by Delia Gallagher
ROME, OCT. 16, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The year is 1978. It is Monday, Oct. 16, 11:17 a.m. Standing in the throng of people in St. Peter’s Square is Archangelo Paglialunga, a young Vatican journalist who watches as black smoke billows from a chimney to the right of the basilica. He joins in the disappointed sigh of the crowd.
It is the third day of the conclave that is trying to decide on a new Pope.
Inside the Sistine Chapel, 110 cardinals sigh too. They have been there since 4:45 p.m. Saturday when Monsignor Virgilio Noè, the master of papal ceremonies, pronounced “extra omnes,” and the 88 priests, nuns and choir singers who had accompanied the cardinals on their walk from the Pauline Chapel to the Sistine were ushered out.
The heavy doors of the Sistine Chapel were shut tight. Cardinals Antonio Samorè, Silvio Oddi and Paulo Arns wandered about inside, checking that all internal doors were closed, while outside the chapel Monsignor Jacques Martin, the head of the Papal Household, and Colonel von Altishofen of the Swiss Guards made sure no one else entered.
Standing under the imposing backdrop of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, French Cardinal Jean Villot, the chamberlain, prayed in Latin, “That God instill in his servants a spirit of patience, of truth and of peace. That they will know what is pleasing to God and will attain it through every effort.”
Now, three days later, the cardinals were at an impasse. Neither the conservative Cardinal Giuseppe Siri nor the more moderate Cardinal Giovanni Benelli could garner the necessary votes.
“Maybe it’s time for a non-Italian,” Cardinal Franz König of Austria said to Poland’s Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski.
“Not me!” exclaimed Cardinal Wyszynski.
“No, not you,” replied Cardinal König. “Cardinal Wojtyla.”
Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had been mentioned previously as a good candidate, though no one was sure such a radical choice, the first non-Italian in 455 years, would happen.
Cardinal Wyszynski walked over to Cardinal Wojtyla.
“If you are elected — don’t refuse — accept,” he told his young protegé.
The cardinals sat down to vote.
Outside, 40,000 people stare up at the Vatican rooftop, afraid to look away. Several hours have passed since the black smoke of 11 a.m. and every so often panic is raised when someone imagines that he sees white smoke from the chimney.
At the edge of the square, near the Vatican press office, journalists are debating the possibilities.
“They’ve moved to a non-Italian,” predicted Gianfranco Svidercoschi of Italian daily Il Tempo to his colleague Paglialunga.
The debate is interrupted by a roar from the crowd — white smoke is seen.
At 6:45 p.m. in the dark of a Rome October evening, Cardinal Pericle Felici comes to the balcony of the basilica. Two seconds earlier he had nudged Cardinal Wyszynski. “How do you pronounce this name?”
“Annuntio vobis,” Cardinal Felici began, “gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam, Carolum …”
“Carolum?” thought journalist Paglialunga as he looked toward Svidercoschi. “They’ve elected Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri?” He was thinking of the over-80 cardinal who was himself watching from his balcony above the press office.
“… Wojtyla,” continued Cardinal Felici pronouncing the Polish name WOY-TEE-WA, as he had been instructed a few minutes earlier.
“Qui sibi nomen imposuit Ioannem Paulum II.”
The crowd was momentarily silent as they turned to one another with perplexed looks, “WOY-TEE-WA?”
“They’ve elected an African!” exclaimed an Italian woman in disbelief.
“No!” corrected the Italian journalists standing next to her. “He is Polish!” they exclaimed in equal disbelief.
The journalists ran off to find biographies and the correct spelling of this unknown Pope while the crowd waited, alive with chatter. “Polish?” “Polish!”
A half-hour passed and suddenly the now-swelled crowd saw Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, appear at the balcony.
No Pope had ever spoken more that the traditional blessing from the loggia. John Paul I, only a month earlier had wanted to, but Monsignor Noè had told him it was not done.
John Paul II immediately demonstrated who was in charge when at 7:20 p.m. he ignored the protests of Monsignor Noè and began to speak:
“Praise be Jesus Christ! Dear brothers and sisters, we are all still grieved after the death of our most beloved John Paul I. And now the eminent cardinals have called a new Bishop of Rome. They have called him from a far country: far, but always near through the communion of faith and in the Christian tradition. I was afraid to receive this nomination, but I did it in the spirit of obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ and in total confidence in his Mother, the most holy Madonna.
“I don’t know if I can make myself clear in your — in our — Italian language. If I make a mistake, you will correct me. And so I present myself to you all, to confess our common faith, our hope, our trust in the Mother of Christ and of the Church, and also to start anew on this road of history and the Church, with the help of God and with the help of men.”
These were the first words spoken to the world by John Paul II. The Pope’s speech was interrupted four times by applause. Twenty-year, and many speeches later, the same Pope is still interrupted — and encouraged — by applause.
(With thanks to Archangelo Paglilunga, dean of the Vatican press corps, who turned down many requests by more important journalists, but agreed to share his memories of that day with me.)
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The Legacy of Maestro Levine
One of the great treats of this week — indeed of my whole time covering the Vatican — was an invitation to sit in on a private taping of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by American maestro Gilbert Levine, in the choir chapel of St. Peter’s Basilica.
ABC News had organized the event for its “Good Morning America” show and it wins the prize for most money well spent covering a papal event.
It was a unique and seemingly impossible idea — obtaining permission to film inside St. Peter’s complete with floodlights, cameras on huge cranes and miles of thick cable wire; flying out 30 members of the London Philharmonic to Rome; and engaging the world-renowned conductor Levine to play pieces specially arranged for John Paul II.
The taping was held at 7:30 on Sunday night. The basilica was long since closed to visitors and I entered through the Swiss Guard station near the Palazzo Santo Uffizio with ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore. We were escorted to the back door of the basilica and arrived just in time to see the London Philharmonic, dressed like Oxford undergraduates in tuxedos and long flowing dresses, carrying their instruments across a darkened Vatican courtyard.
A Vatican official led us all into the empty basilica and suddenly the orderly line of musicians began to quietly disperse behind columns and statues. The exasperated official attempted to call them back, but they had forgotten about the concert, hypnotized by the grandeur of the basilica, floating off to see the Pietà. And who can blame them?
The concert was the “gift” of conductor Levine to the Holy Father. The maestro, as he is called at the Vatican, is Jewish.
In 1987 Levine was invited to conduct the Krakow Philharmonic by the then Communist regime in Poland. He subsequently became its permanent conductor. After his first performance, Krakow’s Cardinal Franciszek Macharski came to meet him.
“I had never met a Catholic priest before then, much less a cardinal,” Levine told me when I sat down with him at the Hotel Minerva in Rome this week. “I told the cardinal about my Polish grandparents and my wife’s family who lost 40 members in the Holocaust.”
“Now,” said the cardinal, “You must tell all you told me,
to the Holy Father.”
“I absolutely did not know what he was talking about,” admits Levine. “I vaguely knew that that was how the Pope was referred to, but it made no sense to me that I would be speaking to the Pope.”
Levine met John Paul II in February 1988.
“How’s my orchestra treating you?” joked the former archbishop of Krakow to the Jewish conductor.
“He talked to me like a veteran citizen of the city talking to a newcomer,” remembers Levine.
John Paul II and the maestro discussed music for a papal concert at the Vatican later that year in celebration of the Pope’s 10th anniversary. It was the Pope’s idea and Levine was shocked to hear that he had been chosen to conduct.
Levine has since conducted concerts all over the world in consultation with the Pope. He arranged Verdi’s Ave Maria especially for John Paul II and it was performed that night in the choir chapel. “He is the Marian Pope,” Levine said. “I thought it would be a fitting tribute.”
Levine has conducted the concert to commemorate the Holocaust, in 1993 for the World Youth Day concert, in 1994, and in 2000 for the Pope’s birthday.
“For every concert, I would go to him with ideas, sometimes through Monsignor Dziwisz, and His Holiness would say ‘yes, that’s appropriate’ or ‘that’s not,'” said Levine. “I’ve done concerts all over the world in consultation with him.”
“The most incredible was an invitation to play for the bishops’ conference in Seoul, South Korea. The Communist government of Poland allowed the Krakow Philharmonic to play at the behest of the Pope,” Levine said. “It was a breakthrough.”
Levine’s relationship with the Pope was a breakthrough personally as well. Once a Reformed Jew, he and his wife are now observant Orthodox Jews.
“I’m much more involved in my own religion now through my relationship with the Pope,” Levine said. “He has shown me the enormous depths of spirituality one can get to by opening oneself up to one’s own religion.”<br>
“The most important thing for him was that I was a believer,” said Levine.
Levine recognizes and is a willing participant in John Paul II’s reaching out to the Jewish people.
“He has said that the Jews are the elder brothers of Christians,” said Levine. “His Holiness understands the power of music and understands that there are places and times that music can be the best communicator of his vision of reconciliation.”
“The artistic impetus comes from me and the spiritual guidance, the overarching world vision, is his,” observed Levine.
“Reconciliation is one of the great themes of this pontificate. I have the sense that I’m able to carry on that theme of the Pope,” he said.
In these days of much talk of the legacies of John Paul II, the American Jewish conductor who carries on the work of the Catholic Polish Pope through music, must certainly be included among them.
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Readers may contact Delia Gallagher at delia@zenit.org.
