The literal truth of the Bible? Adam and Eve are “a fable.” Then what of the Virgin birth, planetary floods, men who literally lived to be eight hundred years old, or the parting of waters with miracle crossings on dry land—all of that? Francis seems to have concluded that—particularly in the West—people no longer require priests to say things that everybody knows are not true and can’t possibly be true. And more than that, he has hinted, perhaps the church is even weakened by these claims of literal truth.
The culture of the Catholic Church? Speaking with the authority of the Magisterium, he has dubbed it “narcissistic,” too inward looking, concerned with its own survival and enrichment rather than the needs of the poor. He has used terms like “spiritual Alzheimer’s” to describe a church that has forgotten Christ’s example of mercy and called out “the lust for power of ladder-climbing clerics.” He has stated, “Like every body, like every human body, the church is exposed to illnesses, malfunctioning, infirmity. It must be treated. With strong medicine.”
Sexual abuse? Leading a church that Bishopaccountability.org, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks church abuse cases, says has paid out three billion dollars in settlements to victims worldwide, he now speaks of “zero tolerance” of both abuse and, vitally, church cover-ups, charging his bishops, on pain of being found complicit, to report incidents to the police. These new rules of transparency, exposure, and criminal consequences have already begun to produce an extraordinary drop in the number of reported cases of abuse, suggesting that acts of sexual criminality by priests were reducible, almost to zero, with the responsible imposition of swift penalties (such as jail terms) and the removal of the church’s cloak of protection from sex-fiend priests. How shockingly simple the solution here may yet prove to be, as long as the police are given unrestricted access to church files, and the church matches or betters the anguished efforts of victims for justice to be done. After all, the Catholic leadership has every incentive for doing so: its survival is at stake.
Capitalism? Pope Francis has deemed it a sin, a system of trickle-down suffering. He has been accused of biting the hand that fed.
The environment? He has taken aim at the world’s governments for their sinful protection of those who are wounding Mother Earth, destroying our collective home. In a long and carefully researched encyclical, he dismantled the positions of climate-change deniers and self-interested, profit-driven industries.
In short, he has shown himself prepared to make powerful enemies. Already there are grumblings among those in the church who yearn for the simpler certainties offered by Pope Benedict. At times, change seems to be all that Francis represents, and it has always been harder to mount arguments for change than for stasis. Still, his arguments, when simplified and distilled, seem—to me at least—to be that the church should insist less, include more. It must bring into joyous alignment the beautiful lessons taught in churches and the beautiful lessons taught in schools.
Bergoglio’s choice of the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, can now be seen for what it was: a statement of revolutionary intent. How far will he go? How far will he be allowed to go?
The name derives from Francesco Bernardone. This young man was walking in the wood. He found a chapel—a ruined chapel. One wall had fallen down. He stepped inside. The crucifix was still on the wall where the altar had been. Afterward, Francesco always said it “captivated his senses.” It even spoke to him: “Francesco, rebuild my church.” Francesco was a practical man; he took this instruction literally, said okay, went up to the quarry on top of Mount Subasio, cut stones, carted them down the mountain, and started to repair the little broken wall. He mistook God’s meaning, who wanted something much bigger for him. The lesson? Even the most glorious journey can begin … with a mistake.
* * *
Let me end this prologue on a personal note.
I am a Catholic. At least, I was raised one, and I am told, and can attest to the fact, that once thus stamped, always stamped.
I was reared on the tale of Jesus Christ, this young Jewish radical hailing from Nazareth two millennia ago, claiming to be the “Son of Man” or, even more audaciously, the “Messiah” and “King of the Jews,” sent by his father on a divine mission to rid humanity of the original sin blighting it since Eden, before being caught and crucified, but then rising from the dead two days later, thereafter ascending bodily into Heaven, there to remain until the unspecified day when he would return to announce the end of the entire human experiment. This was my religion. A tall tale, admittedly, but with the insolent logic of truth. Tacitus called Christianity “that most mischievous superstition,” and the writer Jorge Luis Borges “a branch of fantastic literature.” Still, this was the faith I was born into.
I grew up as the second-to-youngest member of a large household, one so Catholic that two of my sisters would marry—very happily—ex-priests. We knew priests at our dinner table, the odd bishop, and even, once, a cardinal. Our home, in addition to the ritual churchgoing, would once a month be visited by a large statue of the Virgin Mary, in solemn procession throughout the parish, obliging my brothers and sisters and me to observe, under the thumb of my mother, the (to my mind, tedious) recitations of the Rosary, paeans to the Virgin, asking for help, for help, for divine help. Life was certainly tough enough in our working-class town. Money was as scarce as good jobs, so we figured that we could do worse than be on good terms with the Mother of God. Don’t argue, just get on your knees, and everything would work out okay with God on your side: this was the drill. We obeyed, falling dutifully, burying our faces in the couch as we mumbled the ancient incantations over and over again: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…”
Amen.
If you’d care to know my parents’ policy on birth control, I am one of eight children (more coitus than interruptus). Educated first by nuns, I progressed to ordained brothers; was well served by two good Catholic schools. For all my childhood I served the mass, as an altar boy, making my last appearance in red cowl and white surplice at the embarrassingly advanced age of sixteen, early stubble on my chin, the robes then two sizes too small for me, as I carried to the priest cruets of water and wine and then the white and innocent wafers that this Heaven-connected man, this neighborhood magician, would transform into the actual body of Christ. The daily miracle, right before our eyes. The body of Christ, abracadabra. Believe it or not.
We were Catholics, or, more specifically, “Irish Catholics” (albeit transplanted to New Zealand via migrant ships four generations before me), the flame of our Irishness kept alight in a remote land by an extended family who did business, and did “the business,” only within the closed circle of this one faith and culture. It shaped us. And my life today, a writer’s life, owes its roots to the animating beauty of the liturgy, heard first through young ears, an art located in the ornate language that inclined all to think in multiple dimensions and across time and space, never contemplating life without first mulling death. The factual was hitched irreparably to the fictional, and distinguishing between the two was actively discouraged. So what, we were taught, if you could not prove something was true: How did it make you feel? Your emotions led you. People wept openly in our small church. Hands were clasped so tightly in prayer, you could see the whites of knuckles. Belief was as necessary for these people as a paycheck. You had to believe, to make it through the day. The church in our town, hexagonal and spireless, was at the geographical and psychological center of our lives. If I ever doubted this, my mother would set me straight. If I questioned some aspect of creed, some far-fetched claim made from pulpit or book, I would receive her stock rebuke: “Anthony, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” That this woman, who left school at fourteen, should so easily quote the poet Alexander Pope (or slightly misquote him, for the operative word is learning, not knowledge), I offer as proof that, in the absence of schooling, the church served as our university, the priest substituting for professor.
This book, and the feature film of the same name that accompanies it (Netflix, 2019, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, directed by Fernando Meirelles), specifically came about with the sudden death of a cousin of mine. Pauline’s death caused my eldest sister, a devout Catholic, to text me, suggesting I light a candle, if I was near a church. I was. I was in Rome. So, with Eva, my partner, I went to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and found the famous square thronged with thousands, all there to see the new pope say an open-air mass. The huge face of Francis, projected on a superscreen, conveyed his superstar appeal. And while standing there, listening to his gentle Italian words, I asked Eva if she knew where the other pope was, Pope Benedict, the one who had resigned, who had slipped off the international radar. Eva knew. Her father, in Munich, had once worked under Benedict (then Archbishop Ratzinger of Munich) while serving as vice chancellor of that city’s Catholic University. Eva informed me that this second pontiff, who retained the title of pope and arguably many of his powers, was quietly living in a monastery just a few hundred yards behind the stage on which Pope Francis now stood, sequestered within the Vatican walls, silent, obedient, old. Two popes, then, within a solid stone’s throw of each other! I asked Eva if she knew when the last time was that the world had two living popes. We googled it. The resulting answer, when it resolved on the screen of her smartphone, inspired both book and film.
1
CONCLAVE
“Let me go to the house of the Father.”
These words were whispered in Polish at 3:30 P.M. on April 2, 2005. A little over six hours later, the Catholic Church was set on an unprecedented new course.
Pope John Paul II was dead. Since 1991, the Vatican had kept his illness secret, admitting only in a 2003 statement on the eve of his eighty-third birthday what had already become clear to the world’s then 1.1 billion Catholics. The pontiff’s slow and painful deterioration from Parkinson’s disease had long been agonizing to watch.
Rome had been ablaze with speculation and rumor since February 1, when the pope was rushed to his private wing in Gemelli University Hospital for the treatment of symptoms of “acute inflammation of the larynx and laryngo-spasm,” caused by a recent bout of flu. The press duly assembled for the deathwatch.
Over the following two months, however, John Paul II had displayed more of the same resilience that had characterized his many years of illness. This was, after all, a pope who during his twenty-six-year reign had survived not one but two assassination attempts; he had recovered from four gunshot wounds in 1981 and a bayonet attack a year later. Now, despite multiple readmissions to the hospital and a tracheotomy, he continued to appear at various Vatican windows and balconies to bless the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. His voice was barely audible. He missed the Palm Sunday Mass for the first time during his tenure as pope, but, dedicated to the last, he was presented in a wheelchair on Easter Sunday, March 27, and attempted to make his traditional address. He was described as “[looking] to be in immense distress, opening and shutting his mouth, grimacing with frustration or pain, and several times raising one or both hands to his head.” It was all too much for the estimated eighty thousand devoted Catholics watching below, and tears flowed freely. The pope managed a brief sign of the cross before being wheeled behind the curtains of his apartment.
Over the following six days the Vatican frequently updated the world on his worsening condition, and those who had been hopeful that he might make a full recovery began to accept that his death was only a matter of time. On the morning of April 1 a public statement advised, “The Holy Father’s health condition is very grave.” At 7:17 the previous evening, he had “received the Last Rites.” John Paul’s most trusted friend and personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, administered the sacraments to John Paul II to prepare him for his final journey, by giving him absolution from his sins and anointing him with the holy oils on his forehead and on the backs of his hands, as is done only with priests. (Those not ordained are anointed on the palms of their hands.) Vatican expert and biographer of Pope Benedict XVI, John L. Allen Jr. witnessed this press briefing and described how “the most telling indication of the true gravity of the situation came at the end of the briefing, when [Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls] choked back tears as he walked away from the platform where he spoke to reporters.”
Surrounded by those who had loved and cherished him for so many years, John Paul II regained consciousness several times during his final twenty-four hours, and was described by his personal physician, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, as looking “serene and lucid.” In accordance with Polish tradition, “a small, lit candle illuminated the gloom of the room where the pope was expiring.” When he became aware of the crowds calling his name from the vigil below, he uttered words that Vatican officials deciphered as “I have looked for you. Now you have come to me and I thank you.”
Dr. Buzzonetti ran an electrocardiogram for twenty minutes to verify Pope John Paul’s death. Once this was done, the centuries-old Vatican rituals began, elements of which date back to as early as 1059, when Pope Nicholas II radically reformed the process of papal elections, in an effort to prevent further installation of puppet popes under the control of opposing imperial and noble powers, through a decree stating that cardinals alone were responsible for choosing successors to the Chair of St. Peter.
Cardinal Eduardo Martínez Somalo had been appointed camerlengo by the late pope to administer the church during the period known as the interregnum (“between the reigns,” which lasts from the moment of death until a new pope is found), and he now stepped forward to call John Paul three times by his Polish baptismal name, Karol. When no answer was received, he struck a small silver hammer on John Paul’s forehead as a sure indication of his death. He was then required to destroy with a hammer the Ring of the Fisherman, or Annelo Pescatorio (the papal ring cast for each pope since the thirteenth century) to symbolize the end of his reign.
And so the death of John Paul was announced to the world. The public outpouring of grief was breathtaking, with many soon referring to him by the prestigious (albeit unofficial) appendage of “the Great,” previously afforded only to pope-saints Leo I (ruled A.D. 440–461), Gregory I (590–604), and Nicholas I (858–867). His body was dressed in bloodred vestments and taken to the Apostolic Palace, where members of the papal administrative offices and agencies of the Catholic Church, known as the Roman Curia, could pay their respects, before being transferred to St. Peter’s Basilica the following day for the beginning of the nine official days of mourning known as the novemdiales, a custom dating back to the novemdiale sacrum, an ancient Roman rite of purification held on the ninth and final day of a period of festivity. An estimated four million pilgrims and three million residents of Rome filed past to give thanks and pray for this most beloved of men, astonishing figures when compared with the previous record of 750,000 people who visited the body of Pope Paul VI in August 1978. John Paul had left instructions that, should he not be alive to read it himself, his final address be read out by the substitute of the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri. During mass at the Feast of Divine Mercy held at St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, April 3, Sandri read John Paul’s final message of peace, forgiveness, and love, which told the people, “As a gift to humanity, which sometimes seems bewildered and overwhelmed by the power of evil, selfishness, and fear, the Risen Lord offers his love that pardons, reconciles, and reopens hearts to love. It is a love that converts hearts and gives peace.”
Tough act to follow.
And there was no time to waste. Interregnum tradition demanded that the funeral take place between the fourth and sixth day following a pope’s death. Therefore, it was scheduled for Friday, April 8. Likewise, the conclave to elect his successor must occur no earlier than fifteen or later than twenty days after his death, so was announced to begin on April 18.
The Vatican began planning the funeral with military precision. The responsibility of presiding over events fel
l to Joseph Ratzinger, as dean of the College of Cardinals—who, despite having no authority over his brother cardinals, “is considered as first among equals” and who, incidentally, had also been John Paul’s right-hand man for twenty-four years. Nicknamed the Pilgrim Pope on account of his globetrotting travels to 129 countries, John Paul II had traveled more miles than all the previous popes in the church’s two-thousand-year history combined, ensuring that heads of state, royalty, and dignitaries from across the globe would be in attendance alongside the crowds of Catholic faithful. A more diverse group of people had gathered at few other moments throughout history, and many opposing nations were united through their mutual respect for the late pontiff. Prince Charles postponed his wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles to be able to attend alongside the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. U.S. president George W. Bush was seen leaning over to shake the hand of staunch Iraq War critic President Jacques Chirac of France, as United Nations secretary-general Kofi Anan watched on alongside former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. The Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, chatted and shook hands with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and the president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, although Khatami later strenuously denied the exchange. It would be the largest funeral of a pope in the history of the Catholic Church, and an estimated two billion people worldwide tuned in to watch the live broadcast on television, with one million of those watching on large outdoor screens specially erected around the city of Rome.
The Pope Page 2
