REPORTER AT THE VATICAN
O'Grady, Desmond
I , i i REPORTER AT THE VATICAN DESMOND O'GRADY A nostalgic review of fifteen yeonrs Journalists covering the Second Vatican Council were amused by a praying mantis-like figure who sat in...
...They should have paid attention not to Marella's manner but to his mentality...
...What went wrong...
...Xctvier's New Mission Hundreds of sick, 89 villages, hungry, 600 open huts, naked 1600 desperate and parents and dying, 3400 shivering stretching children need their your help...
...As is cnstomary, the tailor had stitched his name inside the jacket together with mine...
...Near yet far: a query to the Vatican press office as to what the Pope reads brings the answer, "Books of high culture...
...Williams rolled back his eyes, "I feel the presence of Mary Immaculate...
...I keep the Hail Mary written out by my bedside table...
...Desmond O'Grady by Ah Chuk, 3a Humphrey's Ave., Kowloon, Hong Kong...
...Electric trains crisscrossed the apartment of the late Cardinal Ildebrando Antoniutti...
...The cardinals' hobbies are a study in themselves...
...Pius XI, who had last-minute thoughts about the dictators with whom he had signed concordats, 17...
...The Pope has a vicar for his diocese Rome even though he is Pope because Bishop of Rome rather than Bishop of Rome because Pope...
...Asked if the curia would accept the Synod as an aid to aggiornamento, he replied, "What is aggiornamento...
...Some curialists are deeply involved in part-time pastoral work, some go quietly mad out of isolation: one danger signal is when they start asking theological teasers...
...Although it has critics from both the right and left, the Vatican's consistent Ostpolitik has presumably benefited the church in Eastern Europe...
...Peter's differs from most people's ideas of a church: if you want intimacy use the side chapels...
...After the press conference, surround by a group of journalists, he spoke with Time correspondent Israel Shenker...
...It coincides with the end-of-pontificate air in the Vatican in the 15th year of Paurs reign...
...I rang Williams and he seemed very willing for me to come to his hotel at four the following afternoon...
...Another, from his apartCommonweal: 751 merit above via della Conciliazione, studies pedestrians with binoculars...
...He is near yet far...
...2 of the Vatican team, Monsignor Pietro Rossano, gave a lengthy answer beginning "Rome is buiR on seven hills and one of them is called the Vatican...
...Another occasion, in lighter vein, when I was able to prove my point was my meeting with Bishop FrancisXavier Hsu of Hong-Kong...
...I was loath to ask him about his conversion but a friend who had met him told me he was anxious to talk about it in relation to his writing...
...We don't want any attention given to the rest of the party," said an official of the pontifical Commission for Social Communications, "as it might detract interest from the Pope...
...I happened to be wearing a suit which had been made for me in Hong Kong years before...
...I love Australia," Macchi proclaimed indignantly, "and my heart cries out to see it polluted by lies...
...Medicine's ability to keep people alive longer only complicates the problem...
...Spring...
...Vatican communications strategy is to focus all attention on the Pope...
...And does he watch television or films...
...Such words, he continued, are beautiful but they are pulled this way and that (squeezing in and out with his palms) like an accordion...
...When the next papal elections are held, journalists will write knowing profiles of the candidates but they will be based predominantly on hearsay rather than on the showing of the candidates in discussions, such as were held during the Council, or on the direct contacts common then...
...You've been favored by a great grace, Mr...
...I simply opened the jacket to show Bishop Hsu: "Specially made for Mr...
...The answer might have satisfied Catholic liberals but Ghedafli commented that the Christians had failed to create a Christian state whereas Libya was a model Muslim state...
...Anyone who has read that irritating Jean Guitton book, The Pope Speaks, must have been worried by its Cloud-9 air...
...Instead Marella, fluent in French and English as well as Italian, was smiling, cordial...
...rather than 4 p.m...
...Eventually Ghedaffi acceded to the requests that he go to the podium: he had to be begged to assume control...
...Sure enough, he did so...
...Peter's seemed a Byzantine boulevard boiling with theological chitchat but it was a world away from Main Street, Maine...
...I'll switch you over to the foreign desk...
...Purportedly he only glimpsed Zeffirelli's TeleJesus for which he provided the original idea...
...Ghedaffi dispatched him back to the podium, neatly upstaging him...
...This was based on documents sent me by someone concerned who considered the difficulties would diminish if they had an airing...
...The extent to which he had unbalanced everyone was revealed by the confusion between addressing him as "Brother," in the fraternal style he is supposed to prefer, or "President" and "Excellency...
...The Sunday Times proposed flying me to South India but the proof was in Rome...
...We sparred for five minutes or so...
...A family atmosphere...
...I know lots of priests who change them only once a week...
...But popes are not eternal...
...Commonweal: 755...
...I stood by my guns but the weakness of my position was that the Indian nuns were not willing to be quoted nor to supply telling details for fear of reprisals...
...As everything depends on No...
...Beata Astronauta" claimed to represent American housewives and asked if she could have a charisma in the kitchen...
...Vatican interests are wider than religion as tightly defined, just as St...
...haughty, unlikable character...
...If there were more like him...
...He was fight...
...The abrupt change from the methods of the previous 400 years doubtless encouraged also a silly season...
...Meeting Williams was one of the weirder moments of the Vatican beat...
...But the Pope can appear as a diplomat who interrupts his activities every now and again to deliver a sermon...
...The most disconcerting part of the performance was that Ghedaffi probed but gave no indication whether the answers met his pleasure...
...he asked over his shoulder to the young man who accompanied him...
...N.C.R.'s current editor, Arthur Jones, who had come to Rome the week after the story's appearance in the Sunday Times, bought American rights to it...
...Marcinkus asserted the article was libelous...
...He wanted us to set the story straight and Arthur Jones reported the interview...
...Nowgong, Assam, India...
...Ghedafli was giving him the flashing eyes, no-response treatment which tested even Pignedoli's volubility...
...They disconcerted each other...
...Williams lay on the bed...
...It took place in Brussels and Bishop Hsu reeaUed an article I had written some time previously about the difficulties of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences...
...It has since emerged that Sindona, who had a name as a sterling Catholic in the Vatican, was also a senior Mason...
...it has its own bank...
...Great confusion among the Vatican delegation as to who should answer...
...A story which raised Vatican hackles concerned the Sicilian banker ' Michele Sindona who had fled Italy as a bankrupt after operations in which the Vatican had lost money...
...of a cultural revolution which made the hidebound church suddenly seem inspired...
...In the queue waiting for presentation, I found myself next to Stokeley Carmichael who was there as a Guinean observer...
...I was told that one of the Congregafions concerned, that for the Eastern Churches, had issued a denial...
...It is seven years since the Pope traveled outside Italy...
...Rossano showed the Vatican state insulated the Pope 25 November 1977:754 from undesirable pressures but that it was not a theocracy...
...Brini argued that there was no exploitation of novices but recognized there might be exploitation of young Indian nurses for which the church was not responsible...
...Sure enough, the huge wooden rosary was draped on the bedside table, also the Hail Mary in large childish hand and a bottle of Curry Sark...
...Francis Xavier and one of your good men instructed me at Key West...
...When they least expected it, he would dart forward to hand them crushing denunciations, in green and red ink, of Paul VI whom he eventually excommunicated...
...You seem to know a lot about what's happening in Hong Kong," said Bishop Hsu, "for someone who's never been there...
...You Jesuits are at both ends of my salvation...
...But Marella is the archetypal curialist...
...It might have been politics more than religion but it was a Vatican concern...
...Macchi wrote me to deny there was any link between Paul VI and Sindona and to assert the Pope had not brought any Milanese Mafia with him as the "Holy F a t h e r . . . gives preferential treatment to those who are opposed to him rather than to those who are friends...
...He invited all the participants to a reception in his palace built, incidentally, for Italo Balbo when he was governor of this limb of Mussolini's empire...
...A pointer was provided by the press conference on establishment of the Synod...
...Tennessee," said Arrupe to that lost-commercial-traveler face...
...The English girl dithered about collaboration, and eventually I wrote the story for N.C.R...
...Consequently it is both a gossip shop and mysterious in its operations, intimate and distant...
...You bring the rosary, Wayne...
...But now the momentum, the excitement has almost been completely lost...
...He is now covering the Vatican ]or the Washington Post...
...The list had a surprise ending, presumably because Pignedoli sought desperately to avoid mentioning those countries, such as Algeria, on bad terms with Libya: Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait a n d . . . India...
...Independently I was contacted by Indian nuns in Rome who complained girls were hoodwinked about prospects, poorly prepared and badly treated in Europe...
...The psychology of power was deftly illustrated by Colonel Ghedaffi, the Libyan president, during the Catholic-Muslim discussions held in Tripoli last year...
...One of his entourage, walking in St...
...I had a call which told me some of the Indian nuns were at the airport on their way back to Kerala...
...The Vatican is not Lhasa...
...You know, every day I memorize a few prayers and doctrines, just a little at a time...
...The Sunday Times asked me to collaborate on the story which I did on condition that I would write it for countries outside Great Britain...
...Ever since, I've felt enveloped by a strange numinosity...
...He said it looked as if it would begin "Humanae V i t a e . . . " "Those who don't know, write...
...I know, black Pope, I know," the visitor gasped...
...The journalists had been swept off their feet by the fact that he talked with them familiarly, prodding their arms and resettling his biretta, alert and witty...
...It sounded unlikely but I was able to confirm it when I visited Williams...
...and did not stay for an answer...
...The ecclesiastical machine has taken over after a glimpse of a more open model of the church...
...He came to Rome shortly after his conversion to Catholicism and met Father Pedro Arrupe, general of the Jesuits, an office sometimes described as that of the black pope...
...When he told some stories about visiting Rome as a youth with a ghastly group of Southern ladies, I made an inaccurate reference to his "The Roman Summer of Mrs...
...Nor is it the Kremlin...
...ten since his last encyclical...
...It is rather as if St...
...We found we shared a passion for cricket...
...It was the year 1396 in the Muslim calendar and was a replay of medieval scenes "The king interrogates the wise men...
...But the priority given to diplomatic considerations creates the impression that the Vatican would like Catholics to attend Mass regularly, pay up and shut up, allowing it to attend to the really important issues such as the international conference on sea limits...
...Palatty M. Catholic Mission, P.O...
...Marcinkus told a good story: basically, that he had 25 November 1977:752 been a friend of Sindona's but that the Vatican losses in Sindona's deals had occurred before he had his bank position...
...Benedict XV's fine pontificate (1914-22) was also, significantly, brief...
...When Jones reaffirmed his intention to print it, Mareinkus, who never grants interviews, told him to come to his office as soon as possible...
...His pastoral talks are given to audiences of thousands who have no continuing contact with him...
...Via della Conciliazione leading to St...
...He questioned the theologians who sat on the platform...
...employees organize a soccer competition...
...Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli, head of the Vatican delegation, left the podium and streamed down the aisle, arms outstretched, to join Ghedaffi...
...Journalists who had described the Curia as the source of the church's troubles apparently expected a dosed, DESMOND O'CL~,DY covered the Vatican .for the National Catholic Reporter ]rom its ]ounding until this past June...
...Women wander in and out of Vatican city with trolleys of food bought at its stores...
...So that, after 15 years covering the Vatican, lightweight Lefebvre unexpectedly becomes the liveliest story, bringing the praying mantis in plastic raincoat to mind and suggesting that the woodwork might be a good future source...
...And as in most families, there is room for maneuver as long as the rules of the game are observed...
...A foreigner who had studied Ghedaffi's style predicted that he would arrive unannounced during the meeting and choose to sit at the back of the hall...
...The utility of Latin...
...Pins XII lasted 19 years, the latter of them nightmarish...
...Pius X, under whom the dirty war over Modernism broke out, survived 11 years...
...Peter's is built for public occasions, it can accommodate applause, and debate as well as Mass...
...It is difficult to prove the best stories...
...The Council made it possible to know churchmen as individuals with strong views, and it made theological issues matters of public concern...
...Williams...
...There was an awkward silence until John Navone, an American Jesuit, asked "Is it a warm presence, Mr...
...The conciliar excitement was real but the bishops, their advisers and the journalists took it with them each time they left Rome...
...But two days later my Sindona story appeared in the Milan weekly Epoca...
...A third, who died recently, posed in papal robes he never, fortunately, won the right to wear...
...Williams sneered that I had merely boned up on his writing for the interview...
...An English girl teaching in Florence wrote to Robert Hoyt, founding-editor of the National Catholic Reporter, claiming there was a racket in European religious institutions' and hospitals' importation of Indian girls...
...Williams asked Wayne offstage as the curtain began to fall...
...Salana, D.T...
...In other words, in his opinion, the Council was all talk...
...There was an air of unreality or hyperreality to it...
...In Williams's room, the drawn blinds made it seem 4 a.m...
...Journalists saw him as a bizarre, pathetic relic of a past when anti-popes and anathemas were recurrent...
...It stung the Vatican...
...In other words, its method was as important as its matter...
...Only his eyes moved, following the journalists...
...Williams's index finger was raised, his voice was hushed: "There is no temperature...
...Other journalists had been converted also...
...Wayne did not have it, understandably when the visitor explained that a girl who had read of his conversion had sent him a four-foot long rosary which he kept by his bed...
...He began enumerating the Muslim countries which have diplomatic relations with the Vatican...
...I've always loved the richness of Catholic ritual, the aroma of incense, the splendor of your art, and Mary Immaculate...
...Marcinkus, not realizing that it had been written before the interview, wrote me to express disappointment that his viewpoint was ignored...
...No one foresaw that, 15 years later, Vatican correspondents would have little to follow but the philippics of another anti-pope, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, as he anathematized Paul VI, the Council and all its works...
...although none of the Indians concerned would put her name to a statement...
...The story attracted worldwide attention when the London Sunday Times picked it up, using its correspondents in Bonn and elsewhere to add details...
...Anyway, he said, he never gave journalists more than ten minutes...
...This was the Vatican which remained when the bishops and journalists departed, convinced that issues had been settled by the conciliar discussions...
...John's brief, exciting pontificate (4ý89 years) was the exception rather than the rule in this century...
...The rhetoric would have made Tennessee Williams blush...
...When most of the guests had left, Pignedoli sat with Ghedaffi pointing out the advantages of diplomatic relations with the Vatican...
...I don't think it's worth the ten minutes," I said, rising...
...I , i i REPORTER AT THE VATICAN DESMOND O'GRADY A nostalgic review of fifteen yeonrs Journalists covering the Second Vatican Council were amused by a praying mantis-like figure who sat in the Vatican press office...
...The Vatican ordered an investigation which altered recruiting methods...
...Popes seem to start well with new initiatives, some fresh ideas for encyclicals but then must face growing problems with diminishing physical resources...
...A gray plastic overcoat swathed him from chin to boots, his bald, immobile head contributed to the insect impression...
...I'm a descendant of the brother of St...
...those who know, don't write...
...He rang Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, president of the Vatican bank (the Institute for the Works of Religion) for comment...
...When General Franco was dying, I rang the Washington Post's religion editor, Marjorie Hyer, to ask if she would be interested in Vatican expectations of postFranco Spain...
...While St...
...Hoyt asked me to check out the story...
...News filters through...
...empty hands PLEASE SEND YOUR LITTLE MITE BY CROSSED M.O...
...But I still had not proved direct church involvement and remained a "slanderer...
...I wandered along to pick it up and found myself ushered into the office of the Congregation's secretary, Archbishop Mario Brini...
...It was the excitement of a collective, four-year reeducation session...
...Peter's Square beneath the Pope's lighted study window after a dinner at which too much wine flowed, asserted, "He changes his socks every day ---why do you laugh...
...He did not recall making the appointment...
...said Desmond Fisher, who was then editor of the London Catholic Heral d, as Marella walked away, "there'd be no criticism of the Roman curia...
...And the victorious progressives did not seem to have clear ideas about curialists...
...He was civil enough but his American secretary, a young cleric, was hostile...
...The trials of Ivan Illieh and the Benedictine psychologist Gregory Lemercier were wide open to criticism but during his trial Illich was dining well in Rome with former classmates and sending photos from the dinner party to his interrogators while Lemercier was lodged in one of the city's more comfortable hotels at the Vatican's expense...
...Tell him the drugs against 'flu make me edgy...
...A Vatican which is a monarchy with a court of celibates...
...Williams should come under a heading religion, literature and psychology or pharmacology...
...Rarely...
...1, a constant eye is kept on his health, his alleged comments are heeded more than his public statements, constant efforts are made to get his ear ("have a word with his confessor" is one suggestion...
...The Council period was so rich that a survey of the past 15 years could become a nostalgic binge about characters such as "Beata Astronauta" who earned her nickname by asking members of the U.S...
...any other day must have been better for it...
...of hundreds of journalists collaborating to a degree in unearthing stories...
...The drift back to the faceless, preconciliar church is well underway...
...He grew up in the Caribbean...
...The Sydney weekly, the National Times, headed the story "Pope tricked by Milan Mafia and Sindona," highlighting a minor element in my story: that largely through his personal secretary, Don Pasquale Macchi, Pope Paul had maintained links with Milanese artists and businessmen who, among other things, were responsible for refurbishing Vatican d6cor and building the Pope's private chapel...
...It was given by Cardinal Paolo Marella, at that time head of the Secretariat for Relations with non-Christian religions...
...I went too...
...bishops' daily conciliar press panel if the astronauts orbiting the earth would see Our Lady...
...Luck is needed as with my Indian nuns story in 1970...
...When he asked if Vatican City was a Christian state, the No...
...OR BANK DRAFT TO: Rev...
...Wayne met me when I arrived, surprised at the appointment and obviously anxious about its outcome...
...That's not religion," was her response...
...Their story appeared in N.C.R., the Sunday Times and papers around the world...
...I realized the extent of this when trying to extract information on those who would accompany the Pope to Asia and Australia in 1970...
...I drove there faster than Niki Lauda and the girls named names, dates and places in a story of exploitation which linked a shyster Kerala cleric with depleted religious congregations not too choosy about their recruits...
...In mid '68, a Vatican source mentioned that they were toying with the first words of an imminent encylical as they would become its title and affect its reception...
...Remember charisms...
...Petersburg had survived the October Revolution...
Vol. 104 • November 1977 • No. 24
