The September Pope

"How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways!" St. Paul's words rang out across St. Peter's Square in the genial, high-pitched voice of John Paul I on that happy day last month, Sept. 3, when he was installed as Pope and "Supreme Pastor" for the world's 700 million Roman Catholics. The new Pope was invoking Scripture as a commentary on the conclave that had unexpectedly elected him--and in a swift, single day at that. Last week the text he had chosen took on a different meaning as John Paul died of a massive stroke, just 33 days after he had been chosen as St. Peter's 263rd successor.

His speedy selection had seemed to be a second Pentecost, a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, to those Cardinals who participated in the conclave; and his pontificate, brief as it was, had suffused the church with warmth and hope. "In a few days, he captured the world. He really did," said Joseph Califano, the only Roman Catholic in the U.S. Cabinet, after attending a memorial Mass. The Netherlands' Johannes Willebrands spoke for many Cardinals: "It's a disaster. I cannot put into words how happy we were on that August day when we had chosen John Paul. We had such high hopes. It was such a beautiful feeling, a feeling that something fresh was going to happen to our church."

For other princes of the church, trained in theology's formulas to explain the vagaries of existence, there were no ready answers to be grasped on this somber Friday morning. "So soon?" cried Manila's stunned Jaime Cardinal Sin. Said Cologne's Joseph Cardinal Hoffner: "God has willed it, as painful as His will is." And Paris' Franc,ois Cardinal Marty: "The ways of the Lord are disconcerting to our human perspective." Boston's Humberto Cardinal Medeiros admitted, "I've been trying to say to God, 'It's your doing, and I must accept it.' " With American bluntness, Archbishop James V. Casey of Denver told a reporter, "When we woke up this morning we were a little disappointed and annoyed with God."

What spiritual meaning, indeed, could be found in the briefest pontificate in more than 3 1/2 centuries? Perhaps, reasoned some Catholics, John Paul was preaching a final sermon to his beloved flock, a reminder of the fragility of human existence and the unpredictable but inevitable fact of death. "His death reminds us how small and how weak man is, that life and death are mysteries, that we are in God's hand," said Willebrands. "That is why we also have faith."

The last day of John Paul's life followed the routine that he had set almost from his first day in office. He arose at 5, for he found the quiet early-morning hours his most productive time. After Mass at the private chapel a few yards from his bedroom in the Apostolic Palace, he breakfasted in his dining room, worked in his bedroom till about 8, then took the antiquated elevator one floor below for the start of his official day. In halting English he told ten Filipino prelates, making their periodic report to the papacy, that Jesus spoke of justice and social liberation, but also could not remain silent about the fullness of life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

After a spare lunch and afternoon siesta, John Paul returned to his desk. Milan's Giovanni Cardinal Colombo, who talked to him by phone, recalled that he sounded "full of serenity and hope." He summoned Sebastiano Cardinal Baggio, head of the Congregation for Bishops and a papabile (papal possibility) going into the last conclave, to discuss pressing business. At 7:30 he had his usual daily meeting with Vatican Secretary of State Jean Villot, 72, who within hours was to become once more the interim administrator, or Camerlengo, of the Holy See. Villot said that the Pope showed no signs of fatigue as he bade him good night. The day ended where it began, in the chapel with evening prayer. As the staff members retired, they told John Paul of the fatal ambush of a Communist youth by right-wing extremists in Rome. "They kill each other --even the young people," he lamented. They were the last words anyone would hear him utter.

Early Friday morning the street cleaners and taxi drivers saw the light burning in the papal apartment and took some comfort, perhaps, in the thought that their Pope, like them, was already about his duties. When the Pope did not appear at Mass time, Father John Magee, one of his secretaries, assumed the alarm clock had not gone off and went to knock on the bedroom door. Receiving no answer, he entered and found John Paul propped up on pillows in a half-sitting position, with a reading lamp still on and Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ open beside him. His face bore the sort of smile that had already earned him around the world the appellation "the smiling Pope," as if to suggest that he had effortlessly slipped into eternity.

Magee summoned Villot and Assistant Papal Physician Renato Buzzonetti; the doctor determined that death had come from a stroke around 11 the previous night. Two hours after the body was found, the Vatican announced the death in a statement of scriptural simplicity. By noon the Pontiffs body was laid in the frescoed splendor of the Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace. Romans and tourists formed a mile-and-a-half queue that wound around St. Peter's Square to pay then- respects to the Pope. At the bier two nuns in blue, overcome, rushed through a gap in the wooden barrier to kiss the dead Pope's hands. White-tied Vatican ushers rushed forward, hissing, "Perfavore, suore!" (Sisters, please!). In the line, New Jerseyite Diane Rapp, 23, remarked, "He was a young people's Pope. He died too soon." In a Saturday-night procession, the body was carried into St. Peter's Basilica to lie in state there.

Once again Camerlengo Villot began the ritual of mourning and papal election that is now so familiar to the world. The 112 Cardinal-electors again received the summons to Rome, their trip made easier by the fact that Rome airport employees broke off their strike in respect for the Pontiff. The conclave to choose John Paul's successor will begin on the second earliest day permitted--Oct. 14. The Latin American bishops' conference, a once-a-decade meeting scheduled to begin Oct. 12 in Puebla, Mexico, meanwhile, was postponed. Though John Paul had decided not to attend, the meeting would have given the first clues to the policy of his newborn pontificate.

A week before he died, John Paul told a group of American bishops that he was "just a beginner." That was the truth, and the reason why he will remain forever, in terms of policy, the unknown Pope. In his days in office John Paul was able to sign only one major decree, and even that will now become invalid: a sweeping reform of seminaries that he had postdated for December release. Ironically, the same document was approved by his predecessor, Pope Paul VI, whose postdated signature also became invalid when he died. Now the document must await the scrutiny of a third Pope.

John Paul's only major statement was his address to the Sacred College of Cardinals the day after his election. Father Carl Peter, dean of religious studies at the Catholic University of America, finds one lasting point in that address, the endorsement of ecumenism as a "final directive." Says Peter: "I regard that as a promise that the rest of us will have to keep."

"There are no great deeds of this pontificate to recall," said England's George Basil Cardinal Hume sadly. Deeds, no. Impact, yes. Especially after the intellectual austerity of Paul VI, his successor's radiance, humility, directness and lack of pomp immediately endeared him to masses of people in a media age, as if they had befriended him by wire. "I felt that if I had a problem, I could go to this Pope and talk to him about it," said Father John T. Pagan of New York's Little Flower Children's Services. For many he seemed to rekindle singlehanded some half-lost feeling of goodness about the church.

The John Paul style was etched on the memory most characteristically by his few papal audiences. He dropped the formal "we" and the intellectualized addresses of Paul VI, and inaugurated an era of laughter. In his last audience last week, John Paul interviewed young Daniele Bravo by microphone while 10,000 people listened in. John Paul: "Do you always want to be in the fifth grade?" Daniele: "Yes, so that I don't have to change teachers." Laughter. John Paul: "Well, you are different from the Pope. When I was in the fourth grade I was worried about making it to the fifth." Laughter again.

The replacement of formal audience speeches with chats disconcerted some. Commented Robert Sole, Vatican correspondent for France's leftist intellectual daily Le Monde: The audiences "attracted the immediate sympathy of the public but had disappointed and sometimes worried church officials. The Pope expressed a philosophy of existence that recalled on occasion the Reader's Digest: common sense, a little simple at that, which broke with the grand theological flights of oratory of Paul VI. Visibly, he did not have the culture and the intellectual training of his predecessor."

But perhaps Le Monde's world is more circumscribed than is a Pope's global parish. Remarked Archbishop Manuel Menendez, head of Caritas in Argentina: "The other day on a street in Rome a little boy was asked if he loved the Pope and he said yes. He was asked why. 'Because I understand everything he says.'" As Albino Luciani, the Pope-to-be never studied on a campus outside his home area of northeastern Italy, nor did he gain the international sophistication of a Vatican bureaucrat or diplomat. In the town of Belluno, where he taught for several years, his old friend Archbishop Maffeo Ducoli said: "People are crying in the streets and in the shops as if someone in their family had died." He was a teacher with a remarkable gift for explaining things through unexpected metaphors, an asker of sharp questions, a man who could defend conservative values without seeming pompous or rigid to the young.

There were a few memorable quotations from the fleeting days of John Paul, and the Vatican found some of them unsettling. At his first audience he quoted Pinocchio and compared the soul in the modern world to an automobile that breaks down because it runs on champagne and marmalade instead of gasoline and oil. Meeting with the Vatican press corps, he tossed off the notion that today St. Paul, who carried the news of Christ around the Mediterranean world, would probably be the head of a wire service. There were his sternly pastoral addresses deploring divorce to a group of U.S. bishops, and to the Roman clergy insisting on the need for "the great discipline of the church." In calling for prayer for the Camp David summit, he stated that God "is our Father; even more, God is our Mother." Attacking Marxist-hued "liberation theology," he said: "It is mistaken to state that political, economic and social liberation coincides with salvation in Jesus Christ, that ubi Lenin, ibi Jerusalem [where Lenin is, there also is Jerusalem]"

In truth, John Paul's honeymoon period was not yet over. Some liberals were anxious about this surprise Pope with his profound doctrinal traditionalism, but they kept it to themselves. If he had lived to issue his first encyclical, make his first appointments, the ideological factions in Catholicism that were temporarily united behind this leader might have reverted to their past divisiveness. Observes Ontario's Archbishop G. Emmett Carter: "It will be very difficult for the new Pope. John Paul wasn't there long enough to make any significant decisions and thus he made no enemies. The new Pope's decisions will always be held up by those who oppose them as something that 'John Paul would not have done.' "

After the first rush of emotion had passed, Catholics in many nations came to the conclusion that the remarkable way in which John Paul assumed office might prove in the end his major legacy. At his installation Mass, John Paul insisted on humility and refused to be crowned with a tiara. St. Louis Church Historian John Jay Hughes says, "He abolished the 1,000-year-old ceremony with the tiara and relegated it permanently to the trash heap. It will be impossible to go back to this triumphalism of the past."

When John Paul proclaimed that he was taking the yoke that Christ had placed on "our fragile shoulders," everyone thought he was speaking figuratively and out of characteristic humility. So cheerful was he, so steady of hand, that hardly anyone thought about his health. Detroit's John Cardinal Dearden, who himself survived a heart attack, recalls that John Paul's health was never mentioned in the conclave. One historian wondered if the Cardinals might not be submerged in guilt over the affliction of the man they put in office. Did the pressures of the job exact a sudden toll, as Cardinals Konig and Suenens suggested in the first shock of the news?

In an earlier age so untimely a death might have stirred deep suspicions. "If this were the time of the Borgias," said a young teacher in Rome, "there'd be talk that John Paul was poisoned." Nothing illustrates how far the church has come since those devious days so well as the 1975 decree that no autopsy be permitted on the body of a Pope.

John Paul's brother Edoardo, in Australia on a trade mission, reported that the Pope had been given a clean bill of health after a medical examination three weeks ago. He was frail in health as an infant and as a young priest, but there were no reports of heart trouble. Since taking office he had driven himself, and had expected Vatican officials to arrive at their desks promptly each morning. One veteran in the Curia, however, speculates on possible emotional strain: "It could have been something to do with passing from responsibility for a relatively small diocese of 600,000 Catholics in Venice to responsibility for the entire Catholic world."

As it does when any Pope dies, the work of the Curia last week came to an abrupt halt. All the officials so recently reappointed by John Paul were again suspended; in the last papal interregnum Camerlengo Villot was so strict that one Cardinal who came by his old office was asked to leave immediately. One other traditional rite will not occur this time. A dead Pope's papal ring is ceremonially smashed; historically, the purpose was to prevent forgeries. But John Paul's papal ring will not be smashed--because there had not yet been time to mint one for him.

The lack of a ring--the emblem of authority--was a telling sign that John Paul's achievements, however impressive, were only symbolic. His death left Catholicism facing an array of groaning problems that were only obscured for a time in the joy of his election and the weeks of his papacy. Like Christianity in general, Roman Catholicism is still navigating perilously in secular and self-indulgent times. There are many specific threats from within, from an archbishop's small but troublesome rebellion on the right to a more subtle revolt against papal teaching and authority on the left, as well as a growing shortage of priests and nuns that could in time spell institutional collapse in some areas. Carlo Confalonieri, 85-year-old dean of the Sacred College, spoke out of his sense of intense loss at John Paul's death, but he aptly expressed the mood as a new Pontiff is chosen: "A mourning on top of another mourning --it is a very grave trial for the church and we must truly pray. Who knows what awaits us now?"

Morto un papa, goes the old Roman saying, se ne fa un altro. "When one Pope dies, we make another." The men most directly charged with what will happen to the church are the Cardinals eligible to take part in the conclave that will elect the new Pope. Hardly had the news of John Paul's death spread across the world than they began winging their way toward Rome. Tanzania's Laurean Cardinal Rugambwa had not even had time to return home from the last election. He was still visiting the U.S. when the word came. Stephen Cardinal Kim of Seoul left directly from a requiem Mass in Myongdong Cathedral to catch the day's last flight to Europe. Daily "congregations" -- the early planning meetings of Cardinals present in Rome -- began last Saturday. In that first congregation, the 29 Cardinals attending set the Oct. 14 date for the conclave and Oct. 4 for the funeral.

Almost all of the 112 Cardinals convoked have just finished electing a Pope. Some of them complained bitterly about the expense and the discomfort of meeting in the Sistine Chapel. But they all are familiar with the election process. Moreover, they presumably return to Rome with a shared vision of the kind of man they want to elect -- a consensus shaped during the hot, anxious days of August after the death of Pope Paul VI.

They also must recognize that John Paul's reign set a new seal on the papacy. That fact may limit to some extent the Cardinals' range of choice. "Now they are going to elect not a successor to Pope Paul but a successor to Pope John Paul," said U.S. Sociologist Father Andrew Greeley last week. "That is a big difference. If he had been an ordinary Pope, this next conclave would be a rehash, but he was a very special man and Pope who has changed the whole ambience that the Cardinals are coming back to." Many other Catholics-- prelates, theologians, lay people -- also want to look for another Albino Luciani. Observes Canon Lawyer Ladislas Orsy, a Vatican veteran now at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.: "The very fact that John Paul's election was so successful will inevitably influence the next one. I think the Cardinals will look in the same direction as they did before."

Paradoxically, their apparent unity of aim may lead to difficulties and frustrations, if only because Luciani no longer exists as a candidate. He was a compromise, to be sure, but a happy one, whose graces and goodness had hitherto shone only in a small corner of a great church. Asks Archbishop Stanislaus Lokuang of Taipei with evident skepticism: "Will it be possible to find a man with the same qualities?" Though Luciani once described himself as a "wren" among bishops, his papacy revealed him as a rather rarer bird. His reputation for doctrinal conservatism made him acceptable to the traditionalists who voted on the first ballot for Genoa's ultraconservative Giuseppe Cardinal Siri. His firm stand against Italian Communists won him the backing of the pro-Christian Democrat forces, led by Florence's powerful Giovanni Cardinal Benelli. His roots among and love for the poor helped draw him votes from Third World Cardinals who distrust Europe. Such a winning combination could prove difficult to find so soon again.

John Paul's unexpected death may also weigh in the conclave's choice. The health of a potential candidate will surely become a much more serious consideration. Professor Enrique Miret Magdalena of Madrid's University Institute of Theology has suggested that papal candidates should have a complete medical checkup, "just as you would do with someone considered for an important job in secular life." John Paul's fate may change attitudes toward the ages of papabili as well. Hitherto there has been an age "window" for candidates, ranging from the early 60s to the mid-70s, mainly because Cardinals feared having a Pope in office for more than ten or 15 years. "Maybe one of the lessons of this is that age shouldn't count," suggests Monsignor John Grant, editor of the Boston Pilot. Asks St. Louis Historian Hughes: "Where else but in the Catholic Church is a man 56 years of age considered too young for a job?"

If the Cardinals in conclave again try to find their compassionate shepherd from within the ranks of Italian pastors, they will have their work cut out for them. The Patriarchate of Venice, left open by Pope John Paul, stands empty. Giovanni Cardinal Colombo, Arch bishop of Milan, will be 76 in December. The important Arch diocese of Turin is governed by a Franciscan friar noted for his spirituality, Anastasio Ballestrero, 66 this week. But Ballestrero, though eligible to be elected Pope, is an unlikely candidate because he is not yet a Cardinal. Antonio Cardinal Poma of Bologna, 68, is a kindly, humble man, a stern foe of any detente with Italian Communism. He is also head of Italy's national bishops' conference -- but suffers from erysipelas ("St. Anthony's fire"), a painful, recurrent skin disease. The same affliction troubles Ugo Cardinal Poletti, 64, the Pope's Vicar for Rome and thus the capital's real bishop, a prelate who has shown a vigorous concern for the city's poor.

Even though he is 72-- an age that may now be considered risky -- Genoa's Cardinal Siri may wind up with the largest single bloc of votes on the first ballot at the new conclave, though he will almost certainly go no further. The Genoese arch bishop is a known foe of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council ("They will never bind us," he once said loftily of its pronouncements), and traditionalists who sympathize with his position have apparently supported him only as a gesture of conservative opposition. But Siri can not hope to add the additional 50 or so votes needed for election. This time Siri's less strident supporters may choose to try their luck by supporting Pericle Cardinal Felici, 67, an engaging but tough Curial conservative who managed the business of Vatican II without ever being caught up in its spirit.

That leaves only three major Italian sees with Cardinals who are papabili. Two are much in the mold of Luciani. The third is Benelli, the man who did much to promote Luciani's cause in the last election, but who may this time have a chance to be Pope instead of popemaker. The three:

CORRADO URSI, Archbishop of Naples, 70. Warmhearted, courageous, a champion of the poor and a friend of ecumenism, Corrado Ursi is the son of a baker from the Adriatic coast. Ursi went almost straight from ordination back into seminaries as a teacher, later a rector. In 1966, after being elevated to the See of Naples, he soon won admiration as a "good pastor." As Cardinal he not only visited his parishes but often stayed on for two or three days to learn their needs. Three years ago, when a cholera epidemic broke out in Naples, he visited the hospitals each day, personally giving the last rites to a dying woman. He annually leads clergy and lay people to the Anglican church in Naples for ecumenical services on Holy Saturday; he maintains cordial relations with the city's Communist administration. In sturdy good health despite his age, Ursi had a small core of support in the last election. If some former Luciani admirers shift to him, he could be ahead of the conservative bloc even on the first ballot. The frequently mentioned fact that he speaks only Italian and has never served outside Italy should weigh against Ursi less this time. As John Paul demonstrated, a generous heart crosses any border.

SALVATORE PAPPALARDO, Archbishop of Palermo, 60. Regional jealousies are strong in Italy, even among Christian bishops. There has not been a Sicilian Pope in twelve centuries. But Salvatore Pappalardo could surmount that prejudice. A keen-minded Vatican diplomat who entered the Secretariat of State along with Giovanni Benelli, Pappalardo served early on as a secretary to Monsignor Montini, later Pope Paul VI. Eventually he became Paul's pronuncio to Indonesia, where the tropical climate sapped his health. Forced to return to Italy, he headed the school that trains Vatican diplomats. (His health is now fine.) In 1970 Paul named him to the See of Palermo. There he swiftly quieted a city badly divided among quarreling Mafia, Communist and Christian Democrat factions. He worked to aid emigrants' families and unemployed youth and--like Naples' Ursi --learned to live with a powerful Communist influence in the city. As a diplomat, Pappalardo pleaded for an end to "false nationalism" and for recognition that all nationalities are equal--a stand that may earn him support among Third World Cardinals.

GIOVANNI BENELLI, Archbishop of Florence, 57. As the Vatican's Substitute Secretary of State under Jean Cardinal Villot, Benelli was for a decade a power to be reckoned with by churchmen who wanted to see the Pope. Though he has befriended and backed pastoral Cardinals like Luciani and Pappalardo, Benelli had never held a pastoral post until Paul VI named him to the See of Florence in 1977. A brusque Tuscan with a deceptively cherubic face, Benelli has earned good marks during his 16 months in Communist-governed Florence. Even during his years as Pope Paul's front-office strong arm, he served as an able conciliator in several sharp internal church disputes. He has trouble delegating authority--a distinct problem for a Pope --and it is thought that he would oppose needed decentralization in the church. But his adroit leadership was apparent in his role as the principal supporter of the candidacy of John Paul. A Curia man himself, he opposed Curial candidates. Among the pastoral Italian archbishops he preferred Luciani for his personal qualities and antiCommunism. His connection with John Paul may help him in the voting.

If the Cardinals in conclave should move toward Benelli, they would be moving away from a pastoral choice and back toward Curial experience. If they choose to go in that direction, this time as in the last election they will have available a Curial man who also has far more pastoral background than Benelli --Sergio Cardinal Pignedoli, 68, the affable, gregarious president of the Secretariat for Non-Christians. In between rungs on his Curial career, Pignedoli served as a World War II chaplain (submarines) and auxiliary bishop of Milan (under Archbishop Montini). Young people love him and thousands write him letters about their problems. In the last election he ran close to Siri and Luciani on the first ballot. Also-ran status is a liability he shares with Sebastiano Cardinal Baggio, 65, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, and Paolo Cardinal Bertoli, 70, a career Curialist, both of whom ran further back last time. Pignedoli has the best chance of the three.

The prevailing wisdom in the last election was that Italy lay in such precarious straits that an Italian Pope was needed to deal with the problems. Conditions have hardly improved but some Cardinals are wondering if an outsider might not do as well. One who almost certainly could is Jean Cardinal Villot, the Camerlengo for both the papal interregnums. In his home country of France, Villot served capably as both Coadjutor Bishop and Archbishop of Lyon before becoming Secretary of State to Pope Paul VI. In the last election his age would have posed no difficulty, but this time, though he is in excellent health at 72, he may be considered a bit too old.

There are younger pastoral foreigners. One of them was the late Pope John Paul's candidate during the last election for the job --Brazil's Aloisio Cardinal Lorscheider, a Franciscan friar who is Archbishop of Fortaleza. A social progressive but a theological moderate, Lorscheider is only 53--a disadvantage last time around. Youth should help this time, but fellow Cardinals are likely to worry about the fact that Cardinal Lorscheider has had open-heart surgery.

Two other non-Italians who figured in the dark-horse stakes last time may now be fading for reasons other than health. Argentina's Eduardo Cardinal Pironio, 57, no longer seems too young, but in his post as head of the Vatican's congregation for religious orders, he has neither the appeal of a pastor nor the clout of a Curial insider. The old Roman tie, however, recently deemed so valuable for a candidate, may diminish the chances of Utrecht's Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, 68. Willebrands has been doing double duty since 1975 as Primate of Holland, but he is identified with Rome because he has been in the Christian Unity Secretariat for 18 years--and still commutes there regularly as its head.

If the Cardinals in this new conclave are to reach across Italy's borders in a bold break with four centuries of tradition, the gesture should serve a more dramatic purpose, like finding the sort of loving and fervent priest they have just lost. One Cardinal who could meet that need is Britain's Cardinal Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, a Benedictine monk who was once Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey. Few Cardinals knew Hume at all until last month's election, but in Rome many came away from encounters with him admiring his evident spirituality, eloquence and warm presence. Hume's age--55--was a major disadvantage in August, but probably would not be held against him so much now. If anyone can fill John Paul's empty shoes, it might be this tall, rangy, soft-smiling Englishman.

There will be other names bruited about before the conclave begins next week, and there may be other forces, yet to coalesce, that will shape the Cardinals' ultimate decision. Just now, the church that John Paul leaves behind grieves and wonders, but there is solace in its centuries of experience, and a mission that endures and heals. As Bishop Daniel Cronin of Fall River, Mass., put it: "People have to stop and sort of redo things, but basically the work of caring for souls goes on. Every priest is in his parish, people are able to approach the altar, the bishops are among their people. The church goes on."

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