One of the first things Karol Wojtyla did on his election to the papacy in 1978 was to install a twenty-five-metre swimming pool at his summer residence at Castelgandolfo. Winters might see him taking off for an impromptu day’s skiing in the Abruzzi mountains, where police close off a piste for his private use; in the summer months a helicopter ride to a suitable glacier enables the pope to indulge further in his favourite sport. Yet he has been known to address the people of Sardinia with these words: “How easy it would be to demonstrate that the ‘fabulous riches’ which from time to time public opinion attributes to the Church, are often insufficient for the modest and legitimate needs of ordinary life”.
Such facts emerge in a chapter of God’s Politician entitled “Peter’s Pence”, demonstrating the ‘warts and all’ treatment the author gives to the subject of the book.
The rise of Karol Wojtyla
God’s Politician surveys the work of John Paul and the Vatican State since this first Polish pope took office. The author examines the pope’s early life and the career path that led him to the Universal Church’s highest office, his involvement in the Polish Solidarity movement and his growing influence in Eastern Europe. The book also considers the pope’s attitude to other believers, his dealings with non-conforming Catholics and dissension within the Church’s hierarchy. The celibate papacy’s inflexibility on birth control in the face of an enormous population explosion is given considerable coverage, as well as its use of riches in the face of a world in want.
The author, David Willey (a cradle Catholic), is a BBC foreign correspondent, who broadcasts on Vatican affairs and who has travelled with John Paul II on his many foreign travels. Willey writes in his prologue: “Long-time residence in Rome, under three popes, and growing familiarity with the Vatican and with Karol Wojtyla and his retinue during their worldwide peregrinations, have left me simultaneously fascinated and appalled by his Universal Church. My faith in God is intact, but my allegiance to the Roman Church has been suspended while I examine this brief Polish interlude in its long history”.
The international pope
John Paul’s endeavours in Europe greatly interest the Bible student, and David Willey makes some shrewd comments on the pope’s aspirations in that area, quoting his address to the European Parliament in 1988: “My wish, knowing the aspirations of the Slav people, is that one day, through the creation of free institutions with sovereign power, Europe may once again cover its true geographical and even more important, historical, dimensions”.
Referring to John Paul’s globetrotting, Willey observes: “All the Pope’s travels were merely stopping places on his road to Moscow, the Third Rome. The political fragmentation of the Soviet Union … opened up ‘exceptional new opportunities’ for the Vatican, in John Paul’s own words”. Later in the book Willey devotes three pages to the development of the concept of Moscow as “the Third Rome”. He also traces the dramatic ascent of Lech Walesa, pointing out how the pope had been ultimately responsible for his elevation from shipyard electrician to Polish president: “From Rome the Pope encouraged, advised and provided a constant reference point for Lech Walesa and the strongly Roman Catholic Solidarity movement. He is also believed to have channelled funds to Solidarity through the Vatican’s offshore bank”. (This influence in Poland is only one example of the Vatican’s international influence. Willey reflects on the fall from power of several late-twentieth-century dictators in principally Catholic countries—Marcos, Duvalier, Pinochet, Jaruzelski, Ortega and Stroessner among them—after a visit from Pope John Paul.)
God’s Politician gives details of the 128 countries John Paul II visited in his first thirteen years—journeys involving 750,000 kilometres of travel and 1,670 speeches in 500 different cities and towns. Compared with the eighteen trips abroad of his predecessor but one, Paul VI (the first pope since the Napoleonic Wars to travel outside Italy), the Polish pope emerges as distinctly zealous.
The Holy See runs one of the most extensive and cost-effective diplomatic services in the world, spending ten million dollars per annum on its representatives in 125 countries. There are eight language desks of the Secretariat of State, and Vatican diplomats report to them from the world’s capitals via telegram and diplomatic bag.
Vatican control
Until the reign of Paul VI, the Roman Curia was Italian dominated. It was he who commenced a process of internationalisation which has continued under John Paul II. Now Germany, Czechoslovakia, Africa, France and Australia are represented in the Vatican’s high offices. This is not to say, though, that such an international flavour reflects a cross section of world Catholic opinion. According to Willey, the ‘pope’s men’ are very much his own appointees, and their total obedience and discretion is assumed. From his close vantage point the author observes that “John Paul’s chief political instrument in imposing his views on the Catholic Church has been the appointment of bishops who are docile, totally in accordance with Roman thinking and who are not prone to asking awkward questions”.
Willey also notes that the Holy Inquisition, founded in the sixteenth century to counter the Reformation, still exists under the name “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”. Willey cites a modern case of its work as follows. Bernard Haring, a theologian eminent in the Roman Catholic world, had suggested that priests should not become involved in conjugal ethics or instruct couples on how many children to have and when. Appalled, Vatican experts commenced a minute study of Haring’s works, searching for theological error. (Meanwhile the seriously ill theologian underwent seven major operations.) Later Haring was to compare these relentless activities of the Holy See with his World War 2 experiences under Hitler, saying that he would “rather find himself back in the dock in one of Hitler’s courts (as had happened on four occasions) than be called to explain himself again in Rome”.
In his book Faith, History, Morals Haring wrote: “The church could well go on living without such an institution (its Inquisition) … Amnesty International should also have a look inside the Vatican. The Holy Office is a poisoned lake where healthy fish cannot swim. It is a combination of ignorance and arrogance, run by ecclesiastics who are career terrorists”.
The Vatican Bank
David Willey does not touch on the mysterious death of John Paul I, but gives substantial attention to the possibly related intrigue which involved the collapsed Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank, through its then chief banker, Archbishop Paul Marcinckus.
In June 1982 Banco Ambrosiano’s Director General, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging under London’s Blackfriars Bridge after telling his wife, “The priests are out to get me”. Months of haggling ensued between Italian and Vatican experts, but there was no agreement on the Vatican Bank’s responsibility in the Ambrosiano affair. Three further years of negotiations resulted in a final settlement with the 119 foreign banks who claimed that they had been defrauded by Calvi. Without formally admitting liability, the Vatican paid out $240,822,222 as its ‘voluntary’ share of the settlement, the Italian Government making up the rest. Paul Marcinckus was allowed to carry on in office until 31 October 1990, when, it is said, he asked the pope’s permission to return to the United States to continue his pastoral work, “enriched by my priesthood”.
Life in Vatican City
David Willey provides fascinating glimpses into life in the world’s smallest state. The Vatican apparently issues its own car licence plates (the pope’s stretched Mercedes registration reads SCV001, standing for Vatican City State). The 110-acre kingdom has its own railway station with duty-free goods, a helipad for the pope’s travels, a mint producing its own coinage, a post office issuing its own stamps, a police station, supermarket, half-price petrol station, library, fire brigade, radio station broadcasting in thirty-two languages, a newspaper and publishing house, a bank, prison, court of law, press office, fine-arts restoration department, and a pharmacy, which apparently does a fine trade in tranquillisers.
God’s Politician, at £14.99, is a relatively expensive book (although the reviewer’s local library was happy to obtain a copy). Some sections are of only casual interest to the Christadelphian reader (for example, the pope’s attitude to contraception and abortion in the face of the world population explosion). However, the book’s value lies in the author’s first-hand analysis of an organisation which features prominently in Biblical prophecy and which will retain a key role in world events till our Lord’s coming.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)