To Kill the Pope (16 page)

Three years later, at the age of thirty-two, Roland received the doctorate: his dissertation was on Mission de France and its implications for the Church and secular ethics.

The 1950s were the heyday of Church intellectuals and Roland de Millefeuille was a rising star among them. His friends included a bishop from Orléans, himself a philosopher, who had converted from Judaism as a teenager during the war—his parents had emigrated from Poland to Paris and he was born there—and now was a leading thinker among Church liberals. On his advice, Roland applied to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to work on a doctorate in theology. His bishop friend had warned him “that it's no longer enough to have just
one
doctorate.” Roland's friendship with the “Jewish Bishop” won him still more hostility among the coterie of right-wing priests. This
is
interesting, Tim Savage thought, making a note in the fat ledger, the centerpiece of his growing papal dossier.

Roland remained in Rome for seven years, earning his theology doctorate and establishing a wide-ranging network of Curial friendships, a precious investment for the future. Elevated to the rank of monsignor, Roland de Millefeuille was drafted by the Secretariat of State as a speechwriter—in Latin—for Pope John XXIII. Early in 1962, the pope approved his nomination as bishop of the Fréjus-Toulon diocese, a choice appointment on the affluent Riviera; the diocese also comprised the great French naval base at Toulon and therefore high-level military connections.

Back in the south of France, Roland rediscovered his Provençal roots, addressing in Provençal the simple people in the fishing and hill villages, and his wealthier faithful in elegant French. Mass in those days was still said in Latin, the sixteenth-century Tridentine Mass inherited from the Council of Trent and Pope Pius V, its rigid implementor.

Roland, however, believed that for the Church to survive in the modern world, liturgy had to be modernized—and Mass celebrated in the vernacular, the language of the faithful in their country. He frequently wrote and spoke about it, winning further opprobrium among the traditionalist priests who began circulating letters in their dioceses sharply criticizing Roland. The letters attacking the bishop violated Church obedience rules, but the
authors were prepared to be in defiance to make their views heard.

As soon as he was installed in Fréjus, Roland had arranged for his seminary friend Romain de Sainte-Ange to join him at the diocese as administrator. They had stayed in touch over the years, though separated by distance, especially during Roland's long stay in Rome where Sainte-Ange managed to visit him only twice, but as bishop in Fréjus, Roland had the power to choose his deputies for the management of the diocese. At the time, Sainte-Ange was the parish priest of the largest church in Honfleur in Normandy, and there was no problem in having him transferred to Fréjus. Roland could not be happier: not only could he entrust the actual day-to-day administration of the diocese to his friend, but he had also acquired a loyal and absolutely discreet interlocutor with whom he could discuss his ideas about the future of the Church—and his own.

In October 1962, Roland was back in Rome to attend, with 2,859 fellow bishops from all over the world, the Second Vatican Council, convoked by Pope John XXIII to force the Church to enter the modern age. The first Vatican Council had been held in 1869 and 1870, nearly a century earlier. Roland was assigned to the drafting of the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, which, for the first time, authorized the use of the vernacular in celebrating Mass—Roland's dream—and the drafting of the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions. These were magnificent assignments for an ambitious intellectual prelate, and Bishop de Millefeuille turned into an outstanding figure at the Council. He formed strong friendships throughout the world Church, among Western and Eastern European bishops, North and Latin Americans, Asians and Africans. As he told a biographer many years later, “I was privileged to help build the
true
universal Church . . .”

Tim Savage found it extremely interesting that Roland had been a coauthor of the
Nostra Aetate (In Our Time
) declaration, which, in a historical breakthrough for the Church, had affirmed that Jesus' Crucifixion “cannot be blamed on all the Jews living without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today.” He wondered whether this pro-Jewish stand could have triggered enough resentment among
Muslims to result in an assassination attempt, now that Roland was pope? Could it explain why the Turk, a Muslim, was the shooter? Tim knew that most Muslims were not viscerally or fanatically anti-Jewish in the religious sense, but Islamic fundamentalism was rising rapidly—the 1979 revolution in Iran, led by fanatic mullahs, was certainly a worrisome example—and a conspiracy against Gregory XVII could not be ruled out altogether.

But was it not equally plausible, Tim asked himself, that the plot had been hatched by extreme right-wing Catholics, priests, or laymen, who were fundamentalists in their own way? No, he decided, it was too absurd. We are not living in the Middle Ages, when popes were murdered at regular intervals for religious reasons, real or imagined. Tim still had no clues to point him in any convincing direction. He noted that Sainte-Ange had accompanied Roland to the Council, but there was nothing to indicate whether he had influenced his friend in any fashion or how he reacted to conciliar texts coauthored by the Fréjus bishop.

*  *  *

In the post-Council years, Roland was busy actively building his Church career. In 1967, he was named archbishop of Marseille by the pope. Not only was this familiar territory from his young worker-priest days, but now he had to live with the new realities of France—and of the Church. Algeria's independence, which Roland had supported from the outset, filled the French Mediterranean coast with
Pieds-Noirs,
French colonialists expelled from their North African ancestral homes, and still another wave of young Arabs fleeing to the urban centers to find work. Social tensions, already exacerbated by youth rebellions of 1968 across France, were barely controllable in Marseille and along the entire southern coast. The new archbishop had to act as pastor to the faithful; conciliator between employers and workers; adviser to the police, the
gendarmerie,
and local politicians; preacher of racial and religious tolerance; and executor of Vatican theological instructions. In 1970, Roland de Millefeuille became cardinal, the first name on the pope's consistory list that year. He was fifty-two years old, full of ideas, energy, and very strong opinions. He moved to Rome once again, this time to be prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, a powerful post rarely given to a newcomer to the College of Cardinals.
But the old pope saw the future of the Church in Roland, a notion fully but quietly shared by the new cardinal.

Eight years later, the old pope died peacefully, and his duly elected successor died mysteriously after a month on St. Peter's throne. The conclave, back at work at the Sistine Chapel, found itself stalemated by the rivalry of two Italian cardinals, rapidly concluding that it had to turn to France, the country that had already provided nine popes. Turning to France meant electing Cardinal Roland de Millefeuille, the charm-blessed intellectual with a social conscience, two doctorates, a distinguished role at the Vatican Council, enviable political and diplomatic acumen, impeccable pastoral credentials, an impressive strength of character—and powerful friends in the College of Cardinals who elect popes.

At sixty, his age was perfect for the papacy: his pontificate would probably be neither too short nor too long, which was the way cardinals wished it to be. Thus Roland de Millefeuille of Avignon became Pope Gregory XVII, the pontiff of the enchanting smile and steel-trap mind. The cardinals explained that they had been inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Gregory the Great, as Tim Savage noted, wrote once: “I am ready to die rather than allow the Church of the Apostle Saint Peter to degenerate in my day.” That was in the sixth century. Roland de Millefeuille would do no less in the twentieth century.

*  *  *

Tim Savage finally put down Gregory XVII's biography, having underlined what struck him as revealing passages, making copious notes in his ledger, and placing questions and exclamation marks wherever something had caught his special attention. In the ledger's section dealing with the pope's personal history, Tim wrote, CONCLUSION: MANY ENEMIES—MANY FRIENDS, then listed names, organizations, and governments in each column, assigning plausible but tentative motives under MANY ENEMIES. He chose not to put down comments under FRIENDS; his intelligence training had taught him that one could never be certain who might be on
his
trail, following him, possibly breaking into his room, and finding the ledger, though it was locked inside a safe Tim had bought. Mild paranoia is part of the craft of intelligence. His comments about ENEMIES were essentially obvious, and it would
not really matter if they were read by one or another of the “enemies.” Comments about “friends,” however, should not fall into the wrong hands; it was none of the business of the “enemies” who were the significant “friends” of Gregory XVII and how they could be relied upon in the course of Tim's investigation.

Studying Church history at the Jesuit seminary, Tim had naturally become familiar with endless schisms and heresies, great and small, divisions, internecine battles, and conspiracies of every imaginable type affecting Christianity over the past two millennia, or nearly so, since the dawning of the Christian era. But now Tim was curious about the relations over the centuries between France and the Holy See, hoping that he might come upon some useful lead. It was uncanny how history, even fairly ancient history, could help one comprehend certain contemporary realities. Religions and nations have eternal memories, always ready to act upon them. Wars, civil or otherwise, over religion and its interpretations had been as common in the first Christian century as they were in the twentieth: they involved early Christian heresies; battles over the Protestant Reform; modern fundamentalism among Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims; conflicts between Muslims and Hindus; and so on and on. And in the case of France and the Roman Church, history was unbelievably intractable, contradictory, petulant, and violent.

*  *  *

It began in the second half of the fifth century when Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, converted to Christianity—his Christian wife, Princess Clotilda, had long urged him to do so—in gratitude to God for victory over his enemies, the Alemanni, the Germans of the day. Clovis was baptized by St. Remigius in Reims on Christmas Day of 496, along with three thousand Franks. Becoming one of Europe's most powerful rulers, Clovis made Paris the capital of his kingdom, erecting the Church of Holy Apostles, known later as St. Geneviève's. His soldiers were armed with battle-axes known as
franciscas,
one of France's early claims to glory. Today, as Tim learned, Clovis is still celebrated by the Church as the hero who made France its “First Daughter.”

Urban II, the first French pope, who reigned for thirty-seven years from the late eleventh to early twelfth century, was a passionately
obsessed and zealous Church reformer. He was determined to make the Church pure, excommunicating in the process Catholic sovereigns across Europe and savagely persecuting bishops and archbishops who resisted reform and insisted on corrupt practices. He was, of course, the same pope who had proclaimed the First Crusade against the Islam “infidels” of Palestine in 1095. Did Islam fundamentalists today remember that crusading Frenchman? Probably not, Tim decided, but made a notation under ENEMIES in his ledger.

At the outset of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III, an Italian, launched the European crusade against Cathar heretics—also known as Albigensians—in the south of France in alliance with the French king, Philip Augustus, whom he had earlier attempted to turn into his vassals. The Albigensian Crusade soon exploded into a civil war between northern and southern French aristocracy, with Innocent III fully in support of Philip Augustus and the northerners. Tens of thousands of the southern heretics, the “pure ones,” were burned at the stake or otherwise liquidated with the pope's enthusiastic blessings. This put the French in Innocent's debt, not long after northern French priests and laymen loudly demanded independence from Rome for their Church.

Reading up on the Cathars, Tim was uncertain how they should be listed in his ledger: as FRIEND or ENEMY? He was now aware that this ancient heresy and its dreadful consequences had not been forgotten. Thus Frenchmen in the south may feel atavistic hatred toward Rome and the northerners may feel gratitude—or none of the above. Besides, this was Gregory XVII's corner of the world. Tim just placed a question mark over the episode; his instinct told him that it was not unimportant in the broad scheme of things.

A half-century later, France surged as Europe's superpower, forcing the papacy into submission to the French crown. Curiously, the French power had been consolidated by Louis IX, a pious king who was later canonized by the Church. During the fourteenth century, relations between the Roman Church and the French oscillated crazily. Elected in 1305, the French pope Clement V refused to reside in Rome because of internal Italian conflicts and, instead, established Avignon as the pontifical See for a long period of what
was called the “Babylonian Exile” of the popes. The Church became even more submissive to France. With five more French pontiffs ruling from Avignon and the College of Cardinals packed with Frenchmen, the Church soon resembled a French institution. Only in 1362, Urban V, himself a Frenchman, returned the Apostolic See to Rome.

In 1404, cardinals in Rome elected as pope a Neapolitan who took the name of Innocent VII, but who had to compete with Benedict XXIII, a Spaniard and the second of the four “antipopes” elected by French cardinals in Avignon and who held court at Avignon. This was the time of the “Great Schism” in the Church, pitting Rome against France. Benedict, of course, had the support of the French crown. Gregory XII became pope in 1406 on Innocent's death, but he and Benedict could not come to terms. Meanwhile the French Church turned its back on Benedict, and Martin V, an Italian, was chosen in 1417, ending the “Great Schism.” At that point, Tim Savage's head had begun to swim as he strove to understand the vagaries in the conflicts between France and Rome.