More than a cardinal
Peter Nichols
Rome
hen cardinals die, not much remains W to be said, as a rule. They are of
'Princely rank, they have the unique privi- lege of electing Popes (unless they are over 80 Years of age) and when they go the feeling is that they have touched heights of Worldly splendour as well as having had the Chance of spiritual riches, given that most of them head large dioceses or hold impor- tant positions in the Church's government. What more can be said?
The death of Cardinal Benelli broke the
Rule. He died on Tuesday at the age of 61, a ripe but far from an old age for high Prelates, who are inclined to longevity. He Was the Archbishop of Florence at his death, a post near enough to the heart of a T from which Benelli was, but a long way 'rorn the post he held for ten years from June 1967, in which he was effectively the executive head of the Catholic Church. Benelli then was the substitute, or under- secretarY, in the Vatican's Secretariat of State. He was second in rank to the Cardinal-Secretary but, given the inertia of his superior, the French Cardinal Villot, and the close relationship he had with the late Pope Paul VI, Benelli was in a position to dominate the Roman Church's admini- strative machine. His capacity for work was him indispensable and the Pope must have thought "...1n1 indispensable until he was forced to dispense with his services and send him to Florence because of the jealousies his power aroused. Benelli was nevertheless seriously missed, and that is a comment on one of the prin- cpal difficulties facing the Roman Church. ,I Two people have held the post since he left out neither would claim to rival his energy and his longstanding friendship with the reigning Pope. Benelli began his career at the Vatican as private secretary to Mon- signor Giovanni Battista Montini, who was later Pope Paul VI. Twenty years went by and Benelli was placed at the head of the administration as the Pope's most valued executive.
It was a career which fittingly ended the Italian monopoly of the Papacy. The defects of that monopoly were there, as were its good features. Benelli had an Italian feel for people, especially in such fields as whether they could be trusted and how far they would go in criticising if they were known to disagree with the official policy. He seldom tried to charm people: he was frequently curt and over-demanding. Like Montini, he had the gift of gathering a few persons around him whose loyalty was totally unquestioned. He himself reflected his master's views, and was not above fill- ing out the detail on his own authority. On first sight, he would not appear to be one of nature's ecumenists. But a matter of days before he died he was talking about the regular contacts he had established between Florence and Canterbury, especially among young people. This interest he undoubtedly owed to Paul VI who was intrigued by the Anglican phenomenon. The only comparable relationship at the present Papal court is between Pope John Paul II and Monsignor Jozef Glemp, the Primate of Poland. Glemp, like Benelli, was born a private secretary. He held the post for many years under his immediate predecessor, the late Cardinal Wyszynski, a dominating figure who took the decisions while his secretary carried them out and sought to repair whatever damage was done in personal relationships as a result of his master's actions.
The present Pope was made Cardinal Archbishop of Cracow by Paul VI who un- doubtedly saw him as the right successor to Wyszynski, and he no doubt would have been Poland's primate if fate had not decreed that he be elected Pope. He became, as Pope, Primate of Italy instead of his native country. He then made what some people feel to be one of the classic er- rors, which is to promote a secretary to the role of the protagonist; unless, of course, John Paul II thought that a person of Mon- signor Glemp's rich experience in the shadows of power would be sufficient given that the Pope himself was a Pole and perfectly able to lay down his own policies in his own homeland.
John Paul II's absorption with Poland and his clear lack of interest in the ad- ministrative machine as such are two of the criticisms most heard about him. His Polishness is very apparent: it can also be argued that Poland never let him alone from the moment he was elected. Danzig was soon the centre of protest and an analysis has still to be attempted of how much direct effect the election of the first Polish Pope in history had on Poland's subsequent turmoil.
There is no similar need to withhold judgment on the Pope's handling of the civil service he inherited and which, in its present form, Benelli did much to fashion. He is, to say the least, erratic in the way he makes use of what Paul VI would happily have regarded as normal channels. Sometimes his methods work well. Had the Pope accepted, for instance, the collective wisdom of his civil service on whether or not to go to Britain in the midst of the Falklands conflict, he would have cancelled his visit. And if he had cancelled his visit he would have missed the journey which he is said to feel was the best of all his journeys with the exception of his return to Poland. The travels themselves weigh heavily on the administrative machine. The Pope himself is distracted when a visit is imminent. He is reading, or writing, drafts of the speeches he will make. Parts of the machine are ab- sorbed in the process; others are left to go their own way.
If there is an advantage, it is that busy people at the Vatican suddenly become eminently seeable once the Pope is air- borne. He takes a fair entourage with him, but those left behind to handle current business suddenly find that at least they have some time on their hands. That was not the case in the days of Benelli and Paul VI. He did not, of course, travel as much as this Pope; and he loved the administrative machine in which spent almost all his life. Except for a matter of weeks as a young man in the nunciature — oddly enough in Warsaw and seven years as Archbishop of Milan, Paul VI lived his life within the Roman curia. It is said that intrigues among his colleagues were the real cause of his ap- pointment to Milan, rather as they say that impatience in the curia with Benelli's high- handed methods accounted for his nomina- tion to Florence.
Ordinary mortals will probably never know the the whole background of either of these moves. Vatican court circles are a complicated affair and the old Italianate tradition of keeping the light well and truly under the bushel survives despite the end of the Italian papal monopoly. And so, too, do the ambitions, especially when there is a gap to be filled, which there has been ever since Benelli went to Florence. It has even been said that the gap brought worse conse- quences, such as the scandals involving that most secretive of all Vatican institutions, the bank. The suggestion is heard that the bank's president, Monsignor Paul Mar- cinkus, felt the pull towards filling that gap. Benelli had a phrase for it which he pro- nounced a few days before his death: 'Children should not be left to play in minefields.' We shall miss him.
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