Chapter 37

THE DEATH OF POPE JOHN PAUL II AND THE FUTURE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, at 9:37 P.M. after a long and public illness. The outpouring of love and grief during the nearly weeklong vigil that preceded his death and during the funeral itself was one of the most extraordinary events of the Church’s long history. An estimated three million pilgrims from around the world came to lament their loss and to serve as witness to the hold John Paul had on them. They moved slowly in a file that took them up to twenty-four hours to reach the papal bier. The incredible psychodrama unfolded in the majestic theater of St. Peter’s Square, a spectacle perfect for the age of television as the cameras swept back and forth across the hundreds of thousands gathered under the embracing arms of Bernini’s colonnade, forming a moving stream that stretched back down the Via della Conciliazione to the Tiber River.

The dignitaries attending the funeral included 157 cardinals, 700 archbishops and bishops, 3,000 priests, 19 foreign delegations, and delegations from 23 Orthodox churches and from Judaism, as well as 17 representatives from non-Christian faiths. The 200 or so world leaders and diplomats included President George W. Bush, Tony Blair of Britain, Jacques Chirac of France, Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Moshe Katsav of Israel, and Mohammad Khatami of Iran. One of the memorable moments of the TV coverage showed President Bush, his wife, and former presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton kneeling before the papal bier.

The majesty and solemnity of the funeral rites on April 8 were overpowering. The pathos reached its climax as the pallbearers, ten on each side, carried the wooden coffin out of the basilica and deposited it in the center of the outdoor sanctuary. After they placed the book of the Gospels on the coffin, a strong breeze blew it open. The pages continued to flutter and flap during the ceremony as though the Holy Spirit were putting his seal of approval on the great life that had ended.

After the ecstatic moments of the funeral, the 115 cardinal electors assembled on Monday, April 18, to get down to their awesome task. To the surprise of all, it took them only two days and four ballots to elect the next Pope—the seventy-eight-year-old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had worked as John Paul II’s enforcer of orthodoxy. Considered a liberal while acting as a consultant at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), he had made a 180-degree turn to conservatism and, once installed in the Holy Office, showed his determination to uphold orthodoxy with rigor. Those who felt the lash included Hans Küng and Charles Curran, who had taken the Council’s extraordinary openness as a green light to “update” the faith. Their daring reinterpretations did not please Cardinal Ratzinger, who brought an end to their Catholic careers by stripping them of their positions as Catholic theologians.

The new Pope took up his formidable task portrayed by a good section of the press as a doctrinaire authoritarian. As a sign of the continuing polarization within the Church, the press pointed to the leading liberal of the papal conclave, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, whose vision of the Church was opposed to that of the new Pope. According to the historian Alberto Melloni, Martini believed that if the Church does not move on in terms of doctrine, it will be condemned to lose the content of Christian truth. However, in a gesture of reconciliation, the new Pope announced that he would take the name Benedict XVI, recalling Pope Benedict XV (1914–22), noted for his spirit of reconciliation. Many Catholics prayed that he could lessen the polarization within the Church.