All the Pope's Men Page 10
Michelangelo’s famous Pietà statue, the Sistine Chapel, or Raphael’s famous frescoes in the Apostolic Palace are all listed on the Vatican books at a value of 1 Euro each. In fact, those artistic treasures amount to a net drain on the Holy See’s budget, because millions of Euros have to be allocated every year for maintenance and restoration. In some cases, the Vatican wouldn’t be able to afford this work without outside support. The Nippon Television Network Corporation of Japan, for example, funded the restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to the tune of some $3 million, in exchange for the exclusive right to film sections of the frescoes in the late 1980s. One could argue that the personnel of the Holy See profit because they live and work in the midst of all this gorgeous art, but that doesn’t pay the rent or build up retirement savings. Moreover, only the lucky personnel of the Secretariat of State have offices with ceilings etched by Raphael. If you work in the Congregation for Worship, for example, or in the Council for the Laity, you’re stuck in an anonymous bureaucratic space that might as well be in the Pentagon or General Motors.
There is one other bit of mythology connected to Vatican finances. This is the notion that Catholics around the world who are dissatisfied should put pressure on the Holy See where it hurts—in the pocketbook. By withholding contributions, this line of reasoning goes, angry Catholics will get the kind of attention that keen theological argument cannot generate. This tends to be an especially common refrain in the United States, since American Catholics are the number-one contributors to the Vatican’s annual budget and because Americans are disposed to believe the credo “money talks" more than other peoples.
Again, however, reality paints a different picture. First, it does not seem that American Catholics are inclined to withhold support from the Holy See in times of discontent; in 2002, at the peak of the sex abuse scandals, American giving to the Vatican registered an increase. More to the point, even a successful boycott would seem to have limited potential. Even if we assume that the U.S. share of the Vatican’s annual budget is one-quarter, and even if we assume that every Catholic in the United States were to refuse to give a cent, that would mean a shortfall of $61.25 million. In 2002, global contributions to the Holy See went up by $55 million, so that continued increases in annual giving elsewhere might offset a boycott. If not, there are certainly enough rich Catholics in various parts of the world, fiercely loyal to the Holy See, that an emergency appeal could probably raise the difference. It would be especially likely to succeed if it were phrased as a campaign to save the Holy See from pushy Americans. If American Catholics are going to bring pressure for change onto the Holy See, they will have to find a way other than their wallets.
Any number of times I have sat down with intrepid journalists and researchers mesmerized by tales of Vatican wealth, who are without fail enormously disappointed when I lay out the reality. Sometimes a form of denial sets in. “But," they insist, “you haven’t actually seen the Vatican’s books, have you? You can’t say for sure that the Vatican doesn’t have a horde of gold stashed away somewhere, or a secret stock portfolio worth billions?" No, I can’t. I also can’t prove there’s no invisible monster under your bed. What I can say is that if the Vatican is sitting on a secret stash of riches, there’s little evidence of it in the way the institution functions. While there are a few black Mercedes limousines to ferry VIPs to and fro, and some cardinals do have fairly nice apartments, for the most part Vatican personnel do not live especially large. Most offices are sparsely furnished and rather low-tech, living quarters are plain, and salaries for most officials are strikingly low by First World standards. Hence stereotypes about the opulence of the Vatican would remain largely false, even if it could be shown that the official ledgers have somehow managed to disguise certain assets.
MYTH FIVE: CLIMBING THE CAREER LADDER
An entire corpus of popular entertainment, from Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal to the Colleen McCullough classic The Thorn Birds , have taught outsiders to regard the conflict between career and personal integrity as the essential drama of the clerical life. Ambition in the clerical world tends to create a special sense of scandal, since priests are supposed to be, in a famous phrase of the former Jesuit General Fr. Pedro Arrupe, “men for others." The idea of a priest calculating his climb up the career ladder—first to monsignor, then bishop, then archbishop, then a cardinal’s red hat, finally the papacy itself—rankles, since it appears contradictory to Christ’s injunction that “the last among you shall be first."
Given that context, it’s understandable why some Catholics approach Vatican personnel with suspicion. These are, after all, clerics who by most standards have “moved up" and may be destined for even higher office. The Villa Stritch, where American diocesan priests working in curial service live, is something of an incubator for bishops. Three current American archbishops are former residents: Edward Egan of New York, Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, and William Levada of San Francisco. Moreover, whenever there is a bishop’s opening in their diocese, men who serve in the Roman Curia from that diocese will generally be considered candidates.
In the popular mind there’s often a de facto assumption that a priest in the Roman Curia is probably a careerist, unless it’s proven otherwise. Frequently bundled with that assumption is the suspicion that the priest is capable of doing some shady things—undercutting rivals, for example, or taking positions based on convenience and popularity rather than conscience—if necessary in order to secure his own advancement. This explains the popular belief that the Vatican is a hornet’s nest of cutthroat competition. St. Augustine once cautioned that, “Whoever looks in the Church for something other than Christ is a mercenary," and by that standard, popular mythology seems convinced that there are an awful lot of mercenaries in the Holy See.
To call this perception a myth is not to deny that it possesses elements of truth. Are there clerics in the Roman Curia who want to move up the ladder and organize their lives and work accordingly? Yes. Most people who work in the Vatican, in fact, can point them out. Are there episodes, sometimes quite infamous, in which personnel inside the Vatican have engaged in outrageous conduct in order to smear the reputation of a rival or otherwise enhance their own prospects for a promotion? Again, yes. One doesn’t have to resort to Monsignor Luigi Marinelli’s Gone With the Wind in the Vatican, a kiss-and-tell classic by a former Vatican official, to find such tales. Sit down over coffee with anyone who works in the Holy See, and they’ll be able to tell terrific anecdotes to illustrate the point.
However, careerism is a case in which reality has become mythologized in terms of quantity rather than quality.
First, it would contravene the laws of human nature were there not some careerism in the Vatican. This is a hierarchical system, and promotion is the primary way the system expresses approval of someone’s work. To complain that curial personnel like to be rewarded for a job well done is a bit like complaining that they’re human beings. Moreover, some degree of ambition is no bad thing, because it usually means that the person is willing to work hard. This double standard, in fact, offers a classic example of how the Roman Curia can’t win. One bank of critics calls them lazy, pointing out how long it takes to get things done; another faction faults them for possessing any drive at all. In other walks of life, we applaud ambition, since it is often the motor fuel of success. Only in the Roman Catholic priesthood do we expect people to turn in consistently excellent work with no thought of personal affirmation. That’s a noble ideal, but it is also to some extent unrealistic.
Second, simply as a matter of accurate observation, it is not true that ambition and careerism are the dominant psychological traits of the men and women in the Holy See. Most officials who clock in each morning do not spend the rest of the day trying to figure out how to move up. In many cases, in fact, officials in the Roman Curia never even applied for their job, and after several years have only vague suspicions of how they got there. Dicasteries of the Roman Curia do not place cl
assified ads in a help wanted column in L’Osservatore Romano. When there is an opening, a superior of the dicastery will usually ask around, quietly, among friends and colleagues, looking for qualified personnel. Sometimes the dicastery will reach out to a trusted bishop or the head of a religious order to suggest someone. In some cases a potential Vatican official is not aware he or she is under consideration until the decision has already been made. In almost no case does the official apply for the job. There are no applications to fill out, no curriculum vitae to send in. It is, literally, a case of “don’t call us, we’ll call you."
In some cases when a candidate is approached, the first response (and sometimes the second and third) is no. The person may have a promising academic career, may prefer not to live in Rome or may want a pastoral assignment rather than working behind a desk. Some want to be free to write and publish under their own name. Most have no desire to be in the Curia forever, or even very long. One of the untold stories of curial hiring, in fact, is how difficult it can be to fill certain slots because people with the proper training and professional experience don’t want the job. I could fill a small dicastery with friends who have been approached about working in the Roman Curia and turned it down. It’s not that these friends are less career-oriented than the officials who eventually said yes. In some cases, in fact, they rejected the curial job precisely because they knew they would find more prestige, more affirmation, greater personal satisfaction, and even more money with other pursuits.
It will be useful at this stage to allow three curial officials to speak for themselves, as a window onto what the real attitudes within the Holy See are on the careerism issue. The first is a North American priest in his fifties, who has worked in the same dicastery since the 1980s; the second is an Italian in his forties who is considered a rising star in the Secretariat of State; and the third is a young Northern European who works in a congregation and who is at the same time trying to complete a doctoral degree at a Roman university.
The North American never wanted to work in the Roman Curia, and in fact did everything he could to avoid the assignment. He was first approached in the mid-1980s, after he had finished a doctorate in Rome and had returned to his home diocese to teach in the seminary, which had been his dream. One of the cardinals of the Roman Curia was looking for someone whose first language was English and had asked around town for suggestions. This man’s name came up, and so the curial cardinal sent him a letter. The priest went to his vicar general in his home diocese, saying he didn’t want the job, but the vicar encouraged him to go to Rome and to hear what the curial cardinal had to say. The priest did so and was offered the job. After consultation with his spiritual director back home, he turned it down. After a few weeks, he got a phone call from his own cardinal’s secretary, saying the cardinal wanted to see him. When the priest showed up for the appointment, the cardinal asked if he had made a firm decision. The priest said yes, he was happy teaching in the seminary and had also just been accepted for another doctoral program in the States that he wanted to pursue on a part-time basis. The cardinal advised him to think again, and asked, “Why not just go over for a year or two?" In the end, the priest realized that the curial cardinal had enlisted his own cardinal’s blessing, and that no was not an acceptable response. He agreed to go to Rome for two years, and has been in the dicastery ever since, some twenty years now. For him, the idea that he came to Rome to make his career is absurd— he came kicking and screaming, and being here for almost two decades has not shot him up the ladder. He is in the same job he was when he arrived.
The Italian had completed his studies at the Pontificia Accademia, the training ground for future diplomats in the Church, when he was approached by the rector of the college where he was living, the Capranica. (In the European system, a college is a residence, not a place of study.) Anyone who knows Italy realizes that a young cleric who is selected to study at the Accademia and to live at the Capranica is going places, and it was no great shock when the rector said there was interest in this man’s services at the Secretariat of State. “Before the rector proposed it, I had never sought it," the priest insists. “But it was not unusual." Like many Italians, he takes a very realistic view of clerical ambition. “We are human beings, sensible to all the gratification that conditions a normal human life," he said. “People do have ambitions and desires. I believe that you have to be honest with yourself. The goal of your work is not to become first, but to render service. If it’s possible to do this with gratification of being recognized, all the better. We’re not called to become martyrs." The priest added that in his job he is often asked to liaison with secular governments, where he said the drive for career advancement is far more palpable than in the Roman Curia. “Yes, some of us hope to be bishops, in the same way that a vice-pastor wants to be pastor, a pastor wants to be the vicar general or president of the tribunal, and the vicar wants to be bishop. Maybe those of us of the Roman Curia feel this a little more, because we spend so much of our time with high-profile contacts. But on the other hand, I know of two cases where a curial official turned down a bishop’s appointment, arguing that they were better suited for other work."
The Northern European priest, a soft-spoken and short man who looks much younger than his forty-one years, was training to teach Scripture in his diocesan seminary when a friend in Rome approached him about working in one of the Vatican congregations. He said he had already promised himself that he would never seek an assignment in his priestly career, and he would never exclude an assignment, in order to be open to what God might want. He told his friend that if the congregation was serious, they should contact his cardinal. Later that fall he saw the cardinal and asked if he should send in his curriculum vitae. The cardinal said no, let the congregation deal with me. The priest had the impression that the cardinal was not inclined to let him go, and so he forgot about the prospect. Next spring, however, the cardinal told him to go to the dicastery for an interview, which happened over the summer. At that time it seemed clear they had already settled on him for the job. By September he began work, having received the obligatory nulla osta, or “all clear," from the Secretariat of State. He’s been in his congregation now five years, and says that if the call came to come home tomorrow, he’d be ready to go. “I don’t want to be here just to be here. I don’t want that awful kind of possessiveness," he said.
Bottom line: none of these three men sought their assignments, and none would be crushed to let their job go. The Italian priest in the Secretariat of State, reflecting the general tendency of Italian clerical culture, is more frank about his career ambitions, but does not seem consumed by them. In each case, they appear to have balanced, sober attitudes toward life and work that do not resemble the preening lust for power that the careerism myth suggests. Each man concedes that he knows colleagues who seem overly anxious for the next step up the ladder; each reports, however, that they are exceptions. As the Northern European puts it: “That kind of person will rise, but not too far, and certainly not far enough or fast enough for their own taste. They’ll be miserable and make other people miserable. Thank God, they’re not the majority."
Finally, there is a special variant of the careerism myth, which is that every cardinal dreams of being Pope. Certainly this kind of ambition does happen. Italian journalist Benny Lai’s 1993 biography The Pope Never Elected, about Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of Genova, made clear that Siri unabashedly felt he would have been a good choice for the Church’s top job. Frankly, however, the number of cardinals who entertain such dreams is probably much lower than, say, the number of United States senators who fantasize about becoming president. There are two reasons why. First, the gap between being a senator and being the president is comparatively small. It’s easy enough for a senator to imagine himself in the Oval Office. The psychological and theological distance between being a cardinal and being the Pope, on the other hand, is enormous. Most cardinals genuinely have a difficult time believing themselves worthy o
f such an enormous responsibility. Second, one can have a life after being president. Bill Clinton was only fifty-four upon leaving office after two terms, meaning he could look forward to perhaps as many as twenty-five productive years to do something else. There is no such thing as an ex-Pope. (This is not the place to pursue the point, but canon 332 of the Code of Canon Law does provide for a papal resignation. The last time this happened without outside pressure, however, was 1294. The reality is that popes don’t resign.) There is no lecture circuit to hit, no memoirs to write, no papal library to open. One carries the burden of office until death. Contrast that with the relatively plush life of a retired cardinal, and it’s clear why most members of the College of Cardinals pray that “this cup may pass."
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VATICAN PSYCHOLOGY
Vatican officials realize that no one likes being told no. Every time Rome silences a theologian, or tells a priest to get out of politics, or turns down a document from a bishops’ conference, or orders a Catholic seminary to pull a textbook, Vatican officials know somebody’s going to be unhappy. They also know such crackdowns are likely to generate bad press—sometimes just a rumble, sometimes an avalanche. They realize that these moves can divide the Church internally and blacken its eye externally. While some in the Holy See may pride themselves on displaying nerves of steel in the teeth of such controversy, the vast majority do not seek opportunities to knock heads simply to get a few notches in their belt. The stakes have to be fairly high before most Vatican officials will be willing to intervene.