Something that passed almost unnoticed in these hectic days before Thanksgiving – for me and for many others – is the talk Pope Benedict XVI gave on November 21 to a group of over 260 artists in the Sistine Chapel. He wanted, among other things, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of John Paul II’s Letter to Artists (published on April 4, 1999) , and the occasion 45 years ago in 1964, when Pope Paul VI greeted artists in the same Sistine Chapel. After recalling those anniversaries, and reminding his listeners that they were in a place filled with some of the most famous works of art in the world, he said:
Dear friends, let us allow these frescoes to speak to us today, drawing us towards the ultimate goal of human history. The Last Judgement, which you see behind me, reminds us that human history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always transcends the present moment even as the two coincide. Yet the dramatic scene portrayed in this fresco also places before our eyes the risk of man’s definitive fall, a risk that threatens to engulf him whenever he allows himself to be led astray by the forces of evil. So the fresco issues a strong prophetic cry against evil, against every form of injustice. For believers, though, the Risen Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For his faithful followers, he is the Door through which we are brought to that “face-to-face” vision of God from which limitless, full and definitive happiness flows. Thus Michelangelo presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of history, and he invites us to walk the path of life with joy, courage and hope. The dramatic beauty of Michelangelo’s painting, its colours and forms, becomes a proclamation of hope, an invitation to raise our gaze to the ultimate horizon. The profound bond between beauty and hope was the essential content of the evocative Message that Paul VI addressed to artists at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: “To all of you,” he proclaimed solemnly, “the Church of the Council declares through our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!” And he added: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands… Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.”
The whole of Pope Benedict’s talk in English, with links to the others, can be found here.
For anyone in the arts, including writers (like me), whether they are poets, playwrights, novelists or even screenwriters, for painters, sculptors, and those in the performing arts, these texts are a rich feast for meditation.
Could anyone express better than John Paul II (who was a practicing poet and playwright) the relation between an artist’s work and the contemplation of God?
6. Every genuine artistic intuition goes beyond what the senses perceive and, reaching beneath reality’s surface, strives to interpret its hidden mystery. The intuition itself springs from the depths of the human soul, where the desire to give meaning to one’s own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things. All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit.
Believers find nothing strange in this: they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God. Is it in any way surprising that this leaves the spirit overwhelmed as it were, so that it can only stammer in reply? True artists above all are ready to acknowledge their limits and to make their own the words of the Apostle Paul, according to whom “God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands” so that “we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold or silver or stone, a representation by human art and imagination” (Acts 17:24, 29). If the intimate reality of things is always “beyond” the powers of human perception, how much more so is God in the depths of his unfathomable mystery!
John Paul also said that Christ too was an artist on earth: “Christ himself made extensive use of images in his preaching, fully in keeping with his willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the icon of the unseen God.” (Both quotes from the Letter to Artists)
I posted here one of his predecessor John Paul I’s writings as a bishop on artists, though he never got to write a letter to artists as Pope. For him, a saint like Fra Claudio Granzotto, OFM Cap., had a similar idea:
Frau Claudio first remained in contemplation, he first heated his heart in the furnace of divine love, then, when he was well heated and had truly contemplated, only the did he set his hand to his masterpiece, and when his masterpiece was finished, he returned to contemplate and tried to bring what he had sculpted to life again.
The one art that Albino Luciani could lay any claim to practicing was that of a writer. And how did this insight work out in his life? One of his students at the seminary in Belluno, Don Aldo Belli, recalled that Luciani one day said to the class: “I don’t know what the prophet Isaiah did to find such clear and expressive images.” Aldo had the impression that Luciani wanted to learn his secret so as to imitate him. (Humilitas, Italian edition, November 1988, p. 15). That is, he saw the sacred writer first as a human writer, with the same difficulties in inspiration as all others. And he saw himself the same way.
I don’t know if the words Luciani wrote came from a vision like those of Isaiah, or, as I think much more likely from his own constant contemplation of the Word of God, which no doubt Isaiah did too. And though Luciani was capable of writing, and quite well, in a more elevated and poetic style, the result of his contemplation of the Gospels was something very like the Gospel simplicity of Jesus himself. What writer could ask for more?
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Here is the latest work of John Paul I that I have translated for Humilitas. To get more of his writings, articles about him, and news of the cause for his canonization, you can write to get Humilitas from Ray and Lauretta Seabeck, The Missionary Servants of Pope John Paul I, 22 Boyd Hill Road, Gilford, NH, 03249.
PRAYING FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY
Letter to the diocese on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
January 6, 1964
Coming as it does in the wake of the recent news that Pope Benedict XV is fulfilling the desire of many Anglican communities for union with Rome, this little piece by John Paul I from the time when he was bishop of Vittorio Veneto is especially timely, because of his attention to the efforts of a member of the Anglican communion, Fr. Paul James Wattson, who became a Catholic priest, the co-founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, and also the founder of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity. Fr. Wattson, the friars and the sisters of their community were the recipients of a then unprecedented action by the Pope Pius X, when they were received into the Catholic Church as a corporate body in 1909.
Dearest people of the diocese,
As he went to the Holy Land, Paul VI, the Pope who is growing dearer every day to both Catholics and non-Catholics, carried in his heart one great hope; that all the Christian churches might become united again.
On January 3, he said to the people of Britain: “We are living in a time in which the extraordinary opportunity is offered to us to see the old controversies starting to go towards a solution and old wounds being put aside. It is not too late to repent of the lack of charity that we have shown one another. Great problems still must be resolved, many differences still must be overcome. But we are beginning our task with a renewed spirit, knowing that a spirit of understanding and good will exists on both sides. Starting from different viewpoints we can little by little approach each other and become one, at the hour chosen by God and according to his will.”
Yesterday, January 5, in Jerusalem, the Pope and Athenagoras repeatedly and with great emotion embraced each other, and recited the “Our Father.” For centuries it had not happened; for centuries a Patriarch of Constantinople has not met with a pope. A sign of the times, a clear, evident sign of “the profound will that, thanks be to God, is inspiring Christians more and more . . . to work towards the goal of overcoming division, and throwing down barriers,” the Pope has said.“This the resolution: to commit ourselves resolutely on the way that leads to reconciliation.”
And this morning, January 6, in his message from Bethlehem to the world, he said: AThe our is historic! Catholics try to see that you are all with me in these efforts, in this spirit!”
We will all try to be with him; first by charity toward our separated brethren, and by being inclined to believe more willingly in the good than in the bad about them; then with prayer, on the subject of which I heartily recommend the so-called “Octave of Prayer” for unity, which lasts from January 18 to 25. It is a pious practice encouraged by St. Pius X, by Benedict XV, Pius XI and John XXIII; it was founded in 1908 by the American Paul James Wattson, who was first a Protestant pastor then a Catholic priest. It has been adopted B in a consoling crescendo B by Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans and the Greek and Slav Orthodox, and produces visible good fruits.
Wattson, though a Protestant, reasoned rightly when he set forth two principles. 1) Union of the separated churches, while impossible to human beings, is completely possible to God; 2) For Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox to pray together for the same end is already a step toward unity.
One day, when he was still an Episcopalian pastor, Wattson preached a sermon at a synod. Our Protestant church, he said “is sick from lack of unity; it is similar to the poor cripple whose parents deposited him every day at the gate of the temple in Jerusalem, so he could ask for alms (Acts 3:1-11). How was the crippled man cured? By turning to St. Peter. So we Protestants will be able to be cured and find salvation, by turning to the Catholic unity personified by Peter and his successors.”
The speech was daring and it hurt some feelings. Pope John and Pope Paul would say it in a different way; in fact this morning in Bethlehem, the pope praised the Orthodox leaders for what the Church they guide possesses that is beautiful and good. It would be enough to add some things B he made it understood B to retouch some others; the Catholic Church, in its turn would gladly yield everything that it is reasonably possible to yield, and everything would be all right. Let’s pray that it happens!
Opera, 3:135-36. (Note: This is part of a longer letter, the second part of which dealt with Catholic schools in the diocese of Vittorio Veneto).
Translated by Lori Pieper
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Here, on the 31st anniversary of John Paul I’s death, is my last post in this series. Don forget to check out my Investigation of the Death of Pope John Paul I as well. My apologies for the lack of greater documentation here; I desperately wanted to get this up today and had very little time.
So it’s clear that the Vatican didn’t snatch up all copies of Luciani’s writings and lock them up in the Vatican archives. But didn’t it massively censor his writings as Pope?
As I’ve said, the idea that the Vatican can and does censor and hush up everything and anything is a widespread assumption. It’s catnip to conspiracy theorists, especially those who hate the Church. These people wildly exaggerate the power of the Vatican. Still, the Vatican Press Office and other papal spokespeople do have some power over the way the Pope’s thoughts are presented to the world. But this is also overblown.
Take a recent one: the controversy over the Vatican press spokesman trying to soften Pope Benedict’s speech about condoms on the plane to Africa. But this was only a matter of a few words, and there was certainly no radical change in meaning. And these things were all noticed and commented about instantly, and incessantly in the press! Certainly if anything on the scale that Yallop, Gregoire and others suggest had taken place with John Paul I, it would have become known right away. But no one at the time reported the Vatican massively altering or withholding John Paul I’s remarks; the few things that did take place were of another order entirely, as I’ll explain later. But first let’s examine the falsehoods that have been put forward.
A cover-up on birth control?
One of the main contentions is that the Vatican not only locked up Luciani’s previous writings, but carried out a disinformation campaign downplaying his earlier stance on birth control after he became Pope. David Yallop started this, but other writers have taken it up.
The background for this is this: In the spring of 1968, after the papal birth control commission had completed its work, Pope Paul was somewhat dissatisfied with the results. He asked Cardinal Urbani, the then Patriarch of Venice, and the Bishops of the Veneto (Luciani among them) to provide him with their opinion on the subject. After they discussed the matter at a meeting, Luciani drafted the document on behalf of the other bishops, and it was sent to the Pope. It did not reflect just his own ideas, but those of the other bishops as well. The document’s exact contents are not known because it has never been published, but it was never intended to be published. It was for the Pope’s eyes only. (Some informed opinion about its contents is available, but I prefer to reserve discussion of that to my forthcoming biography of John Paul I). Later on, that summer, when Cardinal Urbani visited the Pope, Paul had expressed admiration for the document, and Urbani told him Luciani had written it (1)
When Luciani was elected Pope himself, Henri de Riedmatten, who had been secretary to the papal commission on birth control, refuted widespread press reports that Luciani had served on Pope Paul’s birth control commission. This is true — he never served on the commission. Riedmatten also denied the reports that Luciani had written a letter to Paul VI on the subject, saying that he would have known if the Pope had received such a letter. David Yallop wrote about this:
This sort of denial is characteristic of the duplicity that abounds in the Curia. The Luciani document went to Rome via Cardinal Urbani and therefore bore the cardinal’s signature. To deny that there existed a document actually signed by Luciani is technically correct. To deny that Luciani on behalf of his fellow bishops in the Veneto region had forwarded such a document to the Pope, was an iniquitous lie. (2).
This statement is typical of Yallop’s hyperbole, as well as his misunderstanding of the Church; here he misunderstands the way documents of episcopal conferences are written. They don’t usually indicate who actually drafts them. If the document bore only the cardinal’s signature, (or even the signature of Luciani along with those of Cardinal Urbani all the other bishops), then how could de Riedmatten have known that Luciani had done the writing? In fact, it seems that Pope Paul himself did not even know this until Cardinal Urbani told him. Does Yallop really expect Church officials to be clairvoyant? Riedmatten’s purpose in speaking was to clear up false rumors in the press (a full-time job for someone who wants to take it on) and he did clear up some falsehoods. In the case of the document of the Veneto commission, he seems merely not to have had the proper information his disposal, and was probably confused because the press had spoken of a letter rather than an official document of an episcopal conference — but that is not “duplicity.”
Censoring the Wednesday audiences?
Yallop made a big deal out of how L’Osservatore Romano supposedly censored the texts of John Paul I’s Wednesday audiences. It is true that some of the things John Paul said at his audiences were not in the official texts of his talks, but that is because the Pope added these remarks to the prepared texts as he spoke, or changed the prepared text, not because someone later removed them.
What happened here was that for more or less the first time, I think, the Vatican was faced with a Pope who did a lot of improvisation in his talks. In fact, as a bishop in Vittorio Veneto and Venice, he rarely used written texts, except perhaps for his most important homilies on major occasions. He usually had an outline of what he wanted to say, and went from there. He could give long talks from memory–he had a very impressive, almost photographic memory. In fact, Luciani once wrote an article in Venice in which he admitted: “Most of the time I prepare [my homilies], but I don’t manage to write them down, for lack of time.” (3)
In my study and translation of his writings, I have noted that he often expanded and added material to his sermons and conferences after he gave them. That’s because in Vittorio Veneto and Venice he often had a few weeks’ time before he had to give his works to the diocesan bulletin, which appeared monthly or every two months (Compare this to the Vatican where the Pope’s talks had to appear in L’Osservatore Romano the same day). In Vittorio Veneto and Venice he gave many talks with children that were basically question and answer sessions, and were largely improvised.
Not surprisingly, he kept up the same thing as Pope. That is, he readily delivered his talks in the formal style without change, he even used the Papal “we.” But his audience talks and the Sunday Angelus addressed were different.
In fact Cardinal (then Archbishop) Caprio, who was the sostituto at the Vatican Secretariat of State, recalled how for John Paul I’s first Angelus talk on the day after his election, he asked the Pope for the text to deliver to Osservatore Romano and Vatican Radio, and John Paul casually replied, “I never read my talks, I’m not myself when I do. So that I won’t be tempted to, I only make a few notes.” He nevertheless complied with Caprio’s wishes by writing down what he had said from memory, and when Caprio compared it with the recording made by Vatican Radio, he found they were exactly the same. (4) However, as time went on, as Caprio recalled, John Paul began supplying the written text in advance so it could be published in time in L’Osservatore Romano; he had to get over the habit he had as a bishop.
In fact, you will notice if you watch the video of his Wednesday audiences, you will notice that even when he had a written text, he didn’t speak from the text, but from memory. His secretary, Fr. Lorenzi also sat next to him with the text; Fr. Greeley said he saw the original typescript with the Pope’s last-minute insertions written in the margins. (5)
There was one occasion when there was a major discrepancy in the Pope’s words as his spoke them and in L’Osservatore Romano. This was on August 30, 1978, when John Paul I gave a more personal talk to the cardinals. There was a prepared text, the final version of which was done by someone in the Secretariat of State (the usual practice for Popes), but the Pope wasn’t too happy with the style. The talk was delivered to L’Osservatore Romano at 11:00, just at the Pope began speaking, and the staff immediately began typesetting it for the 3 p.m. edition. Vatican Radio had a hookup ready for the audio feed, in connection with the private Italian station GR2. But then John Paul discarded the prepared text and started speaking extemporaneously. He made all the same points as in the prepared text, just in his own style, as the prepared text was even then being distributed to the journalists in the Vatican press room.
But the Vatican feed did not go through, and only Gr2 was able to record the speech. Journalists listening to GR2’s 12:30 p.m. news broadcast of the recorded talk, began calling up the station demanding, “Just what did you transmit? We don’t have this text!” Vatican radio had to resort to broadcasting the speech from GR2’s recording on the later news at 2:30, even though the completely different text had already been published in L’Osservatore Romano. (6)
This was due more to accident and error than anything. Oddly enough, the Vatican (prepared) version of the talk is still the “official one” and was never replaced by the other in printed compilations of John Paul I’s works, but disdain for the Pope’s simple style was certainly not the reason, since the Vatican paper printed all his other talks in the same style without changes. In fact for the first of the Wednesday audience talks on September 6, for which the Pope once again did not have a written text in advance, L’Osservatore Romano noted, “The Holy Father, John Paul I, improvised a discourse, which we are reproducing as we have taken it from his spoken voice” (dalla sua viva voce). This version, when compared with the recording, is quite exact. (7)
Yallop claimed he Pope’s remarks on drug abuse at his third Wednesday audience were “censored” by the Vatican newspaper. True these remarks weren’t in the official text of his talk as printed in the paper, because once again they were an addition, but all Yallop had to do was to look at the text of the story reporting the audience on the same page; he would have found that not only were the Pope’s remarks on drug abuse reported in full there, but special attention was drawn to them by the headline! (8)
It is true that once in a while there was a discrepancy, as I’ve said, but this was not due to someone changing what the Pope said, but to the Pope himself changing the text. If the papal “we” did not appear in the Pope’s remarks but did later appear in the official version published in L’Osservatore Romano, as did happen, this was not because someone at the Vatican paper changed it to read the way he wanted. The journalists simply printed the official text they were given; it was the Pope himself who made the alterations. I don’t see a single case in John Paul I’s papacy in which anyone in the Vatican deliberately changed anything he said after he said it. Most of all, the substance of his words was never altered.
The Vatican and Pope John Paul I
Most of all, the general impression that the Vatican as a whole disdained John Paul I’s simple style is false. Cardinal Caprio, for instance, told an interviewer who asked what he remembered most fondly about John Paul I, answered: “His audiences. John Paul I was a real catechist, a real pastor. His meetings with the people were a source of joy.” (9) There were differences of opinion, and the sniping monsignori cited by Cornwell certainly existed, but I can’t imagine any Pope for whom there would be no criticism. But I have read almost the whole of the Osservatore Romano coverage of John Paul I’s papacy (I bet Yallop didn’t do that; he never cites dates or page numbers or headlines or anything else that would indicate that he did). The paper was full of praise from beginning to end for the Pope’s simple style. As journalists, the staff of the paper were obviously delighted to have a Pope who for once, provided good copy! As I’ve already previously recorded Luciani’s secretary from Venice, Don Diego Lorenzi, vividly recalled a reporter from the Vatican paper saying to him in wonder, “However did you manage to hide this man from all of humanity for so many years?” (10)
Unfortunately, he remains all too hidden still. But I’m going to make sure it doesn’t always stay this way.
NOTES
(1) Kay Withers, “Pope John Paul I and Birth Control.” America, 24 March 1979, pp. 233 34.
(2 Yallop, In God’s Name, p. 168.
(3) “Pane profetico, pane amaro,” article in Il Gazzettino, February 27, 1971, Opera, 5:171.
(4) Interview with Cardinal Caprio, “E’ stato un vero pastore,” 30 Giorni (September 1993): 42; cf. comments by Caprio in Nicolini, Trentatre Giorni., 3rd ed., p. 134.
(5) Andrew Greeley, The Making of the Popes 1978, p. 170.
(6) Napoli and Marcucci, Giovanni Paolo I: Papa per trentatre giorni (Bologna: Cappelli, 1978), pp. 66-67. A transcription of the Pope’s actual remarks was printed in Lucio D’Orazi, Tre mesi per tre papi (Bologna: Ponte Nuovo, 1983), pp. 337-39.
(7) L’Osservatore Romano, September 7, 1978, p. 1.
(8) L’Osservatore Romano, September 21, 1978, p. 1.
(9) “E’ stato un vero pastore,” p. 42
(10) Diego Lorenzi, “Luciani, una lezione vivente per il mondo,” interview in Gente Veneta, September(?) 2003; this article is online in Italian at www.amicipapaluciani.it/dondiego.htm.
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