‘Don’t forget the context: before 1989, rumours of homosexuality and paedophilia were constantly used by the Polish secret services to discredit opponents of the regime. Being used to blackmail and political manipulations, John Paul II and his assistant Dziwisz never wanted to believe in any of those rumours. Their mentality was that of the besieged fortress: enemies of the Church were trying to compromise the priests. So they had to show solidarity, whatever the cost.’
Adam Szostkiewicz of the newspaper Polityka completely agrees, but with one reservation: ‘John Paul II had his precise goal and political agenda with regard to Poland and communism. He never deviated from that trajectory. And he was barely concerned with his entourage, or with the morality of his supporters.’
It is likely that the national forces of law and order who are investigating sexual abuse in the Church in dozens of countries will one day shed some light on these mysteries. For now, Stanisław Dziwisz has not been troubled by the law, no complaints or charges have ever been brought against him, and he is enjoying a very active retirement in Kraków. But if one day he was to be implicated in any investigation, the very image of John Paul II’s pontificate would be sullied to its heart.
The next day I go back to Kanonicza Street, and Cardinal Dziwisz receives me for a second informal interview. He is more incautious, less controlled than his friends Cardinals Sodano, Sandri or Re. More spontaneous.
I have brought the ‘little white book’, and he opens the wrapping paper with delight.
‘Is this your book?’ he asks me, full of kindness again, now remembering that I am a journalist and writer.
‘No, it’s a present: a little white book that I’m very fond of,’ I say.
He looks at me with a hint of surprise, amused now that a stranger should come all the way from Paris to give him a book. I am struck by his eyes, they are identical to the ones I have seen so often in photographs: the greedy and idolatrous eye is more eloquent than the tongue. It is a very reproachful look.
We resume our game. The cardinal asks me to dedicate my present to him, and he lends me his fountain pen. Meanwhile he disappears into an ante-room and I hear him opening drawers and cupboards. He comes back with four presents for me: a photograph, a lovely-looking book and two rosaries, one with black beads, one with white, bearing on their fine verdigris-coloured cases a coat of arms with his effigy. His episcopal motto is simple: ‘Sursum Corda’ (‘Raise your hearts’). On the train back to Warsaw, I will give one of these rosaries to a passenger in a wheelchair. The man, a practising Catholic who suffers from Parkinson’s, will tell me that he studied at the John Paul II University in Kraków, and knows the name of Dziwisz, whom he venerates.
The photograph I have been given shows John Paul II holding an animal in his arms.
‘It’s a lamb,’ Dziwisz tells me, himself as gentle as a lamb.
Now the cardinal dedicates the book of photographs to me with his beautiful pen, in a prince’s tiny black-ink handwriting.
‘You’re a writer, Frédéric: how do you spell your name in French?’ he asks me.
‘Frédéric, like Frédéric Chopin.’
He gives me the present and I thank him for it, even though the book is horrible, useless and vain.
‘You’re very likeable for a journalist. Really very likeable,’ Dziwisz insists.
Since he is forbidden the ‘companionship of women’, I sense his Cracovian ennui, his weariness, having once been in the spotlight, at the right hand of the man who was guiding the course of the world. In Rome, he knew all the seminarians and all the Swiss Guards by their first names. Time has passed, and the old bachelor has ceased to count his widowhoods. In Kraków the old man in his holy robe, grieving, a young pensioner, questions me. Not even a companion.
‘No, I’m not bored here. I prefer Kraków to Rome,’ Dziwisz tells me, apparently not a man given to blushing.
We’re no longer alone now. A bishop has come in. He bows deeply, addressing Dziwisz with a very reverential ‘Eminence’.
I tell the cardinal, with irony and a hint of shame, that I have never used the term ‘Eminence’; he bursts out laughing, taking me by the hand as if bringing me into his confidence, as if saying that it isn’t serious, that titles are of no use, that he really doesn’t care. As if, having returned from his season in hell: ‘I’m not an eminence! I’m a widow!’
To understand John Paul II’s pontificate we must therefore leave the concentric circles that surround the pope. The first ring is that of those closest to him, of whom Stanisław Dziwisz is the central link. The secretary of state, Agostino Casaroli, isn’t part of this group. In reality he didn’t really work well as a team with the pope. The relationship between the two men soon experienced tensions, sometimes with vehement debate, and Casaroli, who was averse to conflict, suggested resigning several times, according to a number of sources, all of which agree. These tensions didn’t leak to the outside world: the relationship between the two men invariably appeared fluid since Casaroli always yielded to the pope’s demands. As a good diplomat, he played from the score he was given, even if he didn’t approve of it. But in private their relationship deteriorated, about fundamental principles and about the choice of men.
About communism, first of all: Cardinal Casaroli was a man of the Cold War, and barely anticipated the fall of communism, even though it was what he desired. In a book of interviews, Pope Benedict XVI would confirm this point: ‘It was obvious that in spite of all his good intentions, Casaroli’s policy had essentially failed … It was clear that rather than trying to placate [the communist regime] with compromises, we had to stand up to it. That was John Paul II’s point of view and I approved of it.’ On this subject, it is quite plain that history proved the Polish pope right, since he is considered today as one of the chief architects of the fall of communism.
The other tension between the holy father and his ‘prime minister’ arose around the choice of men. Was this the tragedy of Casaroli’s succession, as some have said to me? In any case, the old and powerful cardinal, condemned to retirement having reached the age limit, in December 1990 (even though the pope could have deferred it), wanted to see a close colleague and his deputy appointed in his place: Achille Silvestrini. The relationship between these two men was magnetic and long-lasting. They had often worked in tandem: Silvestrini was his private secretary before becoming his deputy; he would write the preface for his posthumous memoirs. The Italian press even mentioned legal documents about their supposed ‘financial association’: the two prelates were said to have been complicit in under-the-table financial dealings, which they shared. This was never proven. (I met Mgr Achille Silvestrini in his private apartment inside the Vatican, near the Piazza del Forno: we exchanged a few words, a few glances, and his team wanted us to take a selfie, but he was ill and, at 95, too old for his testimony to be of use.)
What is known, however, is how close Casaroli and Silvestrini were to one another; and when I interview cardinals and bishops about this curious relationship, my question usually provokes what we might call ‘knowing smiles’. Few prelates lay their cards on the table; few will call a spade a spade. Their answers are metaphorical, sometimes poetic, and I understand that hidden behind those smiles there are secrets that no one wants to reveal. Then they resort to highly allusive images. Are they ‘of the parish’? Have they ‘eaten of the cursed bread’? Do they form an ‘unusual household’?
Some will say that I am being bold with my hypotheses; to tell the truth, I’m not nearly bold enough. It’s simply that I sometimes have to attribute to hearsay what could have been written as fact! And this is what I can state now, more boldly:
Contrary to countless rumours, Casaroli doesn’t seem to have been Silvestrini’s lover. Let’s listen to the former Curia priest Francesco Lepore, who was assistant to several cardinals, and who is for the first time in public revealing what he knows about the Casaroli–Silvestrini household: ‘First of all, Casaroli was homosexual and everyone i
n the Vatican knew it. He liked young men, not minors, no, but young adults. It is quite certain that Silvestrini was one of his “creatures”. But they were probably never lovers, because Casaroli liked younger men.’ (More than a dozen priests have confirmed these inclinations of Casaroli’s, some even informing me that they had intimate relations with him.)
Father Federico Lombardi, the former spokesman of the three last popes, didn’t even want to discuss the hypothesis of Casaroli’s homosexuality when I questioned him on the subject during one of our five interviews: ‘All of these accusations of homosexuality are a little excessive,’ he tells me. ‘Of course there are homosexuals [in the Church], that’s obvious. There are even a few who are more obvious than the others. But I refuse to read things that way, and to believe that homosexuality is an explanatory factor.’
What is certain is that the two men in this strange household, Casaroli and Silvestrini, always helped one another, sharing friendships and hatreds. So, for example, they always remained suspicious of John Paul II’s new ‘minister’ of foreign affairs, Angelo Sodano, who had had his eye on Casaroli’s post since 1989, when he came back from Chile.
Did this plotter want the job promised to Silvestrini? They reassured themselves as best they could, remembering that John Paul II had just appointed Silvestrini as prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, and created him a cardinal as a sign of his support before the promotion he dreamed of.
‘I met Silvestrini just before the fateful day, and he was already behaving as if he were secretary of state,’ the Slovene cardinal Franc Rodé told me during an interview in his Vatican office.
Rodé came from the communist bloc, and analysed the choice between Silvestrini and Sodano as a rational and political one: ‘I was in Slovenia, and, like John Paul II, I sensed that communism was in its death throes. We might say that Casaroli represented the left wing. Some will even say that Casaroli was the soft line and Silvestrini was the soft line of the soft line. John Paul II favoured someone on the right. Sodano was an upright man, a man of wisdom and loyalty.’
Everyone understood why John Paul II hesitated. And what should only have been a formality went on for ever. But the pope reassured Casaroli, confirming that, since he was unaccustomed to Roman intrigues and not greatly interested in Italian affairs, he wanted to take an Italian as his deputy.
Casaroli showed considerable mettle in defence of his young protégé. Some first-hand witnesses of his campaign testify to this: they describe it in terms of a Shakespearian epic, one which was prepared for like the Battle of Agincourt by Henri V: others – more French – prefer to describe it as a Napoleonic conquest, which started with Austerlitz but ended in Waterloo; others, probably more fairly, speak of a cunning campaign in which all kinds of low blows were possible, not to mention wounds to self-esteem. Finally, one priest cited Plato and his praise of pairs of soldiers who always go into combat together, and who are, by virtue of this fact, the bravest and the most invincible, even unto death.
‘To say that Casaroli “wanted” Silvestrini hardly corresponds to reality,’ Cardinal Paul Poupard says by way of nuance. ‘Casaroli had a preference, but he knew that the choice would be down to the pope. Which didn’t stop him trying to push Silvestrini’s candidacy and bringing out his great guns.’
In spite of the insistent pressure of Casaroli, John Paul II finally dropped Silvestrini in favour of Angelo Sodano. And since the Vatican is a fierce theocracy where, as in Silicon Valley, ‘the winner takes all’, Casaroli retired immediately afterwards to devote himself to helping delinquent boys in a prison in Rome. Silvestrini, hurt and depressed, would soon join the liberal opposition to Sodano and Ratzinger (the so-called ‘St Gallen Group’), and would turn his attention to a school for orphans in the district of Cornelia in Rome (where I went to interview his close colleagues, particularly Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli).
Two men from the Vatican who spent time with Casaroli during the last years of his life have told me of their exchanges. These testimonies come from first hand. The former ‘prime minister’ to the pope did not conceal from them his liking for young men, or his bitterness towards John Paul II, or his criticisms of Sodano. These witnesses, who told me of his words and his wounds, were also surprised when they visited him in his private apartment in the Vatican, to discover photographs of naked men hanging on the walls.
‘One might say that they were artistic photographs, but obviously I wasn’t falling for that one,’ one of Casaroli’s friends confides in me.
An archbishop from the Curia also tells me that Casaroli had a work of art showing St Sebastian in that private apartment. ‘There were lots of jokes about that painting, and someone even advised the former secretary of state to hide it in his bedroom.’
And the archbishop, who fears that he’s gone too far, adds to reduce the tension: ‘You must bear in mind that Casaroli was an aesthete …’
According to a reliable Vatican diplomatic source, the artistic inclinations of Casaroli and his dealings with young men were used against him by the advocates of Angelo Sodano’s candidacy. That of Silvestrini was torpedoed when the pope was told that he had been checked by the police, twice, near the Valle Giulia in Rome, where there are several contemporary art museums.
‘That unfounded rumour, that little piece of gossip, was the Judas kiss,’ observes someone familiar with the file.
The harshness of his confrontation and this rumour-mongering had little to do with Silvestrini’s eviction, according to other cardinals and Vaticanologists who I interviewed. One of them even assures me: ‘It wasn’t an interpersonal question for John Paul II: you have to think about these choices in terms of a political line. As soon as the Berlin Wall came down, John Paul II chose to get rid of Casaroli. It was almost automatic. And, by definition, the pope didn’t intend to allow his line to perpetuate itself, which would have been the case if he had appointed Silvestrini in his place. In fact, from the outset, Silvestrini didn’t have a chance. And Sodano was chosen.’
Angelo Sodano was of a different stripe altogether. He was the ‘villain’ of John Paul II’s pontificate – and he is the ‘villain’ of this book. We will get to know him well. A diplomat like Casaroli, with a dry intelligence, more discreet than most cardinals, with a metallic gaze, Sodano is presented by all those who know him as a Machiavellian cardinal for whom the end always justifies the means. He is the ‘éminence noire’, not just ‘grise’, in all the blackness and opacity of the term. For a long time he too has had the whiff of sulphur about him.
His campaign to become John Paul II’s ‘prime minister’ was an effective one. Sodano’s anti-communism won out over the moderation of Casaroli and, on the rebound, of Silvestrini. The fall of the Berlin Wall, which had taken place a few months earlier, probably persuaded the pope that a ‘hard’ line (like Sodano’s) was preferable to a ‘soft’ one (like Casaroli’s or Silvestrini’s).
To ideology we must add differences in personality.
‘From the pope’s trip to Chile, where he was nuncio, Sodano struck him as a strong personality, even though he appeared very effeminate. He was tall, very bulky; he looked like a mountain. He had a lot of authority. That was also his strength: he was very loyal and docile. He was the exact opposite of Casaroli,’ Francesco Lepore tells me.
Federico Lombardi, who ran Radio Vatican at the time, and who would go on to become spokesman for John Paul II and Benedict XVI, completes this portrait of his character. ‘Angelo Sodano was efficient. He had a systematic cast of mind. He was a good organizer. Certainly, he lacked creativity, there were no surprises up his sleeve, but that was what the pope was after.’
It appears that John Paul II’s private secretary, Stanisław Dziwisz, played a part in this nomination, favouring Sodano’s candidacy. According to the testimony of an influential layman in the Vatican: ‘Casaroli was a very powerful secretary of state. He knew how to say “no” to the pope. Dziwisz wanted an inoffensive person in the post, a go
od functionary who was capable of doing the job, but who would say “yes”. And everyone who, like me, lived inside the Vatican during John Paul II’s pontificate knew very well that it was Dziwisz who was in charge.’
This entourage that Dziwisz and Sodano formed around the pope was far from anodyne. What a strange duo! These two characters will occupy our attention for a long time in this book.
Today Angelo Sodano lives in a very luxurious penthouse on the top floor of a place called the ‘Ethiopian College’ in the heart of the Vatican. He is locked up in his African ivory tower, with all his secrets. If the Garden of Eden ever existed, it must be like this little earthly paradise: when I go there, crossing a bridge, I find myself among impeccably tended lawns and fragrant magnolias. It’s a Mediterranean garden, with pines and cypresses and, of course, olive trees. In the surrounding cedars I see purple-headed and moustachioed parrots, elegant and multi-coloured, whose mellifluous voices doubtless wake Cardinal Sodano from his slumbers.
Still reflecting on these beautiful long-tailed birds at the Ethiopian College, I am suddenly approached by a passing African bishop who lives there, Musie Ghebreghiorghis, a Franciscan who comes from the small town of Emdibir, 180 kilometres from Addis Ababa. The bishop shows me around his college, with Antonio Martínez Velásquez, a Mexican journalist and one of my main researchers, and talks to us at length about Angelo Sodano and his darkness. Because Musie is very unhappy: ‘It’s an abuse. Sodano shouldn’t be living there. This is the Ethiopian College; so it’s for Ethiopians …’
The reason for his discontent, and that of the other Ethiopian priests living in the college: the presence of Angelo Sodano, who has privatized the top floor of the establishment. For Musie Ghebreghiorghis, Sodano should never have been given permission to live there. (Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Bertone will also criticize this privatization.)
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 26