The Great Reformer

by Austen Ivereigh

  Paul VI brought in two key collegial reforms in the teeth of opposition by some in the Vatican old guard. One was the synod of bishops that since 1967 has been held in Rome every two or three years, in which around 250 delegates of local Churches deliberate for three weeks on questions facing a particular region or matters affecting the universal Church. The other innovation was the creation of collegial bodies of bishops, both nationwide (thus, for example, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, or USCCB) and continent-wide. CELAM in Latin America was the pioneer of the second kind, which since the 1970s has inspired similar councils in Europe (CCEE), Africa (Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM), and Asia (The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, or FABC). Yet of these, only CELAM has had a strong identity, because its two great meetings at Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979) took place before John Paul II’s recentralizing drive of the 1980s and 1990s.

  John Paul II chose to govern monarchically. During his twenty-seven-year pontificate, collegiality was reinterpreted by the Vatican to refer to bonds of trust and fellowship between bishops and the See of Peter, rather than the local Church sharing in the governance of the universal Church. “Affective” collegiality came to replace “effective” collegiality. Synods became three-week talking shops rather than instruments of governance, their agendas and their conclusions carefully managed by the Roman Curia. At the same time, the new continent-wide bishops’ councils such as CELAM were warned not to improvise their own theology: there was only one “Magisterium,” or teaching authority, in the Church. In 1992, the same year that the CELAM gathering in Santo Domingo was steamrollered by the Vatican, the pope’s doctrinal watchdog took a position that looked to some critics as if it were harking back to the days before the Second Vatican Council. The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Joseph Ratzinger, claimed that the universal Church was “ontologically prior” to the local Church.2 This wasn’t merely a theological assertion. In the 1990s, bishops who visited Rome increasingly felt talked down to by the Vatican, as if they were mere delegates of the Curia.

  It was this growing concern that provoked the meetings at St. Gallen. Its bishop, Ivo Fürer, began in the late 1990s to host in his residence annual private meetings of concerned European cardinals and archbishops, which in themselves were expressions of collegiality. The dominant figure was the Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who until 2002 was the archbishop of Milan. Another senior cardinal, the archbishop of Brussels, Godfried Danneels, was also a significant voice in these meetings. There would normally be six or seven others around the table at the two-night meetings, drawn from across central and northern Europe. In 2001, the group was joined by three archbishops who were made cardinals in February 2001 alongside Bergoglio. One was Walter Kasper, the bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, who in 1999 was put in charge of the Vatican’s department for relations with Christians and Jews. The other two were the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany and England and Wales: Karl Lehmann, the bishop of Mainz in Germany, and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster, England. Others came and went, from France and central Europe, but these names formed the core of the St. Gallen group.

  Martini and Danneels, often dubbed by journalists as liberals or progressives, were more accurately described as reformers (riformisti) as opposed to the conservatives (rigoristi) who dominated John Paul II’s Curia. There were two different emphases involved: where the rigoristi wished Church teaching above all to be clear and unambiguous, the riformisti wished it to be credible in a pluralist society. Behind these two tendencies lurked two different ecclesiologies. The rigoristi wanted to tighten Vatican control over questions of doctrine and discipline, where the riformisti wanted greater freedom of action in applying church norms to local situations. The rigoristi liked to close down debate, making clear that norms were clear and unchanging; the riformisti preferred to keep some things open, believing that, in matters of ecclesiastical discipline, rather than unchanging doctrines of faith and morals, the local Church should help the universal Church discern the need for changes in pastoral practices.

  As senior churchmen and theologians who headed major metropolitan dioceses on the front lines of Europe’s increasingly secular, pluralistic societies, the riformisti were aware of the growing gap between the norms of the Church and the realities of people’s lives. For the St. Gallen group, the lack of collegiality was not just a theological question; it made it harder for the Church to evangelize. Another factor for the group—which included a number of senior churchmen on the front line of dialogue with other Churches—was that the lack of collegiality made the search for Christian unity much harder. For leaders of churches in the reformed or orthodox traditions, the assertion of papal power in the centuries after the Reformation was cited as a major stumbling block on the road to Christian unity. John Paul II had made an offer in 1995 to other Churches to help him find new ways of exercising his primacy. But it was hard to take the offer seriously at a time of increasing papal centralism, and little happened.3

  The St. Gallen group began meeting in the late 1990s, as John Paul II’s health began its sharp decline. Its figurehead, Cardinal Martini, told the 1999 synod on the topic of Europe that another gathering of the world’s bishops would be needed in order to implement collegiality, which the Second Vatican Council had called for but which had been frustrated by John Paul II’s Curia. Without, apparently, any sense of irony, the curial body that ran the synod suppressed the publication of the speech, which journalists only learned of from leaks.

  In addition to Martini, there were two major voices arguing for the restoration or implementation of collegiality at the time. One was the archbishop of San Francisco, John R. Quinn, whose best-selling book The Reform of the Papacy came out in 1999. The other was a member of the St. Gallen group: the German bishop theologian, Walter Kasper, who famously went head-to-head in a friendly theological dispute with Cardinal Ratzinger over the question of the primacy of the universal and local Church. In a widely published article in December 2000, which disputed Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1992 document, Kasper said that Cardinal Ratzinger’s argument became “really problematic when the one universal Church is identified with the Roman Church, and de facto with the Pope and the Roman Curia,” describing it as “an attempt to restore Roman centralism.” He went on to argue that collegiality was vital to resolve pastoral questions such as the admission of divorced and remarried persons to Communion, as well as making credible the Catholic invitation to unity with other Christians. Progress on unity depended, he argued, on this recognition of the value of the local Church. “The ultimate aim is not a uniform united Church, but one Church in reconciled diversity.” The phrase “reconciled diversity” was one Bergoglio adopted in Buenos Aires when discussing relations with other Christians and other faiths.4

  In their meetings during the winter years of John Paul II’s papacy (1999–2005), the St. Gallen group was concerned by the deterioration in the Vatican that an enfeebled pope was powerless to prevent. Under the secretary of state, Cardinal Sodano, the Curia had grown haughty and unaccountable, as well as intransigent. Sometimes its failures were linked to actual corruption, most notoriously in the case of Father Marcial Maciel, head of the conservative Mexican priests’ order, the Legionaries of Christ. There was mounting evidence that Maciel was a serial pedophile and drug addict. His regular donations to the Church via Sodano coincided with nine former members of the order going public with their accusations against Maciel, writing to the pope to complain of Vatican inaction, which continued for years. Ever since his days as nuncio in Latin America, Sodano had been Maciel’s supporter, and Sodano’s nephew Andrea had business dealings with him.5

  More often it was ineptitude, or sclerosis. But at times—as when cardinals publicly disagreed with one another over the ethics of condoms in the context of AIDS, say—it showed that the John Paul II model of central governance, built for clarity, was unable to tackle
new challenges. Even rigoristi criticized the synod as unwieldy and unproductive. As was clear from the Vatican’s response to the emerging clerical sex abuse crisis, there was a tone deafness, an insularity and defensiveness, which the St. Gallen group saw as fruit of an excessive centralism, symptoms of a Vatican turned in on itself, cut off from the realities and needs of the local Church.

  The problem was acute in the last years of John Paul II. He had been a compelling evangelizer, but a poor governor even when fit, an outsider to the Curia who had never been much interested in its inner workings. Now that he was no longer robust—his Parkinson’s diagnosis was made official in 2000—he remained the Church’s evangelizer in chief, giving a powerful witness through his public displays of weakness and vulnerability. But the Curia increasingly did its own thing, undermining that witness. Now, with the pope’s infirmity, the chances of reforming the Curia were increasingly remote.

  The St. Gallen group believed that what was needed was a thorough reform of governance, a restoration of the balance between the local and universal Churches, toward an authentic collegiality. They were not the only senior church leaders who agreed with this diagnosis and cure. Their view found a particular echo among Latin-American archbishops, not least because of CELAM’s long experience of exercising collegiality and its experience of Vatican centralism at Santo Domingo. A whole new generation of Latin-American pastoral leaders were about to be made cardinals. Among them was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, who was not only influenced by Martini, but had many of his own reasons for identifying with the St. Gallen group’s concerns.

  * * *

  EMERGING resolutely into a sunstruck St. Peter’s Square in flashing gold vestments, John Paul II’s disabilities seemed the last thing on his mind: he was eighty, struggled to walk and speak, was deaf in one ear, and had a face frozen by Parkinson’s, yet he was as commanding as ever, like a biblical patriarch. After his homily, in which he declared this to be a “great feast for the universal Church,” he created forty-four new cardinals, bringing to 135 the number of electors—that is, those under eighty years of age—who would vote for his successor. To each he handed a scarlet biretta and a scroll with the Titulus, placing them nominally in charge of a church in the diocese of Rome. No doubt because he was a Jesuit, Bergoglio was given the church of St. Robert Bellarmine, named after a famous seventeenth-century Jesuit cardinal.

  Among those who also stepped forward at that consistory in February 2001 was a diminutive seventy-two-year-old Vietnamese bishop who would die the following year. After Paul VI in 1975 named François Xavier Vân Thuân coadjutor archbishop of Saigon, the communists had sent him into the jungle, where he spent nine years in solitary confinement. It was a poignant reminder that the streams of scarlet in the square on the day of that consistory stood for the blood of martyrs. Five Loaves and Two Fish, Cardinal Vân Thuân’s meditations secretly penned on tiny scraps of paper, was among Bergoglio’s favorite spiritual reading. (Pope Francis would later put the cardinal on the path to sainthood.)

  The cardinals knew that their most solemn responsibility would be, at some point soon, to name John Paul II’s successor. This was the most global college of cardinals in history. The sixty-five Europeans—including twenty-four Italians—were still the largest continental grouping, but they were outnumbered for the first time by non-Europeans. Latin America now had twenty-seven cardinals, while North America, Africa, and Asia had thirteen each, and Oceania four.

  Among the other new cardinals that day was an Argentine, Jorge Mejía, head of the Vatican library, whom Bergoglio would become close to in his visits to Rome, and ten archbishops who ran dioceses in Latin America. Among these were four future close Bergoglio collaborators: Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Tegucicalpa in Honduras, recently stepped down as CELAM president, who had led the anti-Sodano rebellion in Santo Domingo in 1992; his successor as president of CELAM, the archbishop of Santiago in Chile, Francisco Errázuriz; and two Brazilians: the archbishop of São Paulo, Claudio Hummes, and Geraldo Majella Agnelo of Bahia.6

  From the boisterous crowd in St. Peter’s Square it seemed as if Latin America’s hour had already come. Yet there were few Argentines among them, because Bergoglio had stopped a campaign to raise funds for pilgrims to travel to Rome, telling its organizers to distribute what they had raised to the poor. During the consistory he opted for austerity and a low profile. Where others were put up in their colleges or hosted by relatives in large hotels, he stayed, as he always did in Rome, in a simple priests’ guesthouse at no. 70 Via della Scrofa, not far from the Piazza Navona, where he prayed at 4:30 a.m. before saying Mass in the chapel. Where others were driven to the Vatican by priest secretaries, he walked alone each morning over the Tiber; where others had ordered their scarlet vestments from Gamarelli, Rome’s ecclesiastical tailor, Bergoglio’s wore Quarracino’s hand-me-downs, taken in by the nuns; and where others—not least the energetic, communicative Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, a pilot and piano player—held press conferences and parties, Bergoglio put on his customary cloak of invisibility.

  He did, however, give a rare interview to La Nación, saying two red hats were an honor for Argentina, and that he shared his people’s pride. “I’m living this religiously,” he told Elisabetta Piqué, who later recalled his mixture of shyness and astuteness. “I pray about it, speak to the Lord about it, I plea on behalf of the diocese.” He didn’t feel promoted, he told her. “In Gospel terms, every elevation implies a descent; you have to abase yourself in order to serve better.” Asked if he agreed with being classified as a conservative in doctrine but progressive in social matters, he said such definitions always reduced people. “I try not be conservative, but faithful to the Church, yet always open to dialogue.”7

  John Paul II called the cardinals back to Rome in late May for a three-day, closed-door meeting known as an extraordinary consistory. The theme was how to increase communio in the Church, a theological term that referred to the bonds of unity. For the St. Gallen cardinals, communion needed to be both forged and expressed through greater effective collegiality, a case they made through the press: Lehmann said national bishops’ conferences should play a role in the Church’s decision making, while Danneels told journalists that “the theme of collegiality will be without doubt one of the major challenges for the third millennium.” Rodríguez Maradiaga echoed the call on behalf of the Latin-Americans: “All of us are convinced it is necessary to increase collegiality,” he told a press conference. But while, according to press leaks, Cardinals Martini, Danneels, Lehmann, and Murphy-O’Connor made similar calls inside the consistory, the issue was barely discussed. The secretariat of state had crowded the agenda with twenty-one points taken from the pope’s recent apostolic letter. The Curia was pushing back.8

  Bergoglio used this time to listen and bond with brother cardinals. He reconnected with Cardinal Martini, whom he had known since they were both delegates at the Jesuits’ General Congregation in 1974 and whose books he often quoted. Martini in turn introduced him to the St. Gallen group, initiating relationships that would develop on Bergoglio’s fleeting visits to Rome in the next years.

  In October Bergoglio was back in Rome for the third time that year as vice-chair of the bishops’ synod. His role was to assist the rapporteur (relator), Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, who arrived in Rome from a city devastated by the horror of 9/11. The topic, ironically, was the role of the bishop, which naturally raised the issue of the relationship of the episcopate to the Vatican. Yet collegiality was mentioned only twice in the forty-thousand-word working document. In June, the curial official in charge of the synod, Belgian cardinal Jan Schotte, insisted that there was no true collegiality outside an ecumenical council such as Vatican II, only “expressions” of it; this was the standard curial defense of the status quo.

  The point was not lost on those attending: here was a bishops’ synod being held on the topic of the bishop that excluded the topic of collegiality. Only half of the bishops’ confer
ences had sent in comments on the lofty, abstract working document sent out by the Curia, the lowest response rate in the synod’s history. When the meeting opened, John Paul II—exhausted from a recent visit to Azerbaijan—sat slumped in his chair, either dozing or reading. In the press hall, journalists joked that he was poring over the synod’s conclusions.

  Bergoglio’s own speech—brief, as ever—was a lyrical meditation on the distinction between, on the one hand, a bishop who oversees (supervisa) and watches over (vigila) his people, and on the other, one who keeps watch (vela) for them.

  Overseeing refers more to a concern for doctrine and habits, whereas keeping watch is more about making sure that there be salt and light in people’s hearts. Watching over speaks of being alert to imminent danger; keeping watch, on the other hand, speaks of patiently bearing the processes through which the Lord carries out the salvation of his people. To watch over it is enough to be awake, sharp, quick. To keep watch you need also to be meek, patient, and constant in proven charity. Overseeing and watching over suggest a certain degree of necessary control. Keeping watch, on the other hand, suggests hope, the hope of the merciful Father who keeps watch over the processes in the hearts of his children.9

  After the first week of speeches, when Cardinal Egan had to return unexpectedly to New York to lead a service of remembrance for the victims of 9/11, Bergoglio was appointed relator, responsible for distilling the 247 bishops’ speeches into a report, or relatio, that would shape the group discussions and conclusions. What he produced was concise and elegant and won plaudits all around. It captured the key themes as well as Bergoglio’s own idea of a bishop, one who has an option for the poor and a missionary approach, who “sets free values tainted by false ideologies,” and who is called to be “a prophet of justice,” in whom the marginalized, disappointed by their leaders, place their trust. Inside the hall, Bergoglio received high praise for the way he reflected bishops’ concerns without causing disunity. “What people admired him for was how he rescued the best of the synod debate despite the limitations of the structure and method,” recalls Bergoglio’s long-standing friend in Rome, Professor Guzmán Carriquiry.