The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  In his conclusion, Magister claimed that John Paul II “never exclude[d] war in Iraq from the array of practicable and just decisions.”34 That was arguably an analytic bridge too far, in that the Pope seems always to have believed, even after the war began, that further diplomatic and other nonmilitary pressures might have brought about the necessary policy change, or even regime change, in Iraq. Whether that was a realistic and prudent expectation will long be debated. But Magister is surely right to point out that John Paul never used the word “unjust” to describe a war he deeply opposed—because he believed that judgment had to be made by others, as the Catechism said, and because he would not place a burden of conscience on Catholic military personnel in the coalition forces that invaded Iraq on March 19 and deposed the regime in Baghdad on April 9.

  Throughout the Iraq crisis of 2003, U.S. ambassador R. James Nicholson worked hard to demonstrate to the Holy See that the American approach to the problem of Iraq was indeed multilateral, not unilateral, as he tried to keep lines of communication open between the Vatican and a U.S. administration that was becoming both confused and aggravated by the rhetoric of Archbishop Tauran, Archbishop Martino, and others. Nicholson later described the situation, and the problems he faced, as he experienced them in late 2002 and early 2003:

  Part of my job was to help overcome what seemed to be a high level of suspicion over the power and influence of the U.S. and its alleged “lust for oil.” The feeling, shared by many in Europe, was that America, being the world’s leading capitalist country, must necessarily have some profit motive in Iraq. The media’s efforts to portray the United States and the Holy See as diametrically opposed on the war continued to intensify, with one Italian Catholic magazine even commissioning a poll asking respondents whether they were “with President Bush for war” or “with the Pope for peace.” Notwithstanding such efforts, our positions were never as far apart as the media portrayed. Both the Pope and President Bush believed that war should be the last resort. Both recognized the danger posed by Iraq and called for Iraq to disarm. Both recognized that decisions on war and peace must be made by legitimate civil authorities. The difference we had essentially came down to the question of whether all diplomatic means to achieve Iraqi disarmament had been exhausted before resorting to military action. The United States believed after twelve years of Iraqi defiance in the face of a strong U.N. consensus that Iraq would never willingly comply with the U.N. The Holy See continued to believe that inspections and dialogue offered a means to meet the international community’s concerns—a view the Pope conveyed to President Bush in a late October [2002] communication.35

  For her part, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed that she couldn’t “understand the Vatican position” given the brutalities and nature of the Saddam Hussein regime, which seemed to make a diplomatic settlement of the problem impossible. When John Paul announced on March 4, 2002, that he was starting a fast in order to ask God’s help in preventing war, Ambassador Nicholson said that he, too, would fast for peace, but he also said that he understood Rice’s puzzlement, for “unfortunately, the Holy See doesn’t mention the crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein. We didn’t hear them mentioned after Cardinal Roger Etchegaray’s mission to Iraq.”36

  Etchegaray, a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter for John Paul II, was sent to Baghdad in early March 2003 to try to persuade Saddam Hussein to cease and desist. Saddam kept the French cardinal waiting for several days and then offered what Massimo Franco describes as a “tenuous agreement to cooperate” with UN weapons inspectors.37 The Etchegaray mission was thus a failure. So was a parallel mission to Washington by the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Pio Laghi, who had formed a friendship with Vice President George H. W. Bush during the Reagan administration, when the two lived across Washington’s tree-lined Massachusetts Avenue from each other and played tennis together. At the White House on March 5, Cardinal Laghi first met Condoleezza Rice and then President George W. Bush, to whom he gave a letter from John Paul II. Leaving Rome, Laghi, never one to underplay his role, had told Corriere della Sera that, while the meeting would be polite, “it won’t be a meeting of friends.” Ambassador Nicholson described the substance of the meeting in these terms:

  Laghi repeated the Holy See’s view that war should be the last resort, and that any decision on military action needed to be taken within the framework of the U.N. The President eloquently outlined his view of both the legality and morality of military action, noting that the U.N. had already provided the needed framework for action with Resolution 1441 and previous resolutions, and that his duty was to protect the American people from the potential risks posed by Saddam’s regime.38

  Still, as Massimo Franco would put it later, “a wall of incomprehension separated the Holy See and Washington.” The Vatican’s diplomatic bureaucracy, as represented by Laghi, believed that the United States “risked dragging the entire western world into a conflict with Islam” because the root cause of all Middle Eastern troubles was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.39 The Bush administration believed that a post-Saddam, democratic Iraq would be a political-cultural magnet drawing other Arab and Islamic states into a more rational posture in world affairs—and thereby opening a path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The differences in perception were irreconcilable.40

  On March 17, Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran and told him that, if Saddam Hussein and his sons did not leave Iraq immediately, which President Bush had stated was the last option for avoiding war, then military action by the coalition assembled on Iraq’s borders would follow. Powell told Tauran that the Bush administration was aware of the Pope’s concern and would do everything possible to keep civilian casualties at a minimum. Tauran thanked Powell, noting that the decision on when all diplomatic means had been exhausted rested with the civil authorities, who bore a heavy responsibility for their judgment.41

  When war began days later, the statement by papal spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls was both strong and measured, as befit the combination of determination and self-discipline with which John Paul II had conducted himself throughout the preceding months. Navarro said that the Pope had taken the news of the commencement of hostilities with “deep pain,” and then observed that “On the one hand, it is to be regretted that the Iraqi government did not accept the resolutions of the United Nations and the appeal of the Pope himself, as both asked the country to disarm. On the other hand, it is to be deplored that the path of negotiations, according to international law, for a peaceful solution of the Iraqi drama has been broken off.”42 To “deplore” is, of course, stronger than to “regret.” Yet Navarro’s statement did not comport with the charge, previously laid down by La Civiltà Cattolica, that the United States was behaving (or better, misbehaving) according to “the law of the jungle,” nor was the language of a “crime against humanity” deployed. What still remained absent from any public commentary by the Holy See was a critique of the role played by France and others in taking pressure off Saddam Hussein at the UN Security Council by preemptively threatening a veto of any measure beyond the disputed Resolution 1441.

  The Holy See’s nuncio in Baghdad, Archbishop Fernando Filoni, remained at his post as the war took its course. When the conquest of Baghdad brought one phase of the war to its conclusion, the Holy See shifted the focus of its concerns to humanitarian relief for the Iraqi people, UN involvement in Iraqi reconstruction, and the necessity of transferring power as soon as possible to a new Iraqi government.43 This new phase of the U.S./Holy See conversation was strengthened by a visit to the Vatican on April 9, the day Baghdad fell, by U.S. undersecretary of state John Bolton, who came to discuss the possibilities of U.S./Vatican cooperation in post-Saddam Iraq. Bolton was told of the Holy See’s relief that casualties had been kept to a minimum; on April 10, the Vatican stated that the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime offered a “significant opportunity for the people’s fut
ure” in Iraq and pledged Holy See cooperation in providing the Iraqi people the “necessary assistance through [Catholic] social and charitable institutions.”44

  When it became clear, later in 2003, that Iraq had not been pacified and that various forms of resistance continued, now aided and abetted by jihadist terrorists who saw in Iraq a new battlefield for fighting the Great Satan, the Holy See’s diplomatic line began to shift, and the Vatican argued against any premature withdrawal of coalition forces that would leave Iraq to Shia fundamentalism and terrorism. That position solidified further when, on November 12, 2003, nineteen Italian soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber in Nasiriyah, in the southern part of Iraq. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope’s vicar for the diocese of Rome and the president of the Italian Bishops Conference, preached at a memorial service for the fallen, held at the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on November 18, and declared that “we will not run away from the terrorist assassins … [but] confront them with courage, energy, and determination.” It was, Corriere della Sera wrote, an effort to “encourage the involvement of other countries, thus making the pacification of Iraq a truly international effort backed by the United Nations.”45

  That, too, was a vain hope, but Ruini’s homily was one more indicator of a change in Vatican perceptions of what was at stake in Iraq, and how the country’s problems ought to be addressed. The Italian losses in Nasiriyah prompted L’Osservatore Romano to describe the Italian mission in Iraq as a “mission of peace.” In October 2003, La Civiltà Cattolica began evening out its criticism, charging Islam with having shown a “warlike and conquering face” in history and deploring the “perpetual discrimination” against Christians in Islamic lands. There were also important changes in the bureaucratic cast of characters in the Holy See. In late November 2003, Jean-Louis Tauran, a cardinal since October 21, 2003, became Vatican archivist and librarian and was replaced as “foreign minister” by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo. Renato Martino, also a cardinal as of October 21, was redeployed to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as its president, and replaced at the United Nations by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, from whom, Sandro Magister wrote, there would be “no more Third World rhetoric and pacifist homilies.”46 Martino was briefly back in the news on December 16, when he complained that U.S. forces had mistreated Saddam Hussein on capturing him in hiding: “I felt pity to see this man destroyed, being treated like a cow as they checked his teeth.”47 By this point, however, few serious observers were paying Cardinal Martino much attention.48

  John Paul II continued to deplore the resort to war, lamenting in his Christmas Midnight Mass homily that “too much blood is still being shed on earth” while “too many conflicts disturb the peaceful coexistence of nations.”49 His Urbi et Orbi blessing on Christmas Day 2003 returned to the theme of peace in a heartfelt prayer:

  Save us from the great evils that rend humanity in these first years of the third millennium.…

  Save us from the wars and armed conflicts which lay waste whole areas of the world, from the scourge of terrorism and from the many forms of violence which assail the weak and vulnerable. Save us from discouragement as we face the paths to peace, difficult paths indeed, yet possible and therefore necessary—paths that are always and everywhere urgent, especially in the land where you were born, the Prince of Peace.50

  CRISIS OF FAITH IN EUROPE

  The Pope’s health oscillated, although it generally moved in a downward direction, throughout 2003. He did not travel outside Italy in the first third of the year, but he was in strong form for Holy Week 2003, presiding over all the ceremonies and preaching in a strong and clear voice. As veteran Vatican correspondent John Allen noted at the time, a pope is never more regularly in the public eye than in the period between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday; thus from the late 1990s on, John Paul II’s performance at the lengthy ceremonies of the Easter Triduum had become “the most-watched annual bellwether of his physical condition.” The strength of the Pope’s presentations during Holy Week in April 2003 made an impression, as did his delivering greetings in sixty-two languages at the end of the Easter Urbi et Orbi message; the last language was Latin, and he sang the greeting in that ancient tongue before joking that “the last language is the first!” As Allen also noted, the Pope was being considerably aided by a new device, a rolling hydraulic wheelchair (or, in the hypersensitive language of the Vatican, a “wheeled throne”). Using the hydraulic chair, the Pope, who was suffering more and more from acute arthritis in his right knee, could be wheeled into place and then hydraulically raised to the altar so that he could celebrate the Eucharist without standing.51 No one seemed to mind, but the media had found another object to tweak its curiosity. Papal spokesman Navarro-Valls noted that the Pope’s infirmities “have become more of an instrument [of evangelization] than a limitation,” and recalled that in his 1999 Letter to the Elderly, John Paul had written that “despite the limitations that age has imposed upon me, I still feel the zest for life.” “With such a spirit,” the spokesman concluded, “of what consequence is a chair?”52

  By Polish custom, November 4, the feast of his patron saint, Charles Borromeo, was more important to Karol Wojtyła than his birthday. Nonetheless, he marked the completion of his eighty-third year on May 18 by canonizing four new saints and remarking in his homily that “there is no age that is an obstacle” to living a fulfilled life. “Grateful for the gift of life,” he continued, “today I again entrust to the Virgin my life and the ministry that Providence has called me to fulfill.” One of the new saints, Bishop Józef Sebastian Pelczar (who died in 1924), was the founder of the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Polish congregation of religious women, some of whose members looked after the papal household—and who reportedly prepared a special dinner for the occasion.53

  Before and after his birthday, John Paul II focused his attention on Europe, a continent of increasing concern to him as it seemed to be sinking ever more deeply into a post-Christian cultural and spiritual morass.

  All the Pope’s international travels in 2003 were within the European Union. The first pastoral visit was his fifth pilgrimage to Spain, on May 3 and 4. Six hundred thousand young people joined the Pope in a vigil of songs and prayers at the Cuatro Vientos air force base on the night of May 3, and one million people came to the Plaza de Colón in the center of Madrid for the May 4 canonization of three nuns and two priests, including Pedro Poveda, one of the 12,000 Spanish priests and religious martyred during the Spanish Civil War. As usual, the meeting with young people produced some banter back and forth. When John Paul asked, “How old is the Pope?” and then answered his own question, “Almost eighty-three years,” the crowd picked up the chant from World Youth Day-2002: “The Pope is young! The Pope is young!” “A youth of eighty-three years,” John Paul riposted, to more cheers. There was more than banter, however. John Paul challenged the young to be “builders of peace” and to “respond to blind violence and inhuman hate with the fascinating power of life. Defeat animosity with the force of pardon. Stay far from every form of extreme nationalism, racism, and intolerance. Testify with your life that ideas are not imposed but proposed.” At the canonization Mass in Madrid, the papal challenge to the crowds was to revitalize European culture through the power of faith: “Do not abandon your Christian roots. Only in this way will you be able to bring to the world and to Europe the cultural richness of your history.”54

  A month later, John Paul made his hundredth pastoral pilgrimage outside Italy, visiting Croatia from June 5 to June 9. It was his third trip to a country still recovering from the ravages of the wars that had wracked the region during and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia—wars that brutally illustrated for John Paul the incapacities of Europe to manage its own house peacefully. Here, the stress was on lay responsibility for the development of society. Christianity, he insisted, could make a crucial difference to Croatia’s future: “For there are values—like the dignity of the human person, moral an
d intellectual integrity, religious freedom, the defense of the family, openness to and respect for life, solidarity, subsidiarity and participation, respect for minorities—which are inscribed in the nature of every human being but which Christianity has the merit of clearly identifying and proclaiming.” What was true for Croatia was true for Europe as a whole.55

  Two weeks later, the Pope was back in the Balkans for a thirteen-hour visit to Banja Luka in the Republika Srpska, the Serbian section of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Pope pleaded for reconciliation—taking, as always, the first step himself: “From this city, marked in the course of history by so much suffering and bloodshed, I ask Almighty God to have mercy on the sins committed against humanity, human dignity, and freedom also by children of the Catholic Church, and to foster in all a desire for mutual forgiveness. Only in a climate of true reconciliation will the memory of so many innocent victims and their sacrifice not be in vain, but encourage everyone to build new relationships of fraternity and understanding.”56

  Finally, in September, John Paul spent four days in Slovakia, his third pastoral pilgrimage to that intensely Catholic country. At the very outset, in his September 11 address at the airport in Bratislava, the Slovak capital, he challenged Slovakia to bring its Christian heritage with it into the European Union, which it would enter on May 1, 2004: “Bring to the construction of Europe’s new identity the contribution of your rich Christian tradition!” John Paul urged. “Do not be satisfied with the sole quest for economic advantage.… Only by building up … a society respectful of human life in all its expressions … will there be guarantees of a future based on solid foundations and rich in goods for all.”57