the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt fourteen)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

Ratzinger faced one important, possibly insurmountable obstacle in his campaign against liberation theology: the pope he served. During the cardinal’s first year in Rome, John Paul kept waffling on the subject, offering comments one day in support of the movement, only to back away the next. In March 1983, however, Ratzinger had reason to hope that the pope’s indecision was finally over. John Paul had just returned from a grueling seven-nation tour of Central America, which included a stop in El Salvador, where he made amends for his initial, callous response to Archbishop Romero’s murder. He prayed over Romero’s tomb and offered seemingly heartfelt praise for “a pastor who always tended to his flock.” His public events drew a joyous outpouring from hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans. That was in stark contrast to the hostile reception he had received two days earlier in neighboring Nicaragua. The leaders of that country’s newly installed socialist government, former leftist guerrillas who called themselves Sandinistas, came to power in 1979 after overthrowing the corrupt dictator Anastasio Somoza, whose family had ruled over Nicaragua for four decades. Somoza’s ouster had been widely celebrated by the public, and the senior ranks of the Sandinista government included four priests who were champions of liberation theology. One of them, Father Ernesto Cardenal, the culture minister, was a proud, self-declared Communist. “Christ led me to Marx,” he said. The decision by priests to accept government appointments infuriated Nicaragua’s conservative church hierarchy. It also alarmed the United States, which protested to the Vatican that Nicaragua was an example of liberation theology run amok. The Reagan administration was then arming right-wing anti-Sandinista insurgents known as contras.

There was a sour expression on the pope’s face throughout his twelve-hour stay in Nicaragua. He did not hide his agitation during a welcoming ceremony in which Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega announced that “Christian patriots” were central to “the popular Sandinista revolution.” At a Mass for hundreds of thousands in the capital city of Managua, the pope was heckled by Sandinista supporters chanting “Power to the people!” and “Liberation!” Infuriated, he yelled back, “Silence!” At a reception line with cabinet ministers, Cardenal dropped to one knee to kiss the pope’s ring. John Paul pulled his hand back and wagged his finger at the priest, telling him to “straighten out your position with the church,” a public scolding caught on camera.

the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt thirteen)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

The end of the Dirty War, and the junta’s collapse, began in earnest on April 2, 1982, when the military launched an ill-fated invasion of the Falkland Islands, a tiny archipelago in the South Atlantic about three hundred miles off Argentina’s eastern coast. A British territory since the early nineteenth century, it had a population of about eighteen hundred English-speaking residents. Argentina had always claimed sovereignty and knew the islands by a different name, the Malvinas. The invasion by ten thousand Argentine troops was a poorly disguised effort to divert attention from the country’s disastrous economy and civil unrest. It quickly turned into humiliation. The British launched a naval armada to retake the islands and seized them again in June, at a cost of 907 lives—649 of them Argentine soldiers and sailors.

The invasion initially had popular support among Argentines, including church leaders. Bergoglio praised soldiers who died in “the Malvinas war”—he would never call them the Falklands—as heroes: “They went out to defend the fatherland, to claim as theirs what had been usurped.” The invasion led to an abrupt decision by John Paul II to visit Argentina in June; it was the first pilgrimage to the country by any sitting pope. The awkward two-day trip, which came in the final days of fighting, was an attempt by the Vatican to appear even-handed. Aides said the pope went largely because he did not want to cancel a long-planned visit that same month to Britain. On arrival in Buenos Aires, he called for negotiations to end the war, a plea that came too late, since Britain was only days from victory. Still, the junta was eager to exploit the visit to suggest a papal endorsement, and military leaders were delighted when the pope said virtually nothing during his time there about human rights.

the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt twelve)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

There was always one glaring exception to the pope’s demand that the church stay out of politics: Poland. In August, weeks after the pope returned from Brazil, Poland was seized by labor unrest tied to the Communist government’s decision to raise food prices. Workers went on strike in the shipyard in Gdansk. The strike committee was led by a thirty-seven-year-old electrician, Lech Wałęsa, who went on to lead a national opposition movement. The city’s archbishop announced his support for the workers, whose rallies were often held at a shrine they created at the front of the shipyard gates, covered with images of the Virgin Mary and photos of John Paul. The strike was immediately recognized within Poland as not simply a challenge to the shipyard managers but, as it grew, a threat to the survival of the Communist government in Warsaw.

The pope would not wait long to take a side. On August 20, during an address in St. Peter’s Square, he noticed a group of several hundred Poles. Many were waving Polish flags, while others carried banners expressing support for the shipyard workers. Unexpectedly, the pope burst into song in Polish—an emotional hymn often heard at the Gdansk protests. Many Poles in the crowd wept openly and began to sing along. After the last verse, the pope called for those in the square to join him in a “prayer for my homeland.”

Days later, he dispatched telegrams to Poland’s bishops to offer his backing for the Gdansk protests and organized a special Mass in St. Peter’s in support. The situation in Poland continued to deteriorate, with Wałęsa’s trade union growing increasingly militant. The pope’s deputies said he monitored the news minute by minute. There were some days, they said, when he would talk about nothing else.

the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt eleven)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

In January 1980, Archbishop Romero was in Rome for a second audience with the pope, and it did not go much better. In a diary entry, Romero wrote he was grateful that John Paul “received me very warmly and told me he perfectly understood how difficult the political situation of my country is.” Still, rather than give full backing to Romero’s brave protest against the savagery of El Salvador’s military, the pope once again urged caution. He said Romero should be worried about the possibility of “score-settling” violence by the government’s “popular Left opponents, which could be bad for the church.” Even more than the year before, Romero returned home convinced he would soon be assassinated. In February, the church radio station was bombed, as was the library of the Catholic university. He stopped sleeping in his own home, hoping to make it more difficult for the death squads to find him. He had taken to driving alone. “I prefer it this way,” he wrote. “When what I’m expecting to happen, happens, I want to be alone. So it’s only me they get. I don’t want somebody else to suffer.”

More than nine hundred Salvadoran civilians were killed in political violence in the first three months of the year. In a sermon in March, Romero warned that the nation was “in a prerevolutionary stage,” with worse to come. He wrote in his diary that he could not understand why the pope, who regularly condemned Mafia violence in Italy, did not say more about political violence in Central America. He was puzzled that John Paul would “speak out about the cruel killings in Italy” but remain mostly silent about the “many killings in El Salvador every day.”

In his final speeches, Romero said he was comforted that, in defending the poor and oppressed, he had done the work demanded by the Savior. In his last radio address, he said: “I know that many are scandalized at what I say and charge that it forsakes the preaching of the Gospel to meddle in politics. I do not accept that accusation.” His diaries show he was unaware at the time that the pope had formally decided to strip him of his authority. In March, senior Curia officials met to plan his ouster from his archdiocese. “He was acting without responsibility,” said Cardinal Silvio Oddi, who then led the Congregation for the Clergy. According to Oddi, Romero had to go because the government in El Salvador “interpreted Romero’s doctrine to be in favor of communism.” Before he could be ousted, however, Romero was dead. On March 24, he was assassinated as he said Mass in a small hospital chapel in San Salvador. The assassin, later identified as a member of a government-backed death squad, fired a single bullet into Romero’s chest, just as the archbishop was raising a chalice to begin Communion. A photographer captured the moment, as Romero gasped for breath, blood pouring from his mouth. A week later, his funeral descended into chaos; twenty-six people were killed and hundreds injured when gunfire broke out on the steps of the Metropolitan Cathedral.

the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt ten)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

In 1980, no misconduct case before him was more troubling than that of Peter Hullermann, a thirty-three-year-old priest who had been transferred to Munich for psychiatric care after he admitted molesting an eleven-year-old boy in the northwest German city of Essen. Church authorities there eventually accused him of “indecent advances” toward several other boys. Ratzinger’s staff accepted responsibility for supervising Hullermann during his treatment by a Munich psychiatrist. Archdiocese records confirm that on January 15, 1980, Ratzinger led the meeting in which Hullermann’s transfer to Munich was approved. In accordance with church policy at the time, there was no consideration in either Essen or Munich of referring Hullermann to the police. Nor was there any thought of forcing him to leave the priesthood, even though Ratzinger’s staff was explicitly warned that Hullermann was likely to continue molesting boys. One document described him as a “clear danger” to children.

Despite those warnings, church records made public decades later showed that just days after arriving in Munich, Hullermann was allowed to resume his full priestly duties, with no restriction on his access to children. He went on to molest at least a dozen more boys across Germany. Years later, Ratzinger would claim ignorance of the details of Hullermann’s case, but his top deputies could not. The cardinal’s records showed that his chief personnel officer, Father Friedrich Fahr, had been determined to find a way to preserve Hullermann’s career despite his confession that he was a child molester. Fahr wrote in 1980 that while the young priest required urgent psychiatric care, he should be treated with “understanding,” since he was a “very talented man.”

the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt nine)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

The pope’s six-city US visit in October 1979, which began in Boston and included stops in New York and Washington, was perhaps the most anticipated event in the history of the American Catholic Church, and the excitement was shared by non-Catholics. The evangelical preacher Billy Graham described John Paul as “the most respected religious leader in the world.” President Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist, welcomed him to the White House: “God blessed America by sending you to us.”

For many of the nation’s fifty million Catholics, there was disappointment, however. In advance of the pope’s trip, the Associated Press conducted a poll of the nation’s Catholics and found 66 percent wanted the Vatican to lift the ban on birth control, 53 percent believed priests should be allowed to marry, and 50 percent believed women should be granted abortion on demand. In the pope’s speeches in the US, he made clear he would compromise on none of those issues. He often adopted a scolding tone, suggesting Americans were out of step with the church’s moral teachings, especially about sex.

Catholic women had special reason to feel slighted during the trip. Since Vatican II, nuns had been allowed in many US dioceses to join priests at the altar and handle communion wine and wafers. It was seen by bishops as a way of dealing with a shortage of priests. In advance of the pope’s trip, however, the Vatican announced that women would be barred from any role in worship services that he attended. When he gave a speech in Philadelphia to twelve thousand clergy from around the country, priests were invited to sit in the audience on the main floor of the auditorium, while nuns were moved to the balcony. In that address, the pope made his most explicit statement to date of his conviction that women could never be priests: the all-male priesthood was “a tradition that cannot be altered.”

the last book I ever read (Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, excerpt eight)

from Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church by Philip Shenon:

Throughout his youth, Argentine politics centered on one man: Juan Domingo Perón, first elected president in 1946, when Bergoglio was nine. Even after Perón was ousted in a 1955 coup and sent into exile, his fanatical supporters remained. For decades to come, political debates centered around the populist movement—Peronism—founded by Perón and his equally charismatic first lady, Eva Duarte, better known by her nickname, Evita.

Years later, Bergoglio was coy about his views on Perón, although as a young man he had been an enthusiastic supporter. His adversaries in the Jesuits would later draw comparisons between the two men. They saw Perón’s influence in Bergoglio’s personality-driven, sometimes cold-blooded style of leadership. Bergoglio credited his early fascination with Argentine politics to the woman who, outside his family, was the most influential in his life: Esther Ballestrino, a feminist and self-declared Marxist who ran the chemistry lab where he worked as a teenager. She did not force her leftist views on him but instead “taught me to think about politics,” he remembered.