Authors: David Yallop
‘Come and see me. I haven’t got time but come all the same.’
They lunched together. Uncle Albino was in excellent health and good spirits. As the meal progressed he commented on his new role: ‘Had I known I was going to become Pope one day, I would have studied more.’ Then in a superb understatement he remarked, ‘It’s very hard being Pope.’
Pia saw just how hard the job could be – made harder by the obduracy of the ever-watchful Curia. Luciani wished to treat Rome as his new parish, to wander through the streets as he had in Venice and his other dioceses. For a Head of State to behave in such a manner presented problems. The Curia flatly declared the idea not only unthinkable, but unworkable. The city would be thrown into constant chaos if the Holy Father went on walkabouts. Luciani abandoned the idea but only for a modified version. He told the Vatican officials that he wished to visit every hospital, church and refuge centre in Rome and gradually work his way round what he regarded as his parish. For a man bent on being a pastoral Pope the reality on his own doorstep presented a powerful challenge.
Rome has a Catholic population of two-and-a-half million. It should have been producing at least seventy new priests per year. When Luciani became Pope it was producing six. The religious life of Rome
was being maintained by enormous importations of clergy from outside. Many parts of the city were, in reality, pagan, with Church attendances of less than 3 per cent of the population. Here, in the heart of the Faith, cynicism abounded.
The city that was now home to Luciani was also home to the Communist Mayor Carlo Argan – a Communist Mayor in a city whose major industry, religion, is rivalled only by the crime rate. One of the new titles Luciani had acquired was Bishop of Rome, a city that had been without a bishop, in the sense that Milan, Venice, Florence and Naples had a bishop, for over a century. It showed.
As Pia lunched with the Pope, Don Diego was involved in a loud, lengthy argument with a Curial official who refused even to consider the Papal wish to visit various parts of Rome. Luciani interrupted his conversation with Pia.
‘Don Diego. Tell him it must be done. Tell him the Pope wishes it.’
Lorenzi conveyed the Papal instruction, only to be met with a refusal. He turned to the Pope. ‘They say it can’t be done, Holy Father, because it’s never been done before.’
Pia sat, fascinated, as the game of Vatican tennis continued. Eventually Luciani apologized to his niece for the interruption and told his secretary he would instruct Villot. Smiling at Pia, he observed: ‘If the Roman Curia permits, your Uncle hopes to visit the Lebanon before Christmas.’
He talked at length about that troubled country and his desire to intercede before the powder keg exploded. After lunch, as she was leaving, he insisted on giving her a medal presented to him by the mother of the President of Mexico. A few days later on September 15th he entertained his brother Edoardo to dinner. These two family meetings were destined to be the last Albino Luciani would have.
As the Papacy of Albino Luciani progressed, the gulf between the Pope and the professional Vatican watchers increased, in direct proportion to the ever closer bonds and relationship between the new Pope and the general public. The bewilderment of the professionals was understandable.
Confronted with a non-Curial Cardinal, who apparently lacked an international reputation, the experts had concluded that they were observing the first of a new breed of Pope, a man deliberately selected to ensure that there would be a reduction of power, a less significant role for the Papacy. There can be little doubt that Luciani himself saw his role in these reduced terms. The essential problem in this vision of a less significant Papacy was the man himself. The very essence of
Albino Luciani, his personality, intellect and extraordinary gifts, meant that the general public promptly gave the new Pope a position of greater importance, held what he had to say as being of deeper significance. The public reaction to Luciani clearly demonstrated a deep need for an enlarged Papal role, exactly the reverse of that intended by many cardinals. The more Luciani was self-dismissive, the more exalted he became for the faithful.
Many who had known Luciani only in his days in Venice were profoundly surprised by what they considered to be the change in the man. In Vittorio Veneto, Belluno and Canale there was no surprise. This was the real Luciani. The simplicity, the sense of humour, the stress on catechism these were integral elements within the man.
On September 26th, Luciani could look back with satisfaction on his first month in the new job. It had been a month full of powerful impact. His investigations into corrupt and dishonest practices had thrown the perpetrators into deep fear. His impatience with Curial pomposity had caused outrage. Again and again he had abandoned officially written speeches, publicly complaining: ‘This is too Curial in style.’ Or, ‘This is far too unctuous.’
His verbatim words were rarely recorded by Vatican Radio or
L’Osservatore Romano,
but the public heard them and so did the other news media. Borrowing a phrase from St Gregory, the Pope observed that, in electing him, ‘The Emperor has wanted a monkey to become a lion’. Lips tightened within the Vatican as mouths parted in smiles among the public. Here was a ‘monkey’ who during the course of his first month spoke to them in Latin, Italian, French, English, German and Spanish. As Winston Churchill might have remarked, ‘some monkey’.
On September 7th, during a private audience with Vittore Branca at 8.00 a.m., an hour that caused Curial eyebrows to shoot even higher, his friend Branca expressed concern about the weight of the Papacy. Luciani responded:
Yes, certainly I am too small for great things. I can only repeat the truth and the call of the Gospel as I did in my little church at home. Basically all men need this, and I am the keeper of souls above all. Between the parish priest at Canale and me there is a difference only in the number of faithful but the task is the same, to remember Christ and his word.
Later the same day he met all the priests of Rome and, talking to them of the need for meditation, his words had a deeply poignant significance when one considers how little time and space a new Pope has for meditation.
I was touched at Milan Station to see a porter sleeping blissfully with his head on a bag of coal and his back against a pillar. Trains were whistling as they left and their wheels were screeching as they arrived. Loudspeakers constantly interrupted. People came and went noisily. But he, sleeping on, seemed to say, ‘Do what you must but I need some peace’. We priests must do the same. Around us there is continual movement. People talking, newspapers, radio and TV. With the discipline and moderation of priests we must say, ‘Beyond certain limits you do not exist for me. I am a priest of the Lord. I must have a little silence for my soul. I distance myself from you to be with my God for a while.’
The Vatican recorded his speeches in the General Audiences when on successive Wednesdays he spoke on Faith, Hope and Charity. Luciani’s pleas that these virtues be shown towards, for example, drug addicts went unrecorded by the Curia who controlled the Vatican media.
When on September 20th he uttered the memorable phrase that it is wrong to believe ‘Ubi Lenin ibi Jerusalem’ (where Lenin is, there is Jerusalem), the Curia announced that the Pope was rejecting ‘liberation theology’. He was not. Further, Vatican Radio and
L’Osservatore Romano
neglected to record Luciani’s important qualification, that between the Church and religious salvation, and the world and human salvation, ‘There is some coincidence but we cannot make a perfect equation.’
By Saturday September 23rd, Luciani’s investigation into Vatican Incorporated was well advanced. Villot, Benelli and others had provided the Pope with reports which Luciani had reflected upon. That day he left the Vatican for the first time, to take possession of his cathedral as Bishop of Rome. He shook hands with Major Argan and they exchanged speeches. After the Mass that followed, with the majority of the Curia present, the Pope touched several times on the inner problems with which he was grappling. Referring to the poor, that section of society closest to Luciani’s heart, he remarked:
These, the Roman deacon Lawrence said, are the true treasures of the Church. They must be helped, however, by those who can, to
have more and to be more, without becoming humiliated and offended by ostentatious riches, by money squandered on futile things and not invested, in so far as is possible, in enterprises of advantage to all.
Later in the same speech he turned and, looking directly at the gentlemen of the Vatican Bank gathered together, he began to talk of the difficulties of guiding and governing.
Although already for twenty years I have been Bishop of Vittorio Veneto and at Venice, I admit that I have not yet learned the job well. At Rome I shall put myself in the school of St Gregory the Great who writes ‘[the pastor] should, with compassion, be close to each one who is subject to him: forgetful of his rank he should consider himself on a level with the good subiects, but he should not fear to exercise the rights of his authority against the wicked . . .’
Without a knowledge of events within the Vatican, the members of the public merely nodded wisely. The Curia knew precisely to what the Pope was alluding. This was in Vatican style an elegant, oblique pronouncement of coming events.
Changes were in the air and within the Vatican village there was frenetic speculation. Bishop Marcinkus and at least two of his closest associates. Mennini and De Strobel, were going. That was known to be a fact. What exercised Curial minds were the rumours of other replacements.
When on Sunday, September 25th a private visitor to the Papal Apartments was identified by one sharp-eyed monsignor as Lino Marconato, excitement within the village reached new heights. Marconato was a director of the Banco San Marco. Did his presence in the Papal Apartments indicate that a successor to Banco Ambrosiano had been found already?
In fact the meeting dealt with far less exotic banking matters. Banco San Marco had been made the official bank of the diocese in Venice by Luciani after he had angrily closed all accounts at Banca Cattolica del Veneto. Now Luciani needed to clear up his personal accounts at San Marco, knowing he would never return to live in the city. Marconato found his soon-to-be former client in the best of health. They chatted happily about Venice as Luciani gave instructions that the money in his Patriarch’s account should be passed on to his successor.
The preoccupation with the forthcoming changes was intense. In many cities. By many people.
Another with a direct vested interest in what Luciani might be about to do was Michele Sindona. Sindona’s four-year battle to avoid extradition from the USA to Italy was moving to a climax in September 1978. Earlier that year, during May, a Federal judge had ruled that the Sicilian, who had transformed himself into a citizen of Switzerland, should be returned to Milan to face the highly expensive music he had previously orchestrated. In his absence he had been sentenced to three-and-a-half years, but Sindona was fully aware that that particular sentence would seem lenient when the Italian courts had finished with him. Despite Federal investigation, he still remained free of any charges in the United States. The Franklin Bank collapse had been followed by a number of men being arrested on various charges but in September 1978 The Shark remained untouched. His major problem at that time was in Italy.
Sindona’s million-dollar battery of lawyers had persuaded the courts to withhold activating the extradition until the United States prosecutors had proved that there was well-founded evidence against Sindona with regard to the variety of charges he faced in Milan.
From May onwards, the prosecutors had been working hard to obtain that evidence. Sindona, helped by the Mafia and his P2 colleagues, had been working equally hard to make that evidence vanish. As September 1978 drew to a close he still had a number of outstanding ‘problems’.
The first was the evidence given at the extradition proceedings by a witness named Nicola Biase. Biase was a former employee of Sindona and his evidence was deemed to be dangerous. Sindona set about making it ‘safe’. After discussing the problem with the Mafia Gambino family a small contract was put out. It was to be nothing particularly sinister. Biase, his wife, family and lawyer were to have their lives threatened. If they succumbed to the threats and Biase withdrew his evidence, the matter would rest there. If Biase refused to co-operate with the Mafia, then the Gambino family and Sindona planned to ‘review’ the situation. The review did not augur well for the continued good health of Biase. The contract for less than 1,000 dollars would be amended to a more appropriate one. The contract was given to Luigi Ronsisvalle and Bruce McDowall. Ronsisvalle is by profession a hired killer.
Another contract was also discussed with Ronsisvalle. The Mafia advised him that Michele Sindona required the death of Assistant United States District Attorney, John Kenney.
Nothing so clearly illustrates the mentality of Michele Sindona as the contract that was put out on John Kenney. The attorney was the chief prosecutor in the extradition hearings, the man leading the US Government’s attack on Sindona’s continued presence within the United States. Sindona reasoned that if Kenney were eliminated the problem would disappear. It would act as a warning to the Government that he, Michele Sindona, was objecting to the heat. The investigation should cease. There should be no more irritating court appearances, no more absurd attempts to get him sent back to Italy. The thought processes at work here are 100 per cent Sicilian Mafia. It is a philosophy that works again and again in Italy. It is an essential part of the Italian Solution. The authorities can be cowed, and are. Investigators replacing a murdered colleague will move very slowly. Sindona reasoned that what was effective in Palermo would work in New York.