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?
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).
In commemoration of the 31st anniversary of Pope John Paul I, I’ve decided to make an official announcement here: I will soon be publishing the biography of him that I’ve been writing for some 25 years. The tentative title is On Wings of Hope: The Life of Pope John Paul I. I also expect to publish it through my own company, though that might change if there’s any interest from a major publisher.
I’m writing largely because many people have been asking me about my plans for the book. I’m happy that there is so much interest. However, I haven’t completely finished writing it, and the editing process will take some time. But I expect to begin serious work on it around the end of this year, after I’ve finished the St. Elizabeth documentary. Keep coming back here for more news.
Happy birthday in heaven, dear Papa Luciani. Santo subito!
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.
Here is the promised part II of the discussion of Lucien Gregoire’s “biography” of Pope John Paul I. At this point, I don’t really feel like writing too much more about Gregoire; this would be to give him much more attention than he deserves. So in this installment, I will talk about the source of some of the claims about John Paul I that have allowed books like his to be written to begin with.
Gregoire’s version of John Paul I’s Teachings as Pope
Gregoire claims that Luciani’s pre-papal works were confiscated by the Vatican after his death. He also claims that the Vatican altered John Paul I’s words as Pope on a massive scale, such as to give a complete different and opposite picture of his beliefs. For instance, here is Gregoire’s account of the programmatic statement of his goals for his papacy, delivered to the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on August 27, 1978:
We must rise up the courage that is within us and set aside the convictions of our Christian forefathers and together we will muster the strength to lift those restraints that have been unfairly placed upon the everyday lives of so many innocent people by doctrine . . . for God-given human life is infinitely more precious than is man-made doctrine. (1)
Some people, believe it or not, have quoted these to me as Pope John Paul I's actual words. Here, on the other hand, is an excerpt from his actual talk.
Overcoming the internal tensions which may have been created here and there, conquering the temptation to conform themselves to the tastes and customs of the world, as well as the titillation of easy applause, united in the same bond of love that must shape the inner life of the Church, as well as the external forms of its discipline, the faithful must be ready to bear witness to their own faith before the world,. . . the temptation to replace God with the autonomous decision that departs from the moral law is bringing modern men and women to the risk of reducing the earth to a desert, the person to an automaton, and fraternal living together to a planned collectivization, often introducing death where God wants life. (2)
If anyone thinks that Luciani felt that the Church’s doctrines are man-made, they are simply wrong!
The most audacious of all the things that Gregoire has written is his account of John Paul I’s last Wednesday audience on the day before his death, September 27, 1978. He claims that the Pope proclaimed his plans to permit birth control, and said the “Moses had great motive to have lied” when he said he had spoken to God. He also supposedly claimed that when the Church condemned the first test-tube baby, this was a sign that “Mother Church does not know right from wrong.” (3)
Here is a famous excerpt from that talk, which I have already published:
We all remember the great words of the great Pope Paul VI. “The peoples who are hungry are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples who live in opulence. The Church shudders at this cry of anguish and calls on everyone to respond with love to his brother.” (Populorum Progressio, no. 3) And then, here justice is united to love. Because the Pope says, still in Populorum Progressio: “Private property is not a undeniable and absolute right for anyone. No one has the right to be able to make use of his goods exclusively for his own benefit, beyond his need, when others are dying because they have nothing.” (Ibid., no. 22) These are grave words. In the light of these words, we must ask ourselves not only as nations, but as private individuals, especially we who are members of the Church: have we really carried out the plan of Jesus, who has said: “Love your neighbor as yourself”? (4)
here is Gregoire’s version of this passage:
Believe me, one day, we who live in opulence, while so many are dying because they have nothing, will have to answer to Jesus why we have not carried out his order, ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’
We, the clergy of the Church together with our congregations, who substitute gold and pomp and ceremony in place of Christ’s instruction, who judge our masquerade of singing his praises to be more precious than human life, will have the most to explain.
Remember the great words of Paul VI, ‘It is the inalienable right of man to own property. But it is the right of no man to accumulate wealth beyond he necessary while other men starve to death because they have nothing! (5)
Here is the actual video of the address (the part in question goes from 5:22 to 6:58):
Note that even those parts of Gregoire’s account that are similar to what was actually said have clearly been reworded by the author. For instance, the Pope very clearly says that the right of property is NOT an inalienable right. Even the order of the sentences has been changed (if there were omissions or if the order of the sentences had been done by editing in the Vatican version, there would have been jumps and cuts in the video, so it’s clearly Gregoire who changed it). As for the other parts of Gregoire’s version for which there is no recording, is there any doubt that these are fictional inventions? If we can’t trust Gregoire to give a correct version of the existing tape, can we really trust him to get the transcription of those mysteriously “missing” parts correct?
Gregoire claims that what the Pope really said, at this audience, especially the controversial parts, was published in an AP story that made newspapers worldwide, including the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. (6). How can it be that I myself have researched the reaction to John Paul I’s papacy in newspapers, both American and from around the world for some 25 years without ever seeing any such story? That’s because none exists! Gregoire’s audacity in regard to his faked sources is incredible.
Father Andrew Greeley was there at that audience where the Pope chatted with Daniele, and recorded his impressions of it in his book The Making of the Popes 1978. Naturally he didn’t mention a word about the Pope’s revolutionary ideas about abolishing the Mosaic law! Not to mention permitting birth control, which Greeley undoubtedly would have favor, and most certainly would have mentioned And, as Greeley recalled, he not only heard the talk, he had a chance to look at John Paul’s own typewritten text. He certainly had a chance to know what he really said.
Gregoire says “The Church’s releases of the event are brief and edit out most of the Daniele dialogue.” (7) This is not only untrue, but completely absurd. The complete written text of all of John Paul’s Wednesday general audience talks was printed in L’Osservatore Romano. It is true that the Vatican didn’t release the whole recording of some them on its various commercial tapes/CDs, because of time limits. (But one seems to have been released on CD now that includes them all; Il Piccolo Catechismo di Giovanni Paolo I, by St. Paul Media and 30 Giorni). That is the sole basis, perhaps, for Gregoire’s wild imaginings. But it’s certainly no excuse for them.
I’m quite certain that Gregoire never listened to a single one of these tapes himself, largely because I’m certain he doesn’t understand Italian. He actually appears to have gotten all of his ideas about the Vatican suppressing the Pope’s words from other authors – principally Yallop – who claimed that the Vatican massively censored John Paul I’s talks while Pope. He also used the published texts of the Pope’s audience talks in English and butchered them in his pursuit of his agenda.
Just last night, I began a discussion over on my YouTube channel with someone who claimed that John Paul I was a truly “open-minded” Pope who was going to make “tremendous changes” in the Church. In answer to my appeal to the facts of his beliefs as asserted in his writings, he /she replied that it didn’t matter what I said, or how many doctrinal statements I listed by Luciani, he and millions of others just knew, based on their “feelings” when they looked at him, that he was the Pope who was going to change it all. Depend on this sort of feeling long enough, and you will get delusions like Gregoire’s.
Other claims of Vatican Censorship of the Pope
So much for Gregoire. Let’s look at the wider issues.
Yallop started all this nonsense about massive Vatican censorship of John Paul I in 1984 by claiming that the Vatican hid or altered his record both before and after he became Pope. Yallop claims that on his election, the Curia snatched up all available copies of Luciani’s pre-papal writings, including his doctoral dissertation and locked them in the Vatican’s secret archives (8) Odd how I was still able to find copies of all those writings scattered over three dioceses without any trouble when I went to Italy seven years later! The first edition of his doctoral dissertation was still in the archives in Belluno, and the Luciani family also had a copy. The revised edition from 1958 was printed in the Opera Omnia in 1989. Everything Yallop said was completely untrue, and has caused enormous damage when it has been repeated and even exaggerated over the years. Gregoire obviously made massive use of Yallop’s work.
Other writers – who also seem to be basing the idea on Yallop, have made similar claims. In Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, Paul Hutchison claims that “immediately after [John Paul I's election], a team of trusted priests from the Secretariat of State began cleansing the archives of documents pertaining to the new pope that did not agree with their imagine of the magisterium.” Specifically, the notes for Luciani’s 1965 retreat to priests in Vittorio Veneto were taken because they contained a passage expressing his hopes for a relaxation of the ban on birth control. (9)
There are a number of things wrong with this statement. First, Luciani’s notes for this conference, which was still unpublished at the time of his election, were, like the notes for the rest of his writings, in his personal files, not the diocesan archives. They would have been in the diocesan archives in Venice or Vittorio Veneto only if he left his papers to one of those dioceses in his will; in which case they would have gone there only after his death. Luciani kept his personal collection of notes in various notebooks and agendas.
Second, these personal files were indeed taken from Venice to Rome very shortly after John Paul I’s election, but it was at the Pope’s own request. He entrusted the work to one of his own secretaries, Don Caro Bolzan, who arrived at the Vatican with them on September 2. (10) John Paul I very much wanted to use this notes for his talks as Pope. After he died, these files were returned to his family, as Edoardo Luciani and his wife testified to me personally.
Third, if Vatican officials tried to suppress evidence of this text, they once again did a very poor job. The talk was published from the original typescript transcription of the talk, which had been recorded on audio tape. A copy of this transcript was also in Luciani’s personal files, with corrections in his own hand. The work appeared as Il Buon Samaritano by the Edizioni Messaggero in Padua two years after Luciani’s death in 1980, (11) and republished in the Opera Omnia in 1988-89. Both of these versions the precise passage on birth control cited by Hutchison.
This stuff only makes headway because people seem to just naturally assume that the Vatican censors papal writings. This is especially true for John Paul I, because so many people have this odd habit of reading their own pet ideas into him.
This seems all the more plausible to some because of the repeated claims, even in supposedly reputable authors, that the Vatican “censored” Pope John Paul I’s talks as Pope, and changed his words before they appeared in L’Osservatore Romano. But is it really possible for the Vatican newspaper alter a Pope’s writings without anyone knowing it?
Stay tuned for the third installment.
NOTES
(1) Lucien Gregoire, Murder in the Vatican p. 128.
(2) The original Latin text is from the Acta Apostolica Sedis, LX (1978):691 99; the translation is mine.
(3) Gregoire, Murder in the Vatican, p. 13.
(4) L’Osservatore Romano, September 28, 1978. Once again, the translation of the original Italian text is mine.
(5) Gregoire, Murder in the Vatican, p. 9.
(6) Gregoire,Murder in the Vatican, p. 23.
(7) Gregoire, Murder in the Vatican, p. 16.
(8) Yallop, In God’s Name, p. 147.
(9) Robert Hutchison, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei (New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006), p. 247.
(10) Msgr. Carlo Bolzan, I miei vescovi, cardinali, sommi pontefici (Privately published by the author, 1981).
(11) For the history of this text, see Il Buon Samaritano (Padova: Edizioni Messaggero, 1980, introduction.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The history of the Catholic missions is by now a long road: at the beginning of that road is the Father of Mercy, who holds out his arms to all his children. All those who encounter the missionaries encounter the Father. And they also encounter the Son, the first missionary, who, obeying the Father, comes to earth, becomes flesh in human nature, is one of us, in solidarity with our misery (except for sin) and ends up dying for us in order to then return to heaven, carrying on his shoulders the human race his has won back.
Out of the same mold are the missionaries, who repeat, in some way, his journey. They too leave their fathers and families and depart to go among a foreign people. They too strip themselves of the refined culture they have acquired in their homelands; and of their native customs and habitat, of a hundred little comforts, in order to be in solidarity. With who? With a people who are on one hand naked and poor, and on the other rich in possibilities, which the missionaries intend to respect, value and elevate."
Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I), to the people of his diocese of Vittorio Veneto, on his return from the diocesan missions in Africa in 1966
