by Morris West
“She’s a stylish woman, with a clear mind. She will come prepared in her subject and its vocabulary. She has no interest in men as sexual partners; but she demands that they acknowledge both her brains and her style. You may rely on accurate quotations of what you say, some acid descriptions of your attitudes under questioning and some insight that may surprise you. She will not accept anything off the record. Her attitude is that you have accepted the rules of the game. Subjects? Certainly she will refer to the Pontiff’s personal relations with you. Certainly she will want to discuss the drama of your rescue from the soldiery and your eventual exit from Argentina. My guess is that she will have more information than you may be expecting. It is common knowledge now that the husband of Señora Ortega has been proposed as the next Argentine Ambassador to the Vatican …”
“Which leads directly to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.”
“Yes.”
“And since you will be present at the interview, that will certainly raise the question of the participation or involvement of members of Opus Dei in the dirty war in Argentina. Do you have any briefing for me in that area?”
“Guillermin is too practised to address any questions to me. This is your interview, Eminence. I shall simply be a fly on the wall. My counsel would be to give your own answers, and not try to guess what her commentary will be or attempt to instruct her in the faith. Some of your eminent colleagues have already fallen into that snare. You’ll inevitably get two general questions: What is the present state of the Church, and what kind of a Pope do we need? Each one of those has its own built-in bear-trap. If the Church is in a bad way, who’s to blame? If the Church needs repairs, who’s the man to fix it? And your answer to that one could have you in trouble with the whole electoral college. Any more questions, Eminence?”
“Let’s get back to the one you haven’t answered,” said Rossini. “What is your personal response to the actions of certain members of Opus Dei in my country during the dirty war?”
The question took him completely by surprise. He blushed crimson. He opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he sat in silence, staring down at the backs of his hands. Finally, he lifted his head to face Rossini. His voice was steady and his answer studiously formal.
“You are not my confessor, Eminence. So, I am not obliged to answer that question.”
“I understand that.”
“So why does your Eminence ask?”
“Because, in my personal life first, and now in my collegial life as a Cardinal, the matter assumes a special importance. A few moments ago, when I raised the question, you declined to give me any directions at all as to how – if at all – it might be answered for the press. So I put it again to you in confidence. There is evidence, clear evidence, that members of Opus Dei were involved directly or indirectly in the repressive activities of the military in Argentina, that they helped to suppress proof of crimes committed in the dirty war. I know you as an upright and honourable man. It would help me to know how you come to terms with these anomalies. I, too, have questions of conscience to solve, and I’d like to have a very clear head when I face my inquisitor!”
“Then the answer will have to be in shorthand, Eminence.”
“I accept that.”
“Let’s start with this proposition: Opus Dei is not a popular or populist group. It is elitist. It is secretive. It does deal with power-groups in the law, in money, in politics. It endeavours, not always successfully, to apply Christian principles to the mechanics of social order. Its origins, like those of the Jesuits, are Hispanic. Its asceticism is, if you like, Hispanic too. For my part, I have to acknowledge that its training enabled me to survive a most difficult period of my life. But, as we both know, power is a dangerous and corrupting game – especially when you have God and Christ’s Vicar on your side! Our society constitutes a very strong pressure group in the Iberian and the South American Churches. Areas in which, let me say it, the power game has been played most brutally. Ask me for evidence of our involvement, I cannot give it. It is too deeply buried. I have chosen not to dig any deeper than I am obliged to do. Like you, Eminence, I have lived and worked under the close personal patronage of the late Pontiff, who gave our society a special place in his plans. His Holiness was a potent influence in the downfall of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In politics and in the Church, he leaned more to the right than to the left. Thus, living so close to the seat of power, it has been easy to dissociate myself from its abuses, to pull the cowl over my head like an ancient monk, and tell myself that God and the Holy Father know what is best for the world. Now I’m not so sure! What to do about it? I’m not sure either, especially with all the changes that a new man will bring. So I wait. I wrestle with my conscience and pray for light enough and strength enough one day to cleanse my own corner of the house of God!” He broke off. His fine-boned features relaxed into a smile and his voice took on its habitual tone of irony. “You see how easy it is to forget the disciplines and lapse into excessive emotion.”
“Your excess was a gift to me,” said Luca Rossini. “The light dawns slowly, doesn’t it?”
“Too slowly sometimes. But let me repeat my warning, Eminence. Steffi Guillermin is a seductive interviewer. She has much intelligence and she likes to display it. Just remember, she’s got ice water in her veins and acid in her pen!”
The interview took place in a room in the Press Office. Guillermin and Rossini sat facing each other, with a small table between them. Angel-Novalis sat apart, out of their line of vision. His tape recorder sat beside Guillermin’s on the table-top. She began without preamble.
“You’re a busy man, Eminence. I thank you for consenting to this interview. Let’s deal with the big questions first. What’s wrong with the Church?”
“The same things that have been wrong with it for two thousand years – people! Men and women and children, too, who make up the family of believers. This isn’t a community of the pure and the perfect. They’re good, bad and indifferent. They’re ambitious, greedy, fearful, lustful, a rabble of pilgrims held together by faith and hope – and the difficult experience of love.”
“Let’s be more specific, then: the institution of which you are a key official, how would you describe its present condition?”
“Sometimes it’s called the ‘barque of Peter’. It’s a good metaphor. It’s a ship – a very old ship riding in stormy waters. It’s been well-built – its essential structures are sound, but its timbers creak; some of them are worm-eaten and have to be replaced. The rigging is frayed, the sails have been patched and repatched. It wallows in the troughs and lurches over the crests of big seas, but it’s still afloat and the crew is still manning her – even though they, too, look a motley bunch sometimes.”
“And now, of course, the captain is dead. You are one of the people, the very few people, who have to elect a new one. What special talents do you bring to that electoral task?”
“Fewer than you might think. I know how bureaucracy works, though I have little taste and less talent for it. However, the electoral process is a play of forces and interests within a small body of highly diverse individuals; sometimes an oddity, like myself, may tip the vote in one direction or another – at least that’s what I am told by those who have attended a conclave. This will be my first.”
“His Holiness had a very long reign. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Good or bad, it’s a fact which produces certain consequences.”
“Could you be more specific, Eminence?”
“There’s no mystery about it. The process of ageing produces certain inevitable consequences. The catalogue is familiar. The arteries get clogged. The joints stiffen. The brain functions may change radically. There are psychological changes as well. The aged can become fearful, paranoid, even tyrannous. In human societies under a long regime, there are analogous changes.”
“Does this not suggest that changes may be necessary in the traditional system? A compulsory reti
ring age for a Pontiff, a revision of the rules for retirement or deposition on the grounds of incapacity?”
“These are all matters of proper concern for the whole Church. Yes.”
“But in the end, as things stand, they can be determined by one man, the reigning Pontiff?”
“That’s true.”
“And in the normal course of events, what Pontiff is going to provide for his own execution?”
Rossini threw back his head and laughed.
“You have a point!”
“The secret diaries of the late Pontiff emphasise the point. An accusation has been made that they were stolen by the Pope’s valet and that we, along with other media, are publishing them illegally. You’re aware of that?”
“I’m aware of it, yes.”
“Are the diaries authentic?”
“To the best of my knowledge, they are.”
“Were they stolen?”
“There is strong presumption that they were.”
“One of the passages in the diaries reads as follows: ‘There are those in the Curia who think my advancement of Luca Rossini is a mistake. They claim that he is secretive, arrogant, and too readily dismissive of opinions that run contrary to his own. I know what these critics mean. I have often had to reprove him for over-emphatic argument. But I know what he has been through. I know how tenaciously he has fought to maintain the integrity of his tormented spirit. He has confessed to me his deep and abiding affection for the woman who saved his life. I believe this experience has given a special value and character to his service to the Church. I cannot protect him from scandal, calumny or hostile rumour. He would consider it beneath his dignity to seek such protection. His reasoning is very simple. He told me once: “Holiness, I have been stripped naked in front of my own church, and flogged into a bloody pulp. I was about to be raped. My assailant was shot just before he penetrated me. What can rumours do to me?” This thought was in my mind when I named him Cardinal. It was my fantasy to think how he might act if he sat on Peter’s throne. But then, I thought of others who survived torture and were considered papabili … Beran, Slipyi, Mindszenty. All were maimed in some fashion.’ Do you have any comment on that, Eminence?”
“None.”
“Are you a deeply tormented spirit?”
“Let’s say I limp, like Jacob after his wrestle with the angel.”
“How do you see your future?”
“Each day is new to me. I take it as it comes.”
“Do the Pontiff’s remarks embarrass you?”
“I am embarrassed that his privacy has been invaded by their publication.”
“This woman, for whom you have this deep and abiding affection. What can you tell me about her?”
“I owe her my life. That says it all, I think.”
“According to my information, her name is Isabel Ortega, born Menéndez. She is married to an Argentine diplomat, by whose family she was protected during the dirty war. She has a twenty-five-year-old daughter.”
“You’re very well informed, Mademoiselle. So, let me say now, I have no intention of pursuing the subject with you.”
“The episode is closed, then?”
“Please, Mademoiselle, don’t play games with me. We are talking not of episodes and incidents, but of my abiding gratitude. When I first went to Japan on a private mission for the Holy Father, I was given some instruction on the habits and customs in that country. I was warned, among other things, not to intervene in any way in a street accident, but to leave the victim to the care of others. If I intervened, I risked a lifetime relationship of duty to the victim – a relationship I could not possibly sustain.”
“And the moral of that story, Eminence?”
“I could not, would not and did not lay any burden of continuing relationship on the woman who saved my life. Now, let’s address whatever other questions you have.”
“Before we do, Eminence, please let me say something. I cannot avoid discussing this matter in the context of the diaries – and of the election itself. It has in fact been raised with me by certain of your colleagues.”
“I will not ask you who these colleagues are.”
“Better you don’t. I understand from my interview with Cardinal Aquino that you had agreed to mediate a discussion between him and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.”
“Hold a moment! You say you have interviewed Cardinal Aquino?”
“Among others, yes.”
“And he volunteered this information?”
“Yes.”
“When did you have this interview?”
“About this time yesterday. Why? Is something wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. I did have such a discussion with him. I find it strange that he should reveal such a delicate matter in a press interview.”
“How delicate is the matter, Eminence?”
“Very.”
“I ask myself, therefore, why you have consented to be advocate for Aquino?”
“Once again, Mademoiselle, your language is loose and inaccurate. I have not consented to be Aquino’s advocate, only to mediate a discussion on the accusations which the women are laying against him.”
“That could be interpreted as a very effective plea for his defence – or the defence of the policies of Rome and of the local church.”
“It would be a false interpretation.”
“So, how do you describe what happened in your country, Eminence?”
“Too many of our people sold their souls to the devil.”
“For what, Eminence?”
“An illusion of order, stability, prosperity. An illusion, old as history, that you can wipe out ideas by guns and the instruments of torture.”
“Why then would you agree even to give comfort to Aquino, who, on his own admission, gave at least some comfort to the regime?”
“Because, first, he has a right to my presumption of his innocence and, second, I am bound as a Christian to find forgiveness in my heart for those who have injured me.”
“Have you succeeded in doing that, Eminence?’
“I work at it.” Rossini made a wry mouth. “I have not succeeded yet.”
“Can you explain why?”
“Yes. As the late Pontiff rightly says, I am still a flawed man, conscious of my own capacity for evil.”
“Are you afraid of that capacity?”
“Oh yes, I am. The prevalence of evil is the darkest and most frightening mystery of the universe.”
“So how do you see the role of the Church in the fight against evil?”
“As a community of believers, formed in faith and hope, supported and enriched by charity, spreading the good news of Redemption. But the community has to renew itself every day.”
“Let’s talk about the role of leadership in that renewal.”
Rossini smiled and shook his head.
“That’s a very big can of beans. There’s no way either of us can digest it in a short interview.”
“Let me put it another way, then. In a few days’ time, you’ll be going into conclave with a hundred or more members of the electoral college to choose a new Pontiff. What sort of man will you be looking for?”
“I can speak only for myself, as a single elector.”
“Yet you share a common interest: the good of the people of God.”
“But being human, we are divided on how that interest should be served.”
“It is claimed, is it not, that the Holy Spirit is present in the conclave?”
“We invoke the Spirit.” Rossini’s tone was cool. “There’s no guarantee that all of us, or any of us, is open to its promptings.”
“And the man you elect, will he be filled with the Spirit?”
“We pray he may, but he, too, will be subject to the daily temptations of power which, as a great Englishmen once wrote, tends always to corrupt.”
“‘And Satan took him up on to a high mountain,’” Steffi Guillermin quoted the familiar text, “‘and showed hi
m all the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof.’ So, truly, Eminence, you and your colleagues are embarked on a high-risk enterprise. And the risk is doubled, is it not, by the dogma of infallibility, which of late has been given some very wide interpretations?”
“I would express it otherwise,” said Luca Rossini. “I believe that the Church is best served when infallibility is not invoked but charity is most abundantly dispensed.”
“Let’s talk about charity, then, divine love and human love.”
“Two sides of the same coin.”
“And the sexual act is an expression of that love.”
“It should be. It is not always. Sometimes it is an invasion, sometimes a debasement. As, for example, sexual abuse by clerics or religious teachers.”
“And you, of all people, must find such abuse intolerable.”
“I do and I find that its concealment by authorities within the Church compounds the crime.”
“What about the perpetrators?”
“We have to admit that some of our training systems have contributed to their delinquency. We cannot keep them in hidden circulation through the pastoral or educational systems.”
“Forgive them?”
“They, like all of us, must have the chance to change and seek forgiveness.”
“The ordination of women: where do you stand on that?”
“I stand where the late Pontiff ordered us to stand – against the idea. Unless and until a later wisdom changes the order, and so long as I hold an official position in the Church, I will not speak against it.”
“Is there any possibility that either position could change: a Papal decision, your own position within the Church?”
“In spite of rumour and pressure to the contrary, I believe the Papal position could change. My own position? Like everyone else in the Curia, I resign automatically and wait at the disposition of the new man.”
“How do you feel about partnerships between gay or lesbian couples? Should they be given marital status?”
“I think not. On the other hand, they should be given a civil recognition as partnerships with mutual rights and obligations.”
