All the Pope's Men (2 page)

All the Pope’s Men
is thus an attempt to understand how the Vatican thinks, why it reacts in certain ways and not others, how it sees the world. The book’s aim is to open up the psychology and culture of the Vatican, so that outsiders can understand what the institution values, what it fears, and what its instinctive patterns of behavior are. It will provide a few facts and a bit of history about the Vatican, but that is not its primary purpose. Many other books offer basic information about Vatican structures, personnel, history, scandals, and vicissitudes. The aim here is different. My intent is to sketch a psychological profile, to explain the Vatican from the inside out, not in terms of its structures, but of its mind. My hope is that after reading this book, a reader will be able to ponder the next Vatican appointment, policy choice, or document and say: “Ah yes, I see where that comes from. I see why they did that."

I come to this subject as one of a handful of journalists working in the English language whose full-time specialization is covering the Vatican from Rome. Day in and day out, I follow the liturgical disputes, theological controversies, makings of saints, comings and goings of bishops and diplomats, and all the rest of the flotsam and jetsam that make up the daily business of the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. A few times a year, I go up to the papal apartments to watch the Pope receive some head of state or other dignitary, and sometimes I get a chance to exchange a quick word with the Pope afterward. (The Pope, unlike presidents and prime ministers, does not give interviews.) Almost every day takes me into the Vatican on some bit of business. I’ve taken a seemingly endless string of curial officials to lunch and dinner, the two occasions of the Roman day when most real business seems to get done. I’ve been to hundreds of roundtable discussions, conferences, symposia, book presentations, and press conferences held by every imaginable group, movement, and force in the Catholic Church. I also move when the Pope moves, so I followed John Paul II all over the globe—to Greece and Syria, Kazakhstan and Armenia, Bulgaria, Canada and Guatemala and Mexico, Poland, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Over the years, I’ve probably interviewed at least two hundred people who work in the Roman Curia in one way, shape, or form and spent countless more hours in informal conversation about their lives and work.

My task is to make all this activity intelligible for an English-speaking audience, helping readers understand why the Vatican does what it does. Like Margaret Mead in
Coming of Age in Samoa
, I see myself as engaged in a sort of cultural anthropology, trying to explain the way inhabitants of a remote island—in this case, a 108-acre walled compound in the middle of Rome—think, act, and live. I do this every week in the pages of the
National Catholic Reporter
and in my weekly Internet column on the NCR website called “The Word from Rome," as well as from time to time on CNN and National Public Radio. I also lecture in America and Canada, taking questions of the “everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask" variety about the Vatican, the Pope, and the Catholic Church. I’ve lived in Rome for four years, learning to negotiate the “cultural gap" that so often separates the people I write about from those I write for.

One final point about my aims and assumptions. I said above I want to foster informed and respectful conversation. Part of respect is taking others at their word about the logic for their decisions, and treating seriously the arguments they provide for particular actions and choices. Thus when I cover the Vatican, I do not start with the assumption that Church officials are guilty until proven innocent and that the Vatican’s motives for any given decision can be assumed to revolve around power and self-interest unless shown otherwise. To tell the truth, my experience is that most of the time Vatican officials are trying to make the best calls they can for the common good of the Church, based on the information available to them and the political and theological convictions they hold. One can debate the wisdom of those judgment calls, and I hope this book will provide tools to do that, but the debate will suffer from fatal confusion unless the challengers appreciate the values Vatican officials are seeking to defend and the logic that led them to particular decisions.

What I have just written may come as a jolt to those of a certain mentality accustomed to thinking of Vatican officials as the heavies, casting the outsiders, prophets, and reformers as the heroes. I understand that view. In my career I’ve had the good fortune of knowing some of these prophets, and they can indeed be impressive people, pressing the Church to realize its best self. On the Catholic left, such figures might include Sr. Joan Chittister or Fr. Hans Küng; on the right, one thinks of Fr. Richard Neuhaus or Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska. Although all are quite different from one another, they share the courage to speak out about what they believe is wrong with the Church, to risk giving offense for the sake of speaking the truth that they see. Their relations with the institutional Church, or at least with certain elements of it, can sometimes be painful. This is true even of someone like Bruskewitz, who is himself a member of the hierarchy, but who is willing to challenge ecclesiastical structures or personnel if he sees them as compromised.

Yet there is a sometimes forgotten, but very powerful, compensation that comes with being a prophet: for those who share your point of view, you are a celebrity. I have attended conferences of the liberal Call to Action group, for example, at which popular reformers such as James Carroll and Eugene Kennedy are greeted with rapturous standing ovations. On the other side of the street, I have listened to young men at the North American College, where U.S. seminarians preparing for the priesthood in Rome live, swap stories about handshakes with papal biographer George Weigel like other young people might talk about meeting one of the Rolling Stones. Prophets may sometimes be struck down by the powerful, but they are also lifted up by their disciples. They have the opportunity, at least within a certain circle, to receive wide acclaim and affirmation.

Most of the men and women of the Roman Curia I know will never have this experience. Fr. Frans Thoolen, a plucky Dutch priest who works in the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Refugees, will probably never walk into a crowded ballroom and hear a packed room explode in applause for him. Long lines of people will probably never cue up to have Fr. Donald Bolen, a soft-spoken Canadian who works the Anglican/Methodist desk in the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, sign a book. Catholics are not likely to tell their grand-children about the time they met Sr. Sharon Holland, a quietly effective American, in the Congregation for Religious. Those who work in the Roman Curia are generally not public figures, and the occasional media darling is a rarity. Vatican officials are involved in the art of the possible, making compromises rather than waves, trying to get things done. By definition and necessity, most of their work is in the shadows. In most cases, the documents into which they pour their blood, sweat, and tears will never bear their names. Their role in forging steps forward in Catholic tradition will likely be known only to a small circle of experts. Such is the cost of progress in a bureaucracy that can only move so far, so fast. The Roman Catholic Church, as I am fond of saying, is not built for speed.

Any social institution needs both its prophets and its bureaucrats. It needs those who will create a clamor for reform from the outside, but it also needs those who will do the hard, patient work of making change happen from within. The person who chooses to labor on the inside, without adulation, exercises a different, but, to my way of thinking, equally real kind of courage. Many of these men and women have put their own desires on hold to do this work, because they think it’s important. Some have sacrificed careers as academics, or pastors, or missionaries in order to answer the Church’s call to serve at a desk in Rome. I have learned to respect their choice, and I hope this book bears the imprint of that respect.

Much of the research for this book arose from the daily experience of covering the Vatican over four years. I also wanted to test my own perceptions, however, against those of the men and women who serve in and around the Holy See. I therefore conducted thirty-five interviews specifically for
All the Pope’s Men
, most with officials of the nine congregations, eleven councils, three tribunals, and other offices that make up the papal bureaucracy. I aimed for a representative sampling across different types of offices, as well as different nationalities and linguistic backgrounds. I also included a few heads of religious orders who have regular contact with the Vatican and a couple of diplomats accredited to the Holy See. In every case, the condition of the interview was that the individual would not be identified by name or even acknowledged in a general way in this introduction. This was both to ensure that people felt free to speak candidly, but also a concession to the requirement of the Vatican’s employee handbook that officials below the level of undersecretary must have the authorization of their superiors before submitting to an interview. Thus I can only express a generalized note of deep thanks to these remarkable souls who move the levers of the institutional Catholic Church and who helped me understand their world.

A number of other people have been instrumental in making this book possible, often without realizing they were doing so. I want to acknowledge those who contributed to whatever virtues the book may possess. First a word of thanks to my colleagues in the Vatican press corps: Gerard O’Connell, Giancarlo Zizola, Gianni Cardinale, Phillip Pullella, Orazio Petrosillo, Marco Politi, Marco Tosatti, Luigi Accattoli, Victor Simpson, Sylvia Poggioli, Greg Burke, John Thavis, Cindy Wooden, John Norton, Robert Blair Kaiser, Robert Mickens, Jeff Israely, Jim Bitterman, Alessio Vinci, Hada Messia, Robert Moynihan, Delia Gallagher, Sandro Magister, Allen Pizzey, Bill Blakemore, Keith Miller, Bruno Bartoloni, Anna Matranga, Paddy Agnew, Frank Bruni, Melinda Henneberger, Alessandra Stanley, Richard Boudreaux, Tracy Wilkinson, Manuela Borraccino, Richard Owen, Dennis Redmont, Franca Giansoldati, David Willey, Ludwig Ring-Eifel, Andreas Englisch, Renzo Giacomelli, Giovanni Avena, Eletta Cucuzza, Ewout Kieckens, Philippa Hitchens, Charles Collins, Tracy McClure, and many others. They have offered me several lifetimes’ worth of insight, expertise, and friendship.

I also want to acknowledge other friends and colleagues who have offered me valuable nuggets, even if they were not conscious that their contribution would help shape this book: George Weigel, Fr. Thomas Reese, Fr. Richard McBrien, Fr. Andrew Greeley, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Fr. John Jay Hughes, Giovanni Ferro, James Nicholson, Brent Hardt, Alberto Melloni, Fr. Antoine Bodar, Fr. Antonio Pernia, Austin Ruse, Fr. Bernardo Cervellera, Bill Burrows, Fr. Borys Gudziak, Fr. Brian Johnstone, Fr. Bruce Harbert, Fr. Bruce Williams, Sr. Clare Pratt, Fr. Daniel Madigan, Fr. Dan McCarthy, Fr. Keith Pecklers, Fr. Mark Francis, Fr. David Fleming, Fr. David Jaeger, Fr. Dennis Billy, Fr. Donald Cozzens, Donna Orsuto, Fr. Drew Christiansen, Eugene Fisher, Rick McCord, Duncan MacLaren, Erich Leitenberger, Christa Pongratz, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, Sr. Filo Hirota, Fr. James Moroney, Francis Pimentel-Pinto, Fr. Franco Imoda, Fr. Michael Hilbert, Fr. James Puglisi, Hubert Feichtlbauer, Fr. Jacques Dupuis, Fr. James Hentges, James Walston, Fr. Jeremy Driscoll, Fr. John Baldovin, Fr. John Huels, John Page, Fr. John Wauck, Fr. Robert Gahl, Marc Carroggio, Fr. Flavio Capucci, Fr. Jose de Vera, Julia O’Sullivan, Fr. Ken Nowakowski, Fr. Kieran O’Reilly, Robert Mickens, John Wilkins, Margaret Hebblethwaite, Austen Ivereigh, Sr. Marie MacDonald, Mario Marazziti, Francesco Dante, Claudio Mario Betti, Fr. Mark Morozowich, Markus Bakermans, Michael Novak, Michael Waldstein, Nelly Stienstra, Fr. Nikolaus Klein, Fr. Nokter Wolf, Otto Friedrich, Fr. Paul Robichaud, Fr. Greg Apparcel, Fr. Jim Moran, Fr. Peter Phan, Phillip Jenkins, Fr. Raymond de Souza, Fr. Robert Geisinger, Fr. Robert Taft, Fr. Joseph Tobin, Fr. Peter Jacobs, Fr. Ron Roberson, Russell Shaw, Fr. Sebastian Karotemprel, David Clohessy, Richard Gaillardetz, Salvador Miranda, Fabrizio Mastrofini, Fr. Stephen Privett, Fr. Ted Keating, Fr. Thomas Green, Fr. Thomas Michel, Fr. Thomas Rosica, Thomas Seiterich-Kreuzkamp, Fr. Thomas Splain, Fr. Thomas Williams, Fr. Anthony McSweeney, Fr. Virgil Funk, Fr. William Henn, Fr. Willy Ollevier, Fr. Gerald O’Collins, Fr. Michael Scully, Archbishop Charles Chaput, Bishop Howard Hubbard, Bishop William Skylstad, Cardinal Roger Mahony, Cardinal James Francis Stafford, and Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald.

To Trace Murphy at Doubleday goes my thanks for his interest and support, especially as the concept for
All the Pope’s Men
took a few twists and turns along the way. To Tom Fox, Tom Roberts, and the rest of the team at the
National Catholic Reporter
go my thanks for their constant support, including allowing me to take three weeks in the summer of 2003 to work on this project. Cardinal James Francis Stafford, Archbishop Charles Chaput, Bishop Howard Hubbard, Gianni Cardinale, Sandro Magister, Fr. Tom Reese, Fr. Gerald O’Collins, Fr. Donald Cozzens, Phil Pullella, Greg Burke, Fr. John Huels, and Richard Gaillardetz were generous in reading portions of the manuscript and offering comments. Obviously, the book’s defects remain my own. The staff of the Park Hotel ai Cappuccini in Gubbio, Italy, was magnificent. I cannot recommend the facility or the people highly enough.

Much of this book was written in Gubbio from July 10–31, 2003. Word reached us upon our arrival that on July 9, 2003, Gary MacEoin had died at the age of ninety-four. Gary was a reporter, author, editor, and human rights activist who specialized in the politics and poverty of the Third World, especially Latin America, and a longtime contributor to the
National Catholic Reporter
. He was also a friend. It was Gary who had suggested to Shannon and I years ago that we should visit Gubbio, saying it was his favorite spot in Italy. We filed the information away for a rainy day and finally got around to acting on it when I needed a place to write. I believe it’s not an accident that I sat down to work on this book just as the lights finally went out in those magnificent Irish eyes, and that some of Gary’s magic was meant to find me here. I hope at least a small part of his passion and his integrity finds an echo in these pages.