Saintly shadows

JOHN PAUL II’s beatification on May 1st may yet have been the most exalted ceremony at the Vatican since his funeral six years ago. 

More than 50 heads of state attended, plus hundreds of thousands of the faithful, largely from the late pope’s native Poland. 

The former pope is now just one stage—canonisation—away from full sainthood. 

The adulation of his communism-toppling 27-year reign and powerful personality will inevitably highlight the less stellar record of the accident-prone Benedict XVI.

Pontifical aides hope the event may mark a turning point. 

The second, most important volume of Benedict’s trilogy on Jesus has been published, with no gaffes and much praise. 

He has given a television interview (carefully staged, but a papal first). 

He has tried to defuse the crippling clerical sex-abuse scandal, expressing unreserved shame for the crimes and cover-ups and meeting victims in Malta, Portugal and Britain.

Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican’s semi-official daily, L’Osservatore Romano, says that Benedict’s actions show him to be “not just a great intellectual, but also a simple, humble, good man”. 

The peak of the scandal, in the “annus horribilis” of 2010, is past, he says. But he acknowledges that the situation in Ireland still requires a “long penitential journey”.

And not only there, many would say. 

Outside the Vatican, the sex-abuse scandal still defines the church’s image. 

And it looks horrible enough. 

In Philadelphia the church suspended 21 priests from active ministry on March 8th following accusations of improper conduct with juveniles. This followed a grand jury report the previous month alleging a big cover-up by the religious authorities. 

In Belgium a former bishop, Roger Vangheluwe, who has already admitted abusing two of his nephews, was this month put under investigation on suspicion of abusing two altar boys. 

The Vatican has sent him for treatment but has yet to unfrock him, even after he seemed to trivialise his actions in a television interview.

This pattern of indecision chimes with a persistent criticism of the 84-year-old pontiff: that he has failed to make the Vatican’s civil service (the curia), work effectively. 

The shy former theology professor once admitted he had “no talent for...administration or organisation”. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrinal orthodoxy, he sensibly delegated managerial work. 

Admittedly, John Paul liked to bypass bureaucracy and bequeathed a mess to his successor. 

But he did entrust the key post of secretary of state (a kind of prime minister), to a canny ex-diplomat, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. 

Benedict’s choice fell on his former deputy Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, an inspirational pastoral leader but lacking curial clout and international experience.

A group of cardinals last year privately implored the pope to replace Cardinal Bertone. 

“Tired of unpleasant surprises”, according to a frequent associate, Benedict responded by giving a broader mandate to his secretary, Father Georg Ganswein. 

Officials say “The Apartment”, (the pope’s private circle) is getting a lot more involved in day-to-day curial administration.

A tighter grip cannot come soon enough. The latest fracas came with the unveiling on April 13th of the trendily named YouCat, a new Catechism (in effect, the church’s FAQ for youngsters). 

Supposedly authoritative, the Italian translation differed seriously from the German original on the vital issues of euthanasia and birth control. 

That led to a public rebuke from the editor, Cardinal Christoph Schonbörn of Vienna, to the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, who had overseen the translation. 

Both are leading candidates to succeed Benedict and are on opposite sides in a vital debate: whether the church’s sex-abuse woes stem chiefly from structural problems in the church, such as (implicitly) priestly celibacy, or from sinfulness (which is Benedict’s position).

While that smoulders at the top, another row is flaring at the grassroots. 

Strange as it may seem, Benedict has disappointed those who hoped he would correct some of John Paul’s more liberal tendencies. 

He has promoted the old, Tridentine liturgy. 

But he has not wooed back breakaway hardliners or dumped the Second Vatican Council’s ecumenical, modernist legacy.

Worse, he has even agreed to join (but not pray with) leaders of other faiths in Assisi in October at an event commemorating a ground-breaking interfaith gathering in 1986. 

At that time, to traditionalists’ fury, John Paul joined other religious figures in prayer, including Native American holy men. Some even think that made him unfit for sainthood. 

They also see Benedict’s role in the follow-up event as a dangerous lurch towards syncretism (the heretical idea of blending religions).

Such disputes dispirit those who want the church to look outward and upward, not nitpick over the past. 

In a fervent article for Jesus, an Italian monthly, Enzo Bianchi, the founder of a monastic community near Turin, said he was tired of “wars between ecclesiastic factions” and of accusers who “do not want to hear or know the truth, but merely silence others”. 

He says: “I wonder along with many others: where is the church going?” 

For all his faults, that was not a question people asked of Benedict’s predecessor.

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