The End and the Beginning
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46. Ibid., 40.
47. Ibid., 42, citing Lumen Gentium, 1.
48. See ibid., 51.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 56 [emphasis in original].
51. Ibid., 59.
52. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, November 29, 2000.
Chapter Seven
1. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, pp. 243–44.
2. John Paul II, General Audience, 12 September 2001.
3. Pius XII’s concerns were not unfounded; see Dan Kurzman, A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII (New York: Da Capo Press, 2007).
4. John Paul II, Testament, 12–18 March 2000, 2 [emphasis in original].
5. Cardinal Dulles, who in his old age bore an uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, was the last of the new cardinals to receive his red hat. As the American Jesuit knelt before him, John Paul placed the biretta on Dulles’s head, the new cardinal bent down to kiss the Pope’s ring, and the newly imposed biretta fell into the Pope’s lap. John Paul reimposed the biretta, Cardinal Dulles bent down yet again to kiss the Pope’s ring, and the biretta fell into the papal lap once more. John Paul was still capable of grinning at this stage of his Parkinson’s disease, and did so as he and Cardinal Dulles put the uncooperative biretta back where it belonged. The next day, when the Pope gave the new cardinals their rings—which were of the same design John Paul had used throughout the pontificate—Cardinal Dulles got the loudest and most sustained round of applause from the large crowd in St. Peter’s Square.
6. John Paul II, Remarks at the Sixth Extraordinary Consistory, 21 May 2001.
7. See John L. Allen, Jr., “Cardinals Debate Church’s Future,” National Catholic Reporter, June 1, 2001.
8. See “Focus on Unity,” Catholic World Report, June 2001, for these and other details of John Paul’s Greek pilgrimage.
9. “Pope and Orthodox Primate Did Pray Together, After All,” ZENIT News Service, May 6, 2001.
10. Cited in “A Pilgrimage that May Change Church History,” ZENIT News Service, May 10, 2001.
11. Clyde Haberman, “Welcome, Man of Peace. Let’s Go Hate My Enemy,” New York Times Week in Review, May 13, 2001.
12. While many Jewish leaders understood the situation, the Catholic Left in the United States took the occasion to criticize the Pope, with the editor of Commonweal, Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, averring that “a lot of people have been hurt and shocked, including a lot of Catholics” [ibid.].
13. See “Focus on Unity,” Catholic World Report, June 2001.
14. Author’s interview with Father Samir Khalil Samir, S.J., March 8, 2008. The Pope discussed Islam in Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp. 91–94.
15. Christian W. Troll, S.J., “John Paul II and Islam,” unpublished paper for a conference at St. Mary’s University College in London on “The Theological Legacy of Pope John Paul II,” March 25–26, 2008; paper provided to the author by Father Troll; emphases in John Paul II’s text are in the original.
16. Cited in “Focus on Unity,” Catholic World Report, June 2001.
17. The Knights’ headquarters had subsequently moved to the Aventine Hill in Rome; the Order’s Grand Master is the only man in the Catholic Church, other than cardinals, who is addressed as “Your Eminence.”
18. See “Focus on Unity,” Catholic World Report, June 2001.
19. On the Union of Brest, see Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
20. On the forced “incorporation” of the Greek Catholics of Ukraine into Russian Orthodoxy, see Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, pp. 148–88.
21. “In Interview, Moscow Patriarch Alexis Asks Pope to Postpone Ukraine Trip,” National Catholic Register, April 23–28, 2001, p. 5.
Born in Tallinn in independent Estonia in 1929, Aleksy Mikhailovich Ridiger, who would become Aleksy II, was admitted to the Leningrad Theological Seminary in 1947, ordained a priest in 1950, took monastic vows in 1961, and was ordained bishop of Tallinn and Estonia (then a Soviet “republic”) later that year. He was chancellor of the Patriarchate of Moscow from 1964 until 1986. Such a career in Russian Orthodoxy in those years was inconceivable without the approbation of the KGB.
22. See Andriy Chirovsky, “Letter from Ukraine,” First Things (October 2001), pp. 15–18.
23. John Paul II, Address at Kyïv International Airport, 23 June 2001 [emphases in original].
24. John Paul II, Homily at Eucharistic Celebration in the Latin Rite and Beatifications, Lviv, 26 June 2001.
25. “Next Stop Moscow?” Catholic World Report, August/September 2001, pp. 34–37.
26. Author’s interview with Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, October 19, 2001. Asked for his explanation of the Orthodox hostility toward the Pope and the Catholic Church, the cardinal replied, “They are very much afraid of something.” There was indeed something to be feared about corruptions from Western culture, Cardinal Husar added, “but there is also a deeper insecurity.”
27. Antoine Arjakovsky, Conversations with Lubomyr Cardinal Husar: Towards a Post-Confessional Christianity (L’viv: Ukrainian Catholic University Press, 2007), pp. 32, 40.
28. John Paul II, Address to the President of the United States of America, H. E. George Walker Bush, 23 July 2001.
29. John Paul II, Address at the World Premiere of the New Polish Version of the Film “Quo Vadis,” 30 August 2001.
30. Massimo Franco, Parallel Empires: The Vatican and the United States—Two Centuries of Alliance and Conflict, trans. Roland Flamini (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 127; R. James Nicholson, The United States and the Holy See: The Long Road (Rome: Trenta Giorni Società Cooperativa, 2004), pp. 82–83.
Nicholson notes that, “On the basis of the Pope’s recognition that the September 11 attacks would justify a response, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, Jean-Louis Tauran, at that time Archbishop, gave public backing to U.S. actions to track down the perpetrators when he affirmed in an October 2001 interview that everybody recognizes that the United States government, like any other government, has the right to legitimate defense ‘because it has the duty to guarantee the safety of its citizens’ ” [ibid., p. 83].
31. John Paul II, Address to the New Ambassador of the United States of America to the Holy See, 13 September 2001.
32. Author’s interview with Cardinal Camillo Ruini, March 17, 2008; author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, November 3, 2001.
33. Author’s interview with Cardinal Francis Arinze, March 18, 2008.
34. John Paul II, Address to Meeting with Representatives of the World of Culture, 24 September 2001.
35. E-mail to the author from Philip Pullella, May 27, 2009; Philip Pullella, “Vatican Says Would Understand U.S. Self-defense Move,” Reuters, September 24, 2001; author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, October 26, 2001.
36. Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, October 26, 2001.
37. Ibid.
38. See Christus Dominus [Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church], 20. Canon 377.1 states, “For the future, no rights or privileges of election, appointment, presentation or designation of bishops are conceded to civil authorities.”
39. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, January 4, 2000.
40. John Paul II, Homily at the Inauguration of the 10th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, 30 September 2001 [emphases in original].
41. One source of amusement during the speech making in the Synod Hall was the newly created German cardinal Karl Lehmann, who snored through some of the proceedings in a rather dramatic way. One American cardinal noted, “Lehmann sits behind me and snores. I don’t mind him sleeping; everyone does. But he snores!” The Pope was clearly amused by all this; at lunch on the fifth day of the Synod, the Syno
d general secretary, Cardinal Jan Schotte, told the Pope that “Cardinal Lehmann has made twelve interventions already.” [Author’s conversations with Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., and Archbishop George Pell, October 2001.]
42. John Paul II, Homily for the Beatification of the Servants of God Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini, Married Couple, 21 October 2001 [emphases in original].
During the course of the Beltrame Quattrocchi beatification process, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints insisted that two miracles were required to complete the cause. The cause’s postulator, Archbishop Giuseppe Mani, raised the point over lunch with John Paul II: “If they want two miracles, then don’t beatify a couple but two people. In that case, everything that we have done [to advance the cause of a married couple] is useless.” The Pope said nothing, but a month later, the Congregation decided that one miracle was sufficient for the completion of the beatification cause. It may be assumed that John Paul took Archbishop Mani’s point and convinced the authorities of the Congregation of it. [See Giuseppe Mani, “A Bishop for the Family,” Totus Tuus 4/2006, pp. 2–3.]
43. John Paul II, Homily for the Conclusion of the Synod of Bishops, 27 October 2001 [emphases in original].
44. John Paul II, Homily at Pastoral Visit to the Roman Parish of St. María Josefa of the Heart of Jesus, 16 December 2001.
45. For an account of the Boston situation, see Philip Lawler, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture (New York: Encounter Books, 2008). For an overview of the crisis, see George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church (New York: Basic Books, 2002; revised paperback, 2003). Throughout the Long Lent, Richard John Neuhaus provided insightful running commentary in the “Public Square” section of the journal First Things.
For the Boston Globe’s account of its reporting during 2002, see Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church (New York: Little, Brown, 2002). Nicholas Cafardi, a civil and canon lawyer, offers another analysis of the crisis prior to the U.S. bishops’ adoption of new clergy personnel guidelines in Before Dallas: The US. Bishops’ Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children (New York: Paulist Press, 2008).
46. Cardinal Castrillón’s implied view—that this was a secularist, anticlericalist media conspiracy against the Church—seems to have been shared by more than a few senior Latin American churchmen, which was another factor impeding a prompt and effective response to the crisis from the Holy See.
47. John Paul II, Address to the Cardinals of the United States, 23 April 2002.
48. For more on the Roman response to the American crisis of 2002, see Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic, pp. 117–46. On the failures of bishops, see ibid., pp. 87–115.
49. The American crisis had one Polish parallel, in that the Pope accepted the resignation of Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznań on March 28, 2002. The resignation followed months of back-channel controversy in both Poland and Rome, and the occasional news story, over allegations that the former Vatican official, who had been archbishop since 1996, had made inappropriate sexual advances to seminarians in his archdiocese. Paetz denied the allegations; the acceptance of his resignation suggests that the Pope was finally persuaded that something was gravely awry.
50. John Tagliabue, “Pope Denounces Violence in Religion’s Name,” New York Times, January 25, 2002; “Pope’s Program for Day of Prayer for Peace,” ZENIT News Service, January 7, 2002.
51. “Rediscovering the Contribution of Jewish Scriptures,” ZENIT News Service, February 6, 2002.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger concluded his preface to the document by addressing an ongoing point of neuralgia in Christian-Jewish relations:
The question of how Jews are presented in the New Testament is dealt with in the second part of the Document; the “anti-Jewish” texts there are methodically analyzed for an understanding of them. Here, I want only to underline an aspect which seems to me to be particularly important. The Document shows that the reproofs addressed to Jews in the New Testament are neither more frequent nor more virulent than the accusations against Israel in the Law and the Prophets, at the heart of the Old Testament itself.… They belong to the prophetic language of the Old Testament and are, therefore, to be interpreted in the same way as the prophetic messages: they warn against contemporary aberrations, but are essentially of a temporary nature and always open to new possibilities of salvation. [The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002), p. 12.]
52. “Putin Willing to Invite Pope to Moscow ‘at Any Time,’ ” ZENIT News Service, January 15, 2002.
53. “Moscow Patriarchate to Join in Assisi Day of Prayer,” ZENIT News Service, January 17, 2002.
54. “Moscow Patriarch Describes Putin’s Invitation to Pope as ‘Wise,’ ” ZENIT News Service, January 18, 2002.
55. “Moscow Patriarchate Lays Down Conditions for Papal Visit,” ZENIT News Service, January 25, 2002.
56. Sharon LaFrontiere, “Rift Grows as Russian Orthodox Church Rebukes Vatican,” Washington Post, February 14, 2002.
57. “Visit Will Be Virtual but Orthodox Ire Is Real,” ZENIT News Service, March 1, 2002.
58. SEIA Newsletter on the Eastern Churches and Ecumenism, n. 79, April 29, 2002.
59. “Pope Brings Solace to the Heart of Former Soviet Republics,” The Tablet, June 1, 2002, p. 25.
60. Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., of Chicago met the Bulgarian priest at breakfast in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse, during the U.S. cardinals’ meeting with the Pope and the Roman Curia in April 2002 [Catholic New World, May 12, 2002].
61. “Pope Brings Solace to the Heart of Former Soviet Republics,” The Tablet, June 1, 2002, p. 25.
62. “Never Ceased to Love You, Pope Tells Bulgarians,” ZENIT News Service, May 23, 2002.
63. “Pope Brings Solace to the Heart of Former Soviet Republics,” The Tablet, June 1, 2002, p. 26.
64. John Paul II, Homily at Eucharistic Celebration and Beatifications, May 26, 2002.
65. Quoted in “Pope Brings Solace to the Heart of Former Soviet Republics,” The Tablet, June 1, 2002, p. 27.
66. “Endurance Test,” Catholic World Report, July 2002, p. 25.
67. Stories that Padre Pio, in an exercise of his extraordinary spiritual gifts, had predicted to Wojtyła his election as pope when the young priest had gone to San Giovanni Rotondo during his studies at the Angelicum continued throughout the pontificate. Asked once about his experience of Padre Pio as confessor, John Paul II replied that the Capuchin had been a “very simple confessor, clear and brief”—a description that did not seem to substantiate the stories. [Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 13, 1997.]
68. John Paul II, Homily for the Canonization of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, Capuchin Priest, 16 June 2002.
69. Ibid.
70. World Youth Day 2002—The Official Souvenir Album (Ottawa: Novalis, 2002), p. 111.
71. Tim Drake, “John Paul’s Toronto Triumph,” National Catholic Register, August 4–10, 2002, p. 7; “Papal Lunch: Spaghetti and a Beatles Singalong,” ZENIT News Service, July 28, 2002.
72. Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2009.
Twenty-five hundred World Youth Day-2002 patients were treated for hypothermia on Saturday night and Sunday morning by a mobile medical center set up at Downsview, but only forty-four had to be taken to hospital emergency rooms. [Prithi Yelaja, “Nasty Weather Keeps Medics Hopping,” Toronto Sun, July 29, 2002.]
73. John Paul II, Homily for 17th World Youth Day, 28 July 2002 [emphases in original].
74. World Youth Day 2002—The Official Souvenir Album, p. 134.
75. John Paul II, Homily for 17th World Youth Day, 28 July 2002 [emphases in original].
76. John Paul II, Angelus, 28 July 2002.
World Youth Day-2002 gave a jolt of spiritual energy to those parts of the Canadian Church that were willing to be energized. Y
et there was little immediate pastoral follow-up by the Canadian bishops conference, which seemed far more concerned with figuring out how to retire the (admittedly considerable) World Youth Day-2002 debt than with seizing the opportunities presented by the largest religious event in Canadian history.
77. John Paul II, Homily for the Canonization of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, 31 July 2002 [emphasis in original].
78. John Paul II, Homily for the Dedication of the Shrine of Divine Mercy, 17 August 2002 [emphases in original].
79. Ibid.
80. John Paul II, Homily for the Canonization of St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, 6 October 2002.
81. SEIA Newsletter on the Eastern Churches and Ecumenism, n. 85, October 31, 2002; author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, November 13, 2008.
82. John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 1 [emphasis in original].
83. Ibid., 19, 21 [emphases in original].
84. Ibid., 21 [emphasis in original].
85. That the effects of the Long Lent continued to cast a long shadow was evident in the commentary from Dallas journalist Rod Dreher, who confessed himself “chagrined that in the face of this horrible child abuse scandal rocking the Church in America, and the collapse of episcopal authority, liturgy, catechesis, and Catholic identity in the United States and Europe, that the Holy Father would busy himself with thinking up new mysteries of the rosary for us to pray. I’d rather he cleared up the mystery of why Rome won’t act to clean up this catastrophe. Holy Father, help us! We don’t need new documents, new devotions; we need action to restore holiness and integrity to the Church in America.” Cited in catholic eye 201, October 24, 2002.
Dreher’s view was likely shaped in part by the sordid situation of the Church in the Diocese of Dallas, one of the epicenters of scandal. But, like so many commentators, he seems to have missed that it was precisely by a call to renewed fidelity that John Paul believed the scandal time of the U.S. Church could be most effectively addressed.
86. Quoted in catholic eye 201 (October 31, 2002), p. 1. On John Paul II closing each day by blessing his adopted city, see Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 89.