About the Second Four Months of Pope John Paul

Photographs of smiling Communist authorities welcoming Pope John Paul II to Poland bring to mind the fact that for another Communist in authority, Mayor Giulio Carlo Argan of Rome, the presence of this Pope in the Chair of Peter has meant continuous headaches. Last week, in an effort to do something about it, he dispatched a letter to the Vatican's newly appointed pro-Secretary of State, Archbishop Casaroli, which read in part, "The influx from every country of people who want to see the Pope and hear his words becomes daily more burdensome. Rome has always welcomed tourists and pilgrims, friendly hospitality is in her tradition, but the imposing proportions of this traffic in conjunction with the comportment of the individual groups creates a problem so serious that only the combined efforts of religious and civil authorities can overcome them.

"The greatest trouble, the presence for long hours of hundreds of enormous tourist buses along the narrow, historic streets within a wide radius of the Vatican, paralyzes the circulation of traffic, fills the air with exhaust fumes and endangers children at play. Then there is the fact that every shady park bench in the same wide area is filled immediately after the general audiences with tourists eating their packaged lunches, strewing their garbage around and trampling the plants. Rome is a city that prides itself on keeping decent but this kind of treatment surpasses every tolerable limit."

The Mayor goes on to say that if the Vatican does not finally agree to sit down and discuss the matter with him and the traffic commissioner the municipal government will be forced reluctantly to begin making prohibitions and exacting fines.

Already by Easter the usual flock of 3000 to 4000 pilgrims coming to Pope Paul's general audiences had grown to 100,000 for Pope John Paul. There was nothing to do but to hold the talks outside in the piazza. When 29 people fainted in the noonday sun and pressure about the buses began to be felt from city hall, the meeting was moved from noon to six p.m. This solved the heat and the garbage problem but only shifted the traffic jams from the noon rush hour to the evening rush hour. As I write, the Polish journey is giving a week's respite but the heavy tourist season is yet to begin. There is talk of parking the buses inside the walls of Vatican City—piled one on top of the other this might work—of restricting the numbers at each audience and, if the Pope and the rest of his schedule can stand it, of having three audience days every week.

Happier than the Mayor about the turn of events is the Marquese Travigliano de Sta. Rita, head of Italian State Tourism. In announcing the fact that every hotel room in the city is booked until October he said, "We are glad and proud!"

How glad and proud we would be if this new Pope with the compelling personality were bringing the crowds back to the True Church ... if his success in Rome, in Mexico, in Poland were not a success of the Conciliar Church! But many millions of Catholics, conservatives among them, are rejoicing. Fr. Paul Crane, S.J., editor of Christian Order, writes: "I am sure the present Pope is the man the Church needs at this moment." That he is the man the debilitated Conciliar Church needs is certain. This "new way of being Christian" is sure to gain credibility in the eyes of the average believer. It was so in Mexico; it will be so in Poland. Indeed, it is touching to see how eagerly people rally to this new leadership, not understanding that only the style is new.

The Pope, himself, has made that fact perfectly clear. With absolute honesty, from the moment he chose his name until, in imitation of his predecessor at Bogota, he kissed the earth at Warsaw Airport he has declared that he wants to be the continuer of Pope Paul. "A great Pope," he said on May 8. "His pontificate was a true gift of God and we today reverently kneel to his memory, vigilant lest we lose any of his illuminating magisterium or his lofty example." No one could be more frank. It is the conservatives who refuse to take him at his word.

In the four months between Puebla and Warsaw Pope John Paul issued one encyclical, nominated 15 cardinals, consecrated 26 bishops, gave public homilies on nearly all the Wednesdays and Sundays, delivered a dozen major messages and discourses and held some 250 private audiences.

Last month I made reference to the encyclical. As for the cardinals-to-be, did even the most beguiled, wishful thinker hold out when he heard that Agostino Casaroli was to become second in command in the Church? True, at this writing he is only pro-Secretary but after the consistory on June 30 he is expected to become Secretary of State. As most traditionalists know, this "foreign minister" of Pope Paul, responsible for the Vatican's damaging Ostpolitik, has figured prominently on all of the recently published lists of Freemasons at the top of the Church with the indications that his lodge is that of the Italian Foreign Ministry, his date of initiation, September 29, 1957, and his registration number, 41/076.

Then there is Msgr. Roger Etchegaray, Archbishop of Marseilles, President of both the French Episcopal Conference and the European Episcopal Council. Among French traditionalists, Archbishop Lefebvre probably counts as his chief opponent Cardinal Garonne; for Msgr. Ducaud Bourget it would be Cardinal Marty, but for the rank and file of loyal French Catholics it must be this affable Marseillese with the long Basque name. I came up against Msgr. Etchegaray when I covered tho 1974 World Episcopal Synod for The Wanderer. During a press conference I challenged the statement he had made as relator for the European bishops to the effect that the Church pronounces no judgement on either of the two ideological systems which divide the continent. I cited the condemnation of Communism by four Popes. He played for time, asking me to repeat the question in French. A friend taped his remarkable reply when it finally came.

"I don't want to run away from your question but I don't think this is the time or the place to answer anything so fundamental. It is difficult for me to reply to such a fundamental question in a few words. It is true as you say that Pius XI condemned Communism but it must be admitted that Communism has evolved since his encyclical was written. When you speak of Communism what is it that you mean? You know that among Communists there is no agreement over hedonistic conceptions, the liturgy of those who follow Lenin. No, I think that if we refer to ideological materialism totally contrary to God, it is evident that from that particular point of view the condemnation is still valid."

In Rome, the following year, Msgr. Etchegaray headed a symposium of his European Episcopal Conference in an attempt to parallel the Latin American CELAM. I say "attempt" because except for the Yugoslavs and Cardinal Wojtyla, who acted as chief theologian for the conference, nobody else showed up from the Communist countries. Now that the Cardinal has become Pope and will have the Ostpolitik expert Casaroli at his side with Cardinal Etchegaray to handle the details, the One-Europe Council may finally get underway.

The twice-a-week homilies of Pope John Paul have been happily less vague and mystifying than Pope Paul's but the piety is clearly Conciliar in its blandness. More interesting and indicative are some of the messages and discourses directed to special groups. As was the case at Oaxaca in Mexico, the Pope's words to the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) assembled at Manila, revealed the conditioning of his 35 years as a member of a socialist society. Over and over he uses the Leftist jargon "solidarity." He speaks of people as being "free, equal and linked in solidarity" and, as he did in his encyclical, calls for "the immediate redistribution of riches and the immediate control of those riches" in order to "restructure institutions in the interest of world solidarity."

In the same vein he addressed a message to the Strasbourg-based Christian Workers Movement and he lamented, as he had done at Puebla, "injustice, discrimination, and repression" (in the West, of course) "which stand in the way of integral liberation."

Following faithfully in the footsteps of Pope Paul he turned several times to the subject of ecumenism. Late in May he received four men and four women superiors of Protestant religious communities who had come to Rome for ecumenical dialogues under Jesuit auspices. He asked them to "experiment through prayer the urgency not only to manifest unity but to live in the fullness of truth and charity." One may assume that these good men and women live in the fullness of charity but does the head of the Roman Catholic Church take for granted that without changing their religion they are able to live in the fullness of truth?

Toward the end of May Italian newspapers headed feature articles with lines like "Wojtyla changes the universities." In reality he released a document which had been formulated by Cardinal Garonne and signed by Pope Paul a few days before his death. Sapientia Christiana, heralded as a reform of the pontifical institutes, raised the hopes of conservatives who soon found, however, that the main thrust of the so-called reform was to widen the base of authority in the schools. Henceforth, administrators, professors, students, and auxiliary personnel are to participate in the running of the universities. This follows the reforms instigated by the Italian Minister of Education a few years ago which resulted in such "auxiliary personnel" as janitors, cleaning women and neighborhood labor leaders taking part in the school councils. Sapientia Christiana was presented to the press by Cardinal Garonne, in 1975 the chief "inquisitor" of Archbishop Lefebvre, in 1958 the prelate who recommended the gifted young Bishop Wojtyla to the Vatican. Assisting him at the press conference was the Jesuit Fr. Dezza, confessor to Pope Paul VI.

The crowd is the same. Only the style is new and that is what people are enjoying. They are charmed by a Pope who calls them brothers and sisters, a Pope who is to have his own swimming pool, a Pope who marries a young couple and kisses the bride. Fifteen years of life in the Conciliar Church has left most of them unable to see that things are not as they should be.

Readers are reminded that Mary Martinez book, FROM ROME URGENTLY, is now available. Simply address the author, Via Sommacampagna 47, 00185 Rome, Italy, and enclose an international money order or check for $6.50. The price includes air mail postage.