Second Spring

by Andrew M. Greeley

  Chuck

  1978

  We arrived at the Vatican about eleven-thirty, after attending Mass at the Trinita dei Monte at the top of the Spanish Steps. I confess that much of my attendance at the Eucharist was distracted by a sense of lost opportunity last night. I had neglected my wife badly. There was something seriously wrong with me.

  The Piazza and the top of the Conciliazione were already crowded with people dressed in their Sunday best—parents and children and many family dogs who amused themselves by pretending to fight with one another. They came, I suspected, because the weather was splendid and the Piazza was the place to be. They really didn’t expect white smoke the first morning. But they didn’t want to miss it either.

  We crossed over the street which ran behind the left colonnade, where we found a good view of the chimney on the top of the chapel. Just as we worked our way into the colonnade, white smoke appeared from the chimney. The throng went wild. “È bianco, è bianco!”

  I reflected that the smoke signal and the excitement it generated seemed to fit perfectly into Italian culture.

  Then the smoke turned black. A vast sigh arose from the crowd.

  “They still can’t get it right,” I said to Rosemarie, touching her arm.

  I had resolved to keep her at the fringes of arousal all the day long. She didn’t seem to mind.

  Then it turned gray. For a long half minute it was clearly white. The crowd cheered, but with a sense of reservation. Then it was definitively black. The crowd groaned its displeasure and quickly broke up. A couple of people near us, who had Radio Vaticana on their handheld sets, turned it off in disgust.

  “Basta!” one elegant Roman woman exploded.

  We wandered over to the Sala Stampa, where a Canadian reporter was telling everyone that Siri had won fifty votes in the first ballot and that by afternoon he would have half the votes. After that he couldn’t be stopped.

  “Do you believe that, Chuck?” Rosemarie asked.

  I looked over the scratch sheet I had prepared.

  “I don’t see how he could have got more than thirty-five, forty at the most. Then, if the history books are right, his plurality will begin to decline.”

  “How did the word leak out, I wonder.”

  “Our friend Rae Adolfo, if he were here, would say that such matters can be arranged. I can’t imagine that there are not communication links both ways. If almost everything around here is corrupt, why not the restrictions on the conclave?”

  “What good does it do?”

  “Someone might send a message inside that the people out here were delighted because they want Siri.”

  “That seems truly weird.”

  “Rosemarie, my love, where are we?”

  “Right … Nothing here is weird.”

  We sat there for a while, holding hands and listening to the director of the Sala Stampa explain why there was a confusion about the smoke signals.

  “Chuck O’Malley, Chicago,” I said, raising my hand. “There doesn’t seem to be any historical record of this happening before at earlier conclaves. Has modern technology made it more difficult to produce the right color smoke?”

  “Chucky!” my wife whispered.

  The man, an insecure and nervous priest who was trying desperately to protect his job, erupted into a long lecture in feverish Italian.

  “What did he say?”

  “That the Vatican has the very best of modern technology.”

  “Like the television studio it doesn’t have.”

  Someone else asked him about the report of fifty votes for Siri.

  He erupted again. There could be no reports from inside the conclave. All reports were false.

  Our driver, whose respect had been won by Rosemarie’s generosity, promised that he would be back by five.

  “White tonight, no?” he asked. “Just like last time.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  We lugged our equipment back up to the suite and collapsed into bed. My wife was, as always, right. We did need a nap, pure, you should excuse the expression, nap.

  We slept so deeply that we would have missed the smoke if our driver hadn’t rung us at a quarter to five. We were both logy and irritable and snapped at one another as we dressed.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?” herself demanded. “I can’t do everything in this family.”

  “You’re the mommy,” I replied. “It’s your job to wake me up.”

  “Bullshit.”

  That is language she never uses. We went down to the car silently.

  “Thank you for calling, Martino. We were both very tired.”

  “Sì, signora, tiring times for great artists, no?”

  I almost said that I was not a great artist, but I thought better of it.

  We arrived at the Piazza at 5:40. The crowd stood around listlessly. Nothing had happened. The sky was quickly darkening. A searchlight focused on the rickety old chimney. It will be hard to tell in the dark. What did they do in the days before searchlights!

  The system is that they burn the ballots which will normally send up white smoke unless wet stuff is added to the fire to make it black.

  By six tension had increased. The last time this had been the decisive ballot. Was something going wrong inside?

  Much later we would learn that the two “scrutinies” (four ballots) had tested the relative strength of the Siri and Benelli forces and that neither had been strong enough. Siri had begun with fifteen more votes than he had at the previous conclave. The curial propaganda had given him an impressive boost. The leaders of the European coalition were worried. Toward the end of the day, he was losing votes to Colombo. Many of the American cardinals would go to bed that night convinced that the Holy Spirit was directing them to vote for an infirm seventy-six-year-old man.

  An orange moon rose over the Tiber and stood for a few minutes at the bottom of the Conciliazione, a perfect setting for white smoke.

  At 6:05, the smoke went up again. It sure looked like it was white. We turned on our portable radio. “E nero,” the announcer of Radio Vaticana said firmly.

  The smoke continued to pour out, alternately white, black, and gray. The crowd groaned and dispersed.

  “Drat,” my wife said. “I wanted to go home tomorrow or Tuesday.”

  “Let’s have a real dinner,” I replied. “That nice little place over by the Gregorian University.”

  We found a table despite the crowd because the owner recognized my wife. Naturally.

  The restaurant was filled with American Jesuits from the Gregorian and American journalists. We hid in our little corner and listened.

  “It’ll be Colombo first thing in the morning,” one young Jesuit with a Boston accent informed the reporters who were hanging on every word. “They beat back Siri today but don’t have enough votes for Benelli. He’s angered too many people. Colombo will be the last Italian Pope, another elderly transitional papacy.”

  He was wrong, as it turned out. But much later, many of us found ourselves wishing that he’d been right.

  We went back to the Hassler and made leisurely and peaceful love, restoring the union which had existed before my sickness.

  How could a man with such a wonderful wife worry about his future? He should just go home and work on the People exhibition and our book on the conclaves.

  The next morning the routine of white, black, and gray began early at 11:15, just as we arrived. However, someone had the bright idea of linking Vatican Radio with the powerful public address system which dominated the Piazza.

  “È nero!” the voice said, almost casually.

  Later we would learn that a line had been set up between the door of the conclave and Vatican Radio. Someone just outside would pick up a signal from someone just inside about the color of the smoke—one if by land, two if by sea or something like that. It was an interesting way to deal with a conclave that was appearing on worldwide television.

  Still later we heard of the dramatic events i
nside. Before the ballot sheets could be collected, Giovanni Colombo rose to announce that he would not accept if elected for reasons of health and age. The cardinals were thunderstruck. He had scuttled their nice little compromise. Then Franz Koenig, Archbishop of Vienna, broke all the rules of the conclave and proposed that they proceed to the second ballot AND elect Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Cracow. Koenig praised his education, his intelligence, his sensitivity, his leadership in the reconciliation between the Church in Germany and the Church in Poland. He said no one could doubt his anti-Communism, but it was a sophisticated anti-Communism, that of a man who understood both the weakness and the appeal of Marxist philosophy.

  The other cardinals were thunderstruck. No one doubted Wojtyla’s intelligence or abilities. Very few realized how young he was. Most knew that he had been an important figure in the Vatican Council. All knew that Koenig, one of the great men of the Council, would not recommend someone who did not stand for the same ideas of ecumenism and collegiality.

  They cast their second ballots under the influence of a passionate appeal which broke all the rules of the conclave. Wojtyla fell short of the two-thirds by only one or two votes. In the afternoon they would elect him and the conclave would end.

  The voice of Koenig was the voice, they firmly believed, of the Holy Spirit.

  In the ensuing years, Franz Koenig might have had second thoughts. When it was time for him to retire as Archbishop of Vienna, the Pope appointed a Benedictine abbot who had impressed him at a Mariological conference, without bothering to consult Koenig. When that man retired from the Archdiocese and from the College of Cardinals under pressure of pedophile charges, John Paul named as his successor a young aristocratic Dominican who, for all his personal charm, was a reactionary.

  His Holiness’s idea of loyalty and the one in which we were raised in Chicago were very different.

  Franz Koenig had locked the Church in for the rest of the century and beyond by that illegal intervention. He is, I am told, not a man to have second thoughts.

  We were back in front of St. Peter’s at five-thirty. The crowd was smaller—it was a workday—but enthusiastic, as if it knew that tonight we would have a pope again. The sky was clear, the weather was soft and warm again, and once more the orange moon hung over the Tiber as if it were waiting with bated breath for the announcement.

  At 6:08 the smoke went up, unmistakably and permanently white.

  “È bianco!” said Radio Vaticana.

  The atmosphere changed at once to hilarity. We were all talking to one another happily. The main subject of conversation was whether the new pope would be a straniero, a foreigner. Some of our newfound friends were horrified at this possibility. Others thought it was high time.

  A well-dressed and cultivated gentleman who spoke excellent English said to us, “I have a store of the best sparkling wine in Rome. If we rid ourselves of the Italian papacy, I will go home and break open that store and with my family drink to the future of the Church in Italy.”

  “What do you think, Chucky? No hedging your bets now.”

  “I don’t think Colombo quite made it. That leaves only a foreigner. I’m betting on a Polish pope.”

  She considered me with glowing blue eyes that make my heart melt and my loins tighten.

  “No bet.”

  The powerful lights went on behind the doors of the loggia of the Basilica. We continued to wait. They certainly knew how to drag out the suspense.

  Then the door swung. The cross bearer and the acolytes emerged, then Cardinal Felici appeared:

  “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum!”

  The required ecstatic cheers.

  “Habemus Papam!”

  Oh great, we weren’t expecting that.

  “Carolum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem …”

  Charles? Who was that?

  “Wojtyla!”

  “Pope Chucky,” Rosemarie giggled.

  The cheer was modest at best. They weren’t sure who this man with the funny name was. They knew he wasn’t an Italian.

  “Qui imposuit sibi nomen Johannem Paulum!”

  Felici did not sound very happy.

  “È papa nero? È papa nero?” a man next to me asked anxiously.

  “Non,” my good wife replied, “È papa Polacco!”

  “Magari!” he exclaimed, clutching his head.

  “Polacco?” a number of others shouted.

  “Revera,” Rosemarie said, “È papa Polacco!”

  “The first non-Italian pope since 1522!” I said to herself. “And we are there!”

  “Quick, who was the last non-Italian pope?”

  “I’ve been sick all week.”

  “Adrian VI, Cardinal Breakspeare!”

  “A Brit!

  “That’s right, a Brit.”

  All right, you’ve elected a Polish pope. What do you do as an encore for that?

  The crowd did not disperse. They were hurt, angry. They wanted to see what this new man was like.

  Not good losers.

  We elbowed our way over to the Sala Stampa.

  “The tradition is that he just gives the blessing and goes back into the Sistine. His first talk is to the cardinals at the closing Mass tomorrow.”

  My spousal tour guide had spent the week of my illness brushing up on the local folklore.

  “He’d better say something to these folks now. They’re not happy.”

  “Pope Chucky,” she giggled again. “Your nightmare came true even if it was another Chuck.”

  An Italian military band struck up happy music at the edge of the colonnade. The moon was orange again, the sky was still clear. A new era had begun in the Catholic Church.

  About 7:20 he appeared on the screen, a big man, not tall (though taller than I am by a couple of inches) but broad-shouldered and solid.

  “May Jesus Christ be praised,” he said in Italian.

  “Now and forever,” the crowd replied, somewhat surprised at the Italian.

  Rosemarie whispered a translation to me, through her tears.

  “Dearest brothers and sisters, we are still all grieved after the death of the most beloved Pope John Paul I. And now the most reverend cardinals have called a new bishop to Rome. They have called him from a distant country, distant but always so close for the communion in Christian faith and tradition. I was afraid to receive this nomination, but I did in the spirit of obedience to Our Lord and in the total confidence in His mother, the most holy Madonna.

  “Even if I cannot explain myself in your …” he paused and chuckled, “ … our Italian language, if I make a mistake you will correct me.”

  Laughter from the throng. He had won them over.

  “Also I present myself to you all to confess our common faith, our hope and our confidence in the mother of Christ and of the Church and also to start with the help of God and with the help of men.”

  An enormous ovation leaped from the Piazza San Pietro. After all they really had another Italian pope.

  One of the functionaries standing around him had tried to silence him, whispering “basta,” which the mikes picked up.

  The new Pope had ignored him.

  Adolfo had said that the Archbishop of Cracow had been an actor before he went to the seminary. He certainly had magical stage presence. He had been close to tears when he spoke of being afraid of the nomination. He had clung to the railing of the balcony to control his emotions. The Romans loved him.

  For the moment.

  “An enormously impressive man,” my wife said to me as we rode back to the hotel.

  “Incredible,” I agreed.

  Both Rosemarie and I were elated and exhausted. I was also fading fast, my cold striking one last mean blow.

  “I’m fading, Rosemarie my darling.”

  “I can see that, Chuck. By tomorrow you’ll be fine.”

  So it was right to bed for Chucky Ducky and his wife and right to sleep. Time for us to go home.

  On Tuesday morning, we were wait
ing with most of our equipment, at the entrance of the Sistine to catch the cardinals as they emerged from the conclave. We were reading the English-language translation of the discourse he had delivered to the cardinals at the Mass ending the conclave. He had touched every base, Vatican Council, collegiality, the synod of bishops. The opponents of the Council had been routed, now it would seem definitively. The Siri people were in full retreat. The Cardinal himself would in all probability never get his fifth chance.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “He was wonderful,” Rosemarie enthused, the stars from last night still in her eyes. “And you, Chucky?”

  “The big question, it seems to me, is whether the man can really make the leap from Cracow to Rome, from being the brilliant leader of a garrison Church to being the one who presides in charity over a worldwide pluralistic Church.”

  I know I said those things because my wife jotted them down in her notebook.

  “Are you perhaps demanding too much?” Adolfo asked. “Can any of us leave behind our origins?”

  “I probably couldn’t leave behind my neighborhood,” I admitted.

  “He will do his best,” Adolfo smiled. “You wish to do the portrait?”

  “Certo,” Rosemarie answered for both of us.

  “Come to the Sala Stampa tomorrow at ten-thirty. I will be engaged at the time. They will, however, take you to the papal apartments. The Pope does not need a translator. Now here come the cardinals. Don’t miss your shots.”

  The cardinals streamed into the courtyard in various stages of formal dress, Siri in full robes with a Roman hat, Benelli with a black cassock and crimson sash and skullcap. They seemed tired and distracted, no claims of a great spiritual experience this time.

  Someone asked a sullen Cardinal Siri whether the outcome was a surprise.

  “I am not able to say. Perhaps it was a surprise.”

  “What do you think of the discourse of the new Pope?”

  “I do not remember anything.”

  Benelli was willing to say more, though he seemed nervous and agitated.

  “The right man at the right time.”

  “A revolution?”

  “There aren’t revolutions in the Church, always continuity.”