Pope John Paul to beatify `popes apart'

Pope John Paul to beatify `popes apart'
REUTERS

VATICAN CITY, AUG 28: Pope John Paul will put two of his predecessors on the road to sainthood on Sunday -- one a 19th century ultra-conservative accused of anti-Semitism and the other a widely-loved and gentle 20th century progressive.

Beatifying both Pius IX and John XXIII on September 3 is a historical and theological juggling act that is seen as an attempt to satisfy both liberal and traditional Catholics.

The two were `Popes apart', who reigned in vastly different periods -- Pius from 1846 to 1878 and John from 1958 to 1963.

They also had vastly differing views on Church authority.

Pius, born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the last `Pope King' to rule as a temporal monarch over central Italy.

He centralised power, adamantly opposed religious tolerance, published the 1864 Syllabus of Errors to combat modernism and called the First Vatican Council to define the doctrine of Papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals.

John, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, called the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which thrust the Church into the modern world, ended the Latin mass and gave bishops more power.

One of Pius's favourite phrases, which he often used to cut short talk of change, was ``I am the Church. I am the tradition.''

John liked to listen to new ideas and told visitors, ``Let's talk man-to-man. I have two eyes and two ears just like you.''

In 1878, when Pius's coffin was taken through Rome, a mob of nationalists, angry at the Pope's opposition to Italian unity, tried to throw it into the river Tiber. When John, dubbed `the good Pope', died in 1963, it seemed all Rome was in tears.

Speculating on the reason behind the decision to beatify Pius at the same ceremony as John, the British Catholic weekly The Tablet said in an editorial:

``It can only be seen as a political move, designed to provide a conservative and reactionary counterweight to the beatification of John XXIII...The conclusion is surely inescapable that the beatification of Pius IX is the work of a small group of ultra-conservatives.''

The pontificate of Pius, at 32 years the longest-ever, will forever be clouded by the strange, moving case of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child kidnapped for Jesus.

On June 23, 1858, papal police in Bologna entered the home of the Mortaras, a Jewish family, snatched six-year-old Edgardo, and took him to Rome to be raised as a Catholic.

The justification was that several years earlier, when the infant Edgardo was gravely ill and appeared on the verge of death, an over-zealous Catholic servant in the home had secretly baptised him because she wanted ``to save his soul''.

Edgardo recovered but when word spread about the crude baptism, local papal police intervened to enforce a civil law that Jewish children who had been baptised, even against their will, had become Christian and could not be raised in a Jewish home.

According to David Kertzer, whose 1997 book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, revived interest in a mostly forgotten episode, even the head of the police squad was moved to tears by the mother's wailing.

The child was enrolled in a school for Jewish `converts' in Rome and put on the path to the priesthood.

Protests by Edgardo's parents sparked an international cause celebre, with Emperor Franz Josef of Austria and Napoleon III of France urging Pius to return Edgardo to his family.

Instead, a defiant Pius, who was losing temporal powers and land day by day, decided to raise the boy as his personal ward and once told a visiting delegation, ``I couldn't care less what the world thinks.''

Pius put Edgardo on display for visitors as ``an obedient son'' and reportedly once made him make the sign of the cross on the floor with his tongue.

According to Kertzer, a professor of history at Brown University in Rhode Island, Pius once sent Edgardo a note saying, ``You are very dear to me, my little son, for I have acquired you for Jesus Christ at a high price.''

Mortara became a priest and in 1907, when he was 55, he wrote of Pius:

``Providence did me the favour not only of seeing and knowing Pius IX but of being adopted and honoured with paternal affection by him without any merit on my part. For him, I was the child of tears and he loved me like a mother who prefers the son who has made her suffer the most.''

Mortara died in 1940 in Belgium at the age of 88.

The decision to beatify Pius has shocked Jews and some Catholics, who have been urging the Vatican not to do it.

``Today, after almost a century and a half, the Italian Jewish community remains embittered by that assault on Judaism and parenthood,'' Seymour Reich, chairman of a collective of major US groups, said in a letter to a cardinal on August 23.

Arguing that Pius's actions could not be excused as a practice of the times, Reich said, ``If saintliness is seen as the goodness, wisdom and courage to behave righteously and right wrongs regardless of when the occur, then Pius IX's conduct falls far short of saintliness.''"

Amos Luzzatto, president of Italy's Jewish communities, said Pius IX was ``openly anti-Semitic'' and the Mortara affair was still ``an open wound''.

Monsignor Carlo Liberati, an official in the Vatican department for saints, was quoted as saying that once Mortara was an adult, he decided freely to remain a Catholic.

Liberati said it was ``absurd to judge facts without taking into consideration the period in which they took place'' and the civil law in force at the time.

The descendants of the Mortara family said in an open letter that this argument was tantamount to arguing that it was not legitimate to prosecute Nazi criminals today because they were acting according to the civil laws of their country at the time.

The family also said that it was too convenient to say that as an adult Mortara had made a free choice to remain a Christian ``after the many years of forced education''.

Writing in America, the journal of American Jesuits, the Reverend John W. O' Malley, professor of Church history at the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said it was difficult to see how Pius could be a model of sanctity for today.

``For whom is this model (of sanctity) meaningful, for whom intended? Popes? Political leaders? Ordinary faithful? The model provided by every saint and blessed must be translated if it is to be meaningful in our lives but for Pius the translating will be especially tricky and taxing,'' O'Malley wrote.

Pius was the ``Prisoner of the Vatican'' from 1870 when nationalists took Rome. He refused to recognise the new Italy.

Traditionalists praise Pius for defending Church freedom at a time of tumult in Europe and at the same time they see John XXIII as setting off a process of disintegration of traditional Catholic identity by calling the Second Vatican Council.

On September 3, Catholic and Jewish ears will be tuned in to Pope John Paul's homily at the beatification mass to hear him speak of the ``heroic virtues'' of both John XIII and Pius XII.

Many will be waiting eagerly to hear him explain his decision to beatify `the Popes apart'.