to love the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo.

  It wasn’t always so. At the beginning of the pontificate, the man who was used to kayaking, hiking, and camping on his summer vacations felt a bit confined there, even given the spacious grounds of the villa Pope Pius XI had rebuilt after the Lateran Treaty of 1929 settled the Holy See’s differences with the Kingdom of Italy. Never one to take the gilded cage with complete seriousness, John Paul “escaped” from Castel Gandolfo on occasion, walking into the town of Castelgandolfo. But it eventually seemed better to change Castel Gandolfo, the villa, itself. So John Paul had a swimming pool built near the helicopter pad, in order to get some vigorous exercise during his stays in the Castelli Romani, the hills outside Rome. When some of the traditional managers of popes complained about the cost, the Pope famously replied that the pool cost much less than a new conclave would.

  Thus John Paul had formed the habit of staying at Castel Gandolfo for a week or two after the traditional holidays of August, when Rome empties because of the oppressive heat and humidity. In late September 2001, the Pope was heading for two former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan and Armenia; the deferred Synod of Bishops for the jubilee year would finally meet in October; and the Pope was looking forward to the first beatification in history of a married couple, which would take place during the Synod. So it made sense for John Paul, who was already experiencing increased physical difficulties due to his Parkinson’s disease, to stay at Castel Gandolfo into the second week of September 2001, preparing for a very busy postjubilee fall.

  In midafternoon on September 11, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the secretary of state of the Holy See, called the papal villa with the news that airplanes had plowed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Sodano, Stanisław Dziwisz remembered, “sounded frightened.” The Pope had the television turned on; like hundreds of millions of others across a world that suddenly seemed much more dangerous, he saw repeated time and again the images of the Twin Towers crumbling into rubble in lower Manhattan, taking thousands of victims with them. “Filled with suffering,” as Dziwisz later recounted, John Paul went straight to the chapel in the papal villa, and shuttled back and forth between the chapel and the television for the next several hours.1

  On September 12, the Pope returned to Rome by helicopter for the weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square and immediately addressed the horror that was on everyone’s mind:

  I cannot begin this audience without expressing my profound sorrow at the terrorist attacks which yesterday brought death and destruction to America, causing thousands of victims and injuring countless people. To the President of the United States and to all American citizens I express my heartfelt sorrow. In the face of such unspeakable horror we cannot but be deeply disturbed. I add my voice to the voices raised in these hours to express indignant condemnation, and I strongly reiterate that the ways of violence can never lead to genuine solutions to humanity’s problems.

  Yesterday was a dark day in the history of humanity, a terrible affront to human dignity.… How is it possible to commit acts of such savage cruelty? The human heart has depths from which schemes of unheard-of ferocity sometimes emerge, capable of destroying in a moment the normal daily life of a people.…

  With deeply felt sympathy I address myself to the beloved people of the United States in this moment of distress and consternation, when the courage of so many men and women of good will is being sorely tested. In a special way I reach out to the families of the dead and the injured, and assure them of my spiritual closeness. I entrust to the mercy of the Most High the helpless victims of this tragedy, for whom I offered Mass this morning, invoking upon them eternal rest. May God give courage to the survivors; may he sustain the rescue-workers and the many volunteers who are presently making an enormous effort to cope with such an immense emergency.2

  The audience ended unusually, with a special Prayer of the Faithful; the petitions were completed by a poignant prayer that quietly but unmistakably condemned the distorted religious convictions of the 9/11 terrorists: “O almighty and merciful God, you cannot be understood by one who sows discord, you cannot be accepted by one who loves violence: look upon our painful human condition tried by cruel acts of terror and death, comfort your children and open our hearts to hope, so that our time may again know days of serenity and peace. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  That prayer would go largely unanswered in the remaining years of the pontificate: years in which both the Church and the world were thrust back into the turbulence of history after the relative calm of the Great Jubilee of 2000.

  In the period following 9/11, John Paul II would be frustrated time and again in his quest for a world that had learned some lessons from the awfulness of the twentieth century. The hope of a robust interreligious dialogue would fade under the incapacities of Islamic leaders to come to grips with the lethal pathologies of the complex Muslim world—even as John Paul II bent every effort to underscore the Church’s regard for those forms of Islamic piety that sustained lives of devotion and civility. The Holy See would find its fifty-year commitment to the United Nations challenged by the manifest incapacities of that institution to cope with the new world disorder. John Paul II’s long-standing affection for the United States—unmistakably clear in his audience of September 12—would be tried by a major policy disagreement over Iraq with an American president who venerated the Pope and whose administration was as supportive of the Holy See’s core issues in international organizations as any American government had ever been. Even the Pope’s efforts to build bridges within the fractured worlds of Christianity would face new frustrations in the years after the Great Jubilee. And the horrors of 9/11 would be followed within four months by the revelation of different, but nonetheless odious, crimes committed by Catholic priests in the United States.

  Throughout the Great Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II had reminded the Church that sanctity must be lived in history. The disciples of Christ might know that, in the end, God’s saving purposes would be vindicated, and that the Kingdom of God would prevail over its enemies. That knowledge provided spiritual ballast within the turbulence of history. It did not diminish the turbulence—for the Pope, or for any other Christian disciple.

  NUNC DIMITTIS, DOMINE?

  When Pope John Paul II knelt in the portal of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s on Christmas Eve, 1999, observers of a biblical cast of mind could be forgiven for imagining that the seventy-nine-year-old Pope—full of accomplishment but now diminished physically—might be praying, with Simeon in the New Testament, “Nunc dimittis …”—“Now, Lord, you may dismiss your servant” (Luke 2.29). According to John Paul himself, the Great Jubilee had been the “key” to his pontificate. He had led the Church and the world across the threshold of a new millennium; an enormous task had been accomplished. Might he consider laying down the burden of the papacy after the holy year was completed?

  Speculation about this—almost always uninformed—had been rife for years; some of its primary promoters seemed to be those who never thought much of John Paul II in the first place. There were, of course, serious questions involved in the event th
at a pope became gravely disabled—a possibility that, as May 13, 1981, had made clear, might arise from an assassination attempt as well as from illness. But there were other worst-case scenarios to be considered. Pius XII had given instructions that, were he to be kidnapped by the Nazis and removed from Rome, the Chair of Peter was to be considered vacant so that Hitler would find himself holding Cardinal Pacelli, not Pope Pius XII; the cardinals were to find a safe place to meet in conclave, likely Lisbon, and they were to elect a new pope.3 In the wake of the 1978 abduction of his old friend Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister, Paul VI was concerned about the possibility of the pope being kidnapped, and left instructions that, were he to be impeded from communicating with the Holy See after a kidnapping, the papacy was to be considered vacant and the cardinals were to proceed to an election. These concerns, as well as the question of physical and mental incapacity, were reflected in the revised Code of Canon Law that John Paul II promulgated in 1983. Canon 335 acknowledges the possibility that the Roman See may be vacated by being “completely impeded,” as well as by a pope’s death. Canon 412, which deals with all dioceses, specifies that “the episcopal see is understood to be impeded if the diocesan bishop is completely prevented from exercising the pastoral office in the diocese by reason of imprisonment, banishment, exile, or incapacity, so that he is unable to communicate, even by letter, with the people of his diocese.”

  John Paul II, who had spent his entire adult life analyzing and teaching about moral responsibility, was certainly aware of these problems. After consulting quietly with senior churchmen, he came to the conclusion that Paul VI had reached and that both moral common sense and canon law dictated: in the event that he was impeded from the exercise of his papal office, it was the responsibility of the College of Cardinals to declare the See vacant and proceed to the election of a successor. In the case of physical incapacity, this was generally thought, among senior churchmen, to mean a situation in which the pope was reduced to a condition in which it was impossible for him to manifest his will, which was the essence of the exercise of his office.