All the Pope's Men Read online

  One traditional way to understand what the Pope does would be to list his titles: His Holiness; Bishop of Rome; Vicar of Jesus Christ; Successor of St. Peter; Prince of the Apostles; Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church; Patriarch of the West; Servant of the Servants of God; Primate of Italy; Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province; Sovereign of the Vatican City State. Such language, however, doesn’t mean a great deal to modern ears. A more illuminating way to proceed is to consider the papacy’s various real-world functions, which will be discussed here in terms of concentric circles representing different zones of responsibility.

  The first and tightest circle is constituted by Rome, because the Pope is the Bishop of Rome and hence responsible for the affairs of his local diocese. Historically, the Pope came to govern the universal Church largely because Rome was its most important point of reference. Rome today has 2.5 million Catholics, according to 2003 figures from the Annuario Pontifico, with 334 parishes and 5,331 priests. Rome is a complex urban archdiocese, with all the spiritual, pastoral, financial, and administrative challenges that entails. In fact, the Pope doesn’t take the government of the diocese personally into his own hands. He appoints a vicar, currently the powerful Cardinal Camillo Ruini, to handle its daily business. At the same time, however, the Pope remains an unsurpassed moral authority in urban affairs. In the summer of 2000, for example, the Roman city council rescinded a $200,000 contribution and official backing for an international gay rights festival because the Pope disapproved. (The march went ahead, however, thus illustrating at the same time the limits of the Pope’s influence.)

  Moving to the next circle, the Pope is also the supreme governor and legislator of the Catholic Church. He is responsible for setting policy, such as what theological ideas are acceptable, what liturgical practices pass muster, which saints to canonize, which bishops to appoint, and how to use the Church’s charitable resources. He makes decisions about finance and personnel, scholarship and service, morality and metaphysics. Further, just as in the ancient Roman empire every citizen had a right of appeal to the emperor, every Catholic has the right to take his or her case to the Pope. This does not mean that Mrs. Smith’s complaint about her son’s third-grade religion teacher is necessarily going to end up on the Pope’s desk. Most appeals are handled much further down the chain of command. But a few of these matters do reach the Pope, because they raise questions of doctrine or discipline that his subordinates believe the Pope himself should resolve or because the Pope takes a personal interest.

  Inside the next ring, the Pope is the most important leader within the broader Christian world, and thus the most important force, for good or ill, in ecumenism—the effort to reunify the badly fractured Christian family. (The World Christian Encyclopedia identifies over 34,000 separate Christian groups, not counting the myriad storefront Christian churches all over the world that have no institutional affiliation.) John Paul II made the thrust for unity one of the cornerstones of his pontificate, beginning with his outreach to the 250-million strong Eastern Orthodox churches. The Roman Catholic Church carries on a formal dialogue with almost every organized Christian denomination, and there are desk officers in the Vatican whose job is to liaison with these other Christian groups. (The Vatican hesitates to call all these bodies “churches" for theological reasons. A “church" has to have valid ministers and sacraments, which, in the Catholic view, many Western Protestant bodies do not.)

  In the next circle lies the Pope’s function as the chief spokesperson for Christianity in dialogue with other religions. Roman Catholicism is the largest and most visible branch of Christianity and that makes the Pope the superstar par excellence of the Christian world. To put the matter crassly: If the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the president of the Lutheran World Federation, visits Madras or Jakarta, he has to catch cabs like everyone else. If the Pope visits, he’s a celebrity. By virtue of his high profile, the Pope has overwhelming influence on Christianity’s relationship with the other religions of the world. John Paul made this aspect of his job a priority, especially with both Judaism and Islam, the other major Western faiths. He became the first Pope to visit a Jewish synagogue in Rome in 1986, and the first Pope to enter an Islamic mosque in Damascus in May 2001. Three times he called the religious leaders of humanity to Assisi together to pray on behalf of peace, a choice that was not popular inside his own circle of advisors. Some worried that the image of the Pope standing in a circle with shamans and Native Americans, Jewish rabbis and Buddhist monks promoted relativism (the idea that one religion is as good as another) and syncretism (a blending of elements of different religions into a kind of New Age pastiche). Obviously, however, John Paul was not deterred.

  Inside the next circle one finds the Pope as the most important voice for religious belief in a secularized, skeptical world. Contemporary Western culture is often allergic to authority and hostile to tradition, and finds religion, especially religious institutions, hard to accept. The Pope is the most visible representative of institutional religion on earth and the most important dialogue partner with this largely areligious culture. A Pope seen as compassionate and humble, with a relevant moral and spiritual message, can reawaken religious sensibility in people for whom it may have been long dormant. A Pope perceived as arrogant and hypocritical can deaden spiritual receptivity.

  Finally, the outermost circle represents the Pope’s role as a moral teacher, a voice of conscience for humanity on social and political questions. As such, there is almost nothing under the sun about which a Pope is not expected to pronounce, whether it’s global warming or land mines or whether the United States should send in peacekeeping troops to restore order in Liberia. This makes the Pope an important player in world politics, a role that has never been more clear than during the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In the weeks leading up to the war, diplomatic heavyweights shuttled in and out of the Vatican like clients at a popular deli: Tony Blair, Joschka Fischer, Silvio Berlusconi, José María Aznar, Mohammad Reza Khatami (speaker of the Iranian parliament and brother of the country’s president), Kofi Annan, and even Tarik Aziz. John Paul dispatched emissaries to both Saddam Hussein and George Bush to try to pull them back from the brink. The initiative failed in terms of preventing the conflict, but it succeeded in convincing many Muslims that the war was not part of a broader Christian offensive against Islam.

  The roles a Pope plays are various and complex: Fortune 500 CEO, media superstar, diplomat, politician, theologian, philosopher, pastor, and voice of conscience. It is an impossible job, and no human being can perfectly do every task a Pope is called upon to perform. Every Pope will emphasize some aspects of the job at the expense of others. Pius XII, who governed the Church during the tumultuous days of World War II, was a superb diplomat, but did not project the pastoral face of John XXIII. John Paul II was a deep thinker, a media phenomenon, and maybe the greatest apostolic traveler since St. Paul (129 countries visited in his twenty-seven-year papacy, the equivalent of two years on the road), but there was a price to pay. He had to leave many aspects of the governance of the Church in the hands of his aides. Yet every Pope exercises all of these roles at some stage, and the men and women of the Vatican assist him in doing so. One will never understand the psychology of the Vatican without grasping their sense of the gravitas and the importance of the papal office. For them, this is not the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace, a largely symbolic relic of a bygone era without real-world clout or significance. This is, from the Vatican’s point of view, the living presence of Peter in the Catholic Church and the most important voice of conscience in human affairs.

  Finally, a quick word about nomenclature. In normal English-speaking usage, most people refer to the head of the Church as the Pope, as in: “When will the Pope leave Rome for his summer break at Castel Gandolfo?" But in formal situations, especially in Rome, it is common to refer to him as the Holy Father, as in, “Would it be possible to arrange to attend an audience with the Holy Father?" Both are correct, and
there’s no shade of theological meaning between them. Unfortunately, however, they have taken on a kind of political resonance in the English-speaking world. When a conservative Catholic wants to display loyalty, he or she will often insist on “Holy Father" even when it sounds egregious. A certain kind of liberal, on the other hand, avoids such phraseology like the plague, even when protocol really requires it. When moving in and around the Vatican, the question is less one of ideology than courtesy. It’s advisable for those who have dealings in Rome to learn to use the language of respect and make it Holy Father when the situation calls for it. (Not everyone bothers; when President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell visited the Pope, for example, both men simply referred to him as “Sir.") In this book, I’ll stick to Pope for simplicity of expression, and I’ll keep the capital letter to signal respect for the office.

  VATICAN, HOLY SEE, AND ROMAN CURIA

  Now we’re ready for some more important terminological clarifications. In conversation about the Vatican there are three terms often tossed around as if they’re interchangeable, but that in fact describe different realities. They are the Holy See, the Vatican, and the Roman Curia.

  First, the Holy See. The term see in this sense means “center of authority, jurisdiction, or office," and it comes from the Latin word sedes, meaning seat. The idea is that the bishop’s chair represents his power and authority. This is where the notion of an ex cathedra pronouncement comes from, since in Latin, cathedra means chair. The sense of the importance of the bishop’s chair runs deep in the Catholic tradition. Directly behind the main altar in St. Peter’s Basilica, one finds the chapel of the Chair of Peter, and there is literally a large seat affixed to the wall to represent the authority of Peter as it is passed down to the present Pope. The Church’s liturgical calendar recognizes a Feast of the Chair of Peter, February 22, which is one of the two traditional dates during the year that the Pope might create new members of the College of Cardinals. The other is June 29, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the two great patrons of the Church in Rome.

  The Holy See is thus the proper term for designating the authority of the papacy to govern the Church. It is a nonterritorial institution, an idea rather than a place. Sometimes the term Apostolic See is used to mean the same thing, as in canon law, but Holy See is more common. The Holy See is an institution rather than a person and continues to exist even when there is no Pope—as during the sede vacante, or period of the “vacant seat," after the Pope has died and before a new one is elected. Canon 113 of the Code of Canon Law states that the legal personality of the Holy See is a matter of divine law. In other words, from a canonical point of view, God gave the Holy See its authority. It is not something erected by human beings on the basis of a social contract. By way of contrast, the legal personality of the Vatican City-State is based on a 1929 treaty with Italy. More on that later.

  As the central government of the Roman Catholic Church, it is the Holy See, not the Vatican, that enters into treaties as the juridical equal of a sovereign state and sends and receives diplomatic representatives. It is the Holy See that conducts full diplomatic relations with 174 nations, plus lesser ties with Russia and the Palestinian National Authority. Many of these countries are non-Catholic and even non-Christian. The Holy See also maintains a presence in all major international organizations. Historically, this diplomatic activity dates to the time when the Pope was also the secular ruler of much of central Italy. The sovereignty and legal personality of the Holy See endured, however, even after the fall of the Papal States in 1870. The Holy See is recognized by a wide variety of international treaties and agreements. Article 16 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, for example, codified the informal practice that the ambassadors of the Holy See are recognized as the dean of the diplomatic corps in many countries to which they are accredited.

  The Holy See is not dependent upon any physical territory for its sovereignty. Between 1870 and 1929, no bilateral treaty or international convention recognized the Holy See as the ruler of a physically defined space. Yet the Holy See during this period negotiated a total of sixty-two concordats with governments around the world to regulate the affairs of the Catholic Church, and these concordats were considered international conventions, with fully recognized legal force. In the same period, the Holy See acted as a mediator in several international conflicts: Germany versus Spain (1885); Ecuador versus Peru (1893); Argentina versus Chile (1900–1903); Colombia versus Ecuador (1906); and Haiti versus San Domingo (1926).

  The Vatican, on the other hand, refers to the 108-acre physical territory in Rome. Historically the term referred to the mons vaticanus , the hill sloping up from the Tiber River away from the heart of ancient Rome. Pliny the Elder records that the area was known for snakes and bad wine. It was a cherished spot for early Christians because tradition regarded it as the burial spot of St. Peter, whose tomb was located in a pagan cemetery. (Claims have been made that later archeological discoveries under the basilica have identified the very bones of St. Peter, but this is a complicated discussion for another time.) The basilica erected by Constantine on the spot was never intended to be the center of papal government, but a shrine to Peter. The Pope’s personal basilica was always considered to be St. John Lateran, and the administrative activity of the papacy was centered in the nearby cancelleria and the Quirinale, the latter of which is now the symbol of Italy’s secular republic. Even today, when a new Pope is elected, among his first ceremonial acts is taking possession of St. John Lateran. The Vatican only became the center of papal activity in 1870 when the Papal States were lost along with the Pope’s temporal authority. As a concession to the papacy’s moral prestige, King Vittorio Emmanuel allowed the Pope to retain St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Palace.

  The Pope at the time, Pius IX, refused to reconcile himself to the loss and declined to recognize the new Italian republic, declaring himself a “prisoner of the Vatican." That state of affairs endured until February 11, 1929, when Pius XI and the Italian government under Benito Mussolini reached an agreement. Vatican City was born, recognized under the Lateran Treaty as an instrument of the Holy See in its spiritual mission to the world. The Vatican City-State (Stato della Città del Vaticano) is, like the Holy See, recognized under international law, and it is party to international treaties such as the International Telecommunications Union and the Universal Postal Union. Unlike the Holy See, however, it does not receive or send diplomatic representatives and has no diplomatic relations with states. Former Secretary General of the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld expressed this distinction: “When I request an audience from the Vatican, I do not go to see the King of Vatican City but the head of the Catholic Church."

  Cardinal Renato Martino, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and for sixteen years the Holy See’s observer to the United Nations, has offered a metaphor for understanding this relationship: “Vatican City is the physical or territorial base of the Holy See, almost a pedestal upon which is posed a much larger and unique independent and sovereign power: that of the Universal Church, respected and esteemed by many, suspected and combated by others, yet always present by its stature, its history and its influence in the international forum."

  The Pope, through the Holy See, is the supreme governor of Vatican City. He delegates its administration to the Pontifical Commission for the State of the Vatican City. The legal system is based on the November 2000 Fundamental Law of the Vatican City-State, promulgated by John Paul II. Beyond that, canon law rules; if canon law is not applicable, the laws of the city of Rome apply. The Vatican City maintains the Swiss Guards, a voluntary military force, as well as a modern security corps. It has its own post office, commissary, bank, railway station, electrical generating plant, and publishing house. The Vatican also issues its own coins, stamps, and passports. Today the Vatican City-State has its own legal system for traffic control, customs duty, and telegraphic services, a nine-hundred-foot railway that connec
ts with the main Italian line, electric power and water services from Rome supplemented by a local water supply, and a small electric power plant. Beyond St. Peter’s Basilica, there is a parish church inside the Vatican, St. Anne of the Palafrieneri, for permanent residents and employees. It is staffed by the Augustinian friars.

  The Vatican City-State also has its own penal system and tribunals, along with two jail cells. For the first time, in 2003, the Vatican issued a report on crimes committed on its territory. Presented by the citystate’s chief prosecutor, Nicola Picardi, the report said there had been 397 civil offenses and 608 penal offenses in 2002, the vast majority petty crimes such as purse snatching, pickpocketing and shoplifting in the Vatican museums. If one uses the traditional measure of dividing the number of crimes by the number of citizens, the Vatican City-State would appear to have one of the highest crime rates in the world, since it has only 455 permanent residents. The museums, however, draw over 3 million visitors a year, so 608 minor crimes are far less dramatic. The perpetrators—like the victims, tourists to the Vatican—were rarely caught, with 90 percent of complaints never leading to a prosecution. There is a backlog of cases before Vatican courts, which had to deal with a record 239 cases in 2002, with 110 still unresolved into 2003. Anyone sentenced to a prison term by the Vatican’s civil court is transferred to an Italian prison, with the Vatican paying the tab.

  The total number of employees of the Vatican city-state in 2003 was 1,511, which includes 4 top directors, 75 men and women religious, and 1,432 laity. Also on the books are 566 retired employees drawing a pension. Salaries for Vatican employees are shockingly low by American standards; a mid-level official working in the Vatican travel agency, for example, might earn the equivalent of $18,000 a year. Among Italians, however, Vatican jobs are highly coveted, because they bring access to the Vatican supermarket, clothing store, electronics store, and gas station, whose products are untaxed and therefore significantly cheaper than anywhere else in Rome. The Vatican also offers access to quality health care and a well-stocked pharmacy. In addition, salaries are not taxed, and the Vatican has a generous pension system and severance plan. (An employee of Vatican Radio who left in 2001 after thirteen years of service received the equivalent of one month’s pay for every year he had put in, so he left with a check in hand for more than a year’s salary.) Most importantly for a country where instability is chronic, the Vatican offers a secure source of employment—it is never going out of business. Under the Vatican’s labor laws, which basically parallel those of Italy, it is also virtually impossible to fire someone. For example, one pontifical commission has a laywoman who does secretarial work and who became pregnant some years ago. Under the rules she was entitled to nine months of maternity leave, but by craftily navigating the system, she actually took more than eighteen months. The number two official of this small office tried to replace her, but gave up after a battle that stretched over four years.