Forgotten Pope

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

While Popes John XXIII and John Paul II were being canonized in St. Peter’s Square last April 27, before what some estimate as the largest crowd gathered in Europe for a religious purpose in living memory, Pope Paul VI rested in his quiet dark tomb under the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. A million people cheered the new saints. Few people remembered Paul VI. I don’t think he would have been surprised. He was never very good at handling public relations and the media.

He was a thin, sensitive, very thoughtful man. One person described him as a man of “infinite courtesy.” If John XXIII can be said to have brought the Church into the modern world, Paul VI can be said to have brought the poor of the world into the Church.

There is little talk of poverty or the poor in the Vatican II documents. It is with Paul VI’s approval after the Second Vatican Council that churches around the world began to give special attention to the poor. Latin America led in this matter, and in the late 1960s and 1970s developed an understanding of the Church as the “Church of the Poor” and of “God’s preferential option for the poor,” and the theology of liberation that supported this thinking. His encyclicals were nearly all on social matters. He championed land reform, the right of poor people to revolt, the obligation of the rich countries to help the poor countries. In these letters he followed the methodology of the Council—that is, he began with the problems as they appeared on the ground and found in them “the signs of the times” that gave believers the sense of direction in which they should move.

Paul VI became pope on the death of John XXIII in 1963 and died in 1978. He was succeeded briefly by John Paul I and then by John Paul II.

He issued one letter, “Humanae Vitae” on birth control, that may be the most unpopular letter written by a pope in modern times.

He was called indecisive and a papal Hamlet. Maybe he was such, but for the poor and for priests and bishops in trouble he was a person of warm compassion—and that is a side of him few people know.

In the 1970s-1980s Bishop Julio Labayen of the Prelature of Infanta was sometimes in trouble with the government and even with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines for his criticism of martial law. He was troubled deeply by this, especially by the charge made by some other bishops that he had no loyalty to the Church. For anyone who knows Bishop Labayen, this was clearly absolute nonsense, but still it pained him. He was able to meet Pope Paul VI and they had a long talk about these matters, and at the end Bishop Labayen told friends: “At the heart of the Church I found a warm and welcoming father.”

Bishop Daniel Tji of South Korea, who also had troubles with his government and had spent time in jail, told me he had the same experience as Bishop Labayen had. He stopped talking after he said this, nodding slowly with a smile on his face as if he remembered once again his time with Paul VI.

My own experience with Paul VI was in Tondo, Manila, on a Sunday afternoon in early November 1970. The pope was here for the start of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences. He arrived at the Don Bosco Center in Barrio Magsaysay and soon was sitting on what looked like a very shaky speaker stand with Cardinal Rufino Santos and Trinidad “Trining” Herrera, president of the Zone One Tondo Organization or Zoto, the first of many mass-based, democratic and nonviolent people’s organizations that would spring up in the Philippine slums during martial law. Trining greeted the pope in the name of the people of Tondo. This was, we were told, the first time a local leader had greeted a pope on such an occasion.

After greetings in Latin, which few people understood even after they were translated into Tagalog, Paul VI walked through Barrio Magsaysay’s muddy streets (it was just after Typhoon “Yoling”) to visit the home of a typical poor family; it was as poor as the families around it. The pope spent more time with the family than he was supposed to spend, and I could hear calls on the police radios around me asking what was wrong. They were beginning to get nervous.

Finally the pope came back. He was deeply shaken by what he had seen and heard. He didn’t say anything, but held on to the hand of a Franciscan Missionary of Mary sister to steady himself. I was next to the sister. He looked stricken in a way: He had seen how his poor people lived in squalor and how the lovely children were fated to be as poor as their parents.

Paul VI was the first pope to travel outside Italy. He traveled to places as different as India, the Holy Land, and New York City. He packed the Yankee Stadium. The Yankee players showed him the uniform of their all-star catcher who had died shortly before the pope’s visit. He told the United Nations: “No more war. War never again.”

I hope that in the future Pope Paul VI is canonized. There must be room in heaven for indecisive people. We can’t all have magical charisma or good luck in one’s life.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Choosing someone for canonization

Commentary By: Denis Murphy Philippine Daily Inquirer 9:03 pm | Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 Most often we don’t know why the Church chooses one holy person for canonization and not another. We don’t know why Pope John Paul II was beatified and not Pope John XXIII whom all the world loved or the wise and humble Paul VI. Most people would probably say anyone of the three could have been chosen. Choices are made for strategic and political (Church politics) reasons, in addition to heroic personal sanctity. There are many people today living truly saintly lives, but only a handful from each generation are set on the road to sainthood. To be canonized a person must have personal sanctity and fit in with the Church’s strategies and priorities for evangelization. The person must be seen as relevant to the problems of the people of the day. To appreciate how this process works let us attempt to choose someone for canonization. But first, it should be clear we are not talking about a person’s face-to-face relationship with God. This relationship at its highest is described in Deuteronomy as being God’s “intimate friend.” We are talking, instead, about the person’s public work in our society. We are talking of a lay person, because for the Church this is the age of the laity. This current policy is due not only to the dwindling numbers of priests, but to the demands of the age that were apparent even before the great outflow of priests in the 1960s-1980s. Our candidate will be a man, not a woman. I apologize to our women, but they are still problematic for many Churchmen. The man chosen will symbolize the laity’s mission to transform the world. He will show in his life how lay people can, in the eyes of the Church, transform the world’s politics, economics, science, practice of justice, educational systems and the other institutions that govern us. The person is not under the authority of the Church, but he recognizes the need for the help of the historical wisdom of the Church to enrich and purify the institutions of the world. He is open to the Gospel, especially to its concerns for the poor, women and the downtrodden. He will not be seen as someone worried about internal Church matters, but rather one who is totally concerned with the transformation of society. Where in Philippine society is such a man? If pushed to respond many might point to Nandy Pacheco. Remember we are not choosing here the man we think is best suited for sainthood, but rather the one we think the Church might choose as an example of the lay people it seeks for its work in the world. The Church might select Nandy because of his work on the Gunless Society and Ang Kapatiran Political Party. The Social Teaching of the Church is the foundation of Ang Kapatiran’s platform. The party was publicly supported by some bishops, though Nandy was disappointed that more bishops didn’t do so. The party didn’t do well in the last presidential election, but Nandy is not giving up. The Church doesn’t necessarily look for winners in society. It has in fact a fondness for losers. Ang Kapatiran’s relatively poor showing in the election may reflect the Church’s loss of esteem among ordinary people in recent years due to its perceived over-closeness to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the sex scandals around the world and the Church’s absence from the main justice struggles. It hasn’t been seen lately as a crusading force in society. Individual bishops and dioceses have been so seen, but not most. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword: those lay people who have success in their reform role in the world because of the esteem the ordinary people have for the Church may suffer if that support weakens. Lay people will have to learn to live and work with a Church that is increasingly cautious, and less in tune with the younger generation. The lay people may be seen in the role of grown children looking after their elderly parents. They will need patience and understanding in that role. Nandy has not stopped because of setbacks. Neither has his Ang Kapatiran Party. He has, however, shown an inclination to put his efforts into a radical conversion of the human heart, since that is required before people can accept the reforms that are demanded in politics and other arenas of secular life. Nandy is now organizing a movement that, he hopes, will change the hearts of Filipinos and enable them to accept the needed changes in the country’s socio-economic and political structures. This movement urges people to accept Jesus’ peace. This is the peace Jesus entrusted to his Apostles on the evening of his Resurrection. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said twice to them (John 20:19-23). These words were the polite greeting Jewish people offered one another in older days, but his use of the phrase carried much more than a simple greeting. In it Jesus conveyed to the Apostles all the blessings of His Kingdom—all the wisdom, humor, courage, perseverance and simple kindness they would need in spreading His message throughout the world. This peace is ours, Nandy points out, if we accept it wholeheartedly. We should “accept” this peace of Jesus rather than “seek it,” since Jesus has already offered it to us in the Gospel. Knowing Nandy, I think he might prefer a big victory for his party at the polls to canonization. Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.