Compassionate Shepherd

Just days before the Cardinals began to choose the new Pope, an NBC newsman in Rome telephoned Venice's Albino Cardinal Luciani to ask for some biographical background. With self-effacing humor, Luciani observed: "There is a Class A list of candidates, a Class B list of candidates, and a Class C list of candidates. I am surely on the Class C list." His fellow Cardinals, obviously disagreeing, last week moved Albino Luciani to the head of the class.

Unlike his recent predecessors, the new Pontiff has never been a Vatican diplomat, has no experience in the labyrinthine ways of the Roman Curia, and has spent most of his life in the region of northeastern Italy where he was born (he never left Italy before last year, when he visited Brazil). But he is precisely what so many Cardinals said they were looking for: a pastor who shepherds his flock with concern, compassion and a profound sense of the spiritual.

At the same time, he is a complex man with an inquisitive mind. John Cardinal Wright, American head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, predicted that Pope John Paul would be "a witty Pontiff who delights in combining love of literature with love of the words of God." Luciani, said Carlo Confalonieri, the 85-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals, is "a bishop who reflects a lot, writes well and speaks well. The church has chosen well."

The new Pontiff grew up in an atmosphere that demanded more practical diplomacy than most Popes have had to practice in embassies around the world: his father was a committed socialist, his mother, as he put it, "a strong and devout" Catholic. Luciani was born, on Oct. 17, 1912, into the working class. In his home town of Forno di Canale in the Dolomite Alps of northeastern Italy, says the parish priest, "the villagers have been forced to work abroad. [Luciani's] father went to Switzer land to make a living." Even tually, the elder Luciani was able to settle down as a glassworker on the small island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon.

After Luciani's ordination in 1935, he soon began teaching dogmatic and moral theology at the Gregorian Seminary in Belluno, a city in the Dolomite foothills. In 1948, he was named by the Bishop of Belluno to oversee catechetics--the teaching of the faith--in the provincial diocese. He later recounted his thoughts and experiences in a book called Catechism in Crumbs, now in its seventh printing.

In Belluno, he began his pastoral ladder climbing, first to vicar general of that diocese, then, in 1958, to Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, another local diocese subject to Venice. When two local priests there were accused of piling up heavy debts and overdrawing their checking accounts, Luciani summoned his 400 priests for a stern sermon. The church, he reminded them, was to be identified with the poor Then he paid the debts of his free-spending priests out of diocesan funds.

In 1969, Pope Paul VI named Luciani Patriarch of Venice,* one of the most prestigious posts in the Italian church. Four years later came the red hat of Cardinal. In Venice, a vast archdiocese that numbered 3.6 million Catholics, he forthrightly declared that "the true treasures of the church are the poor." He thereupon authorized the clergy to dispose of church gold and jewels to raise funds to aid the handicapped.

Luciani, who lived in the patriarchal palace next to St. Mark's Basilica, loved to exercise by walking or riding a bicycle through the city's streets! Jesuit Theologian Herbert Ryan of Los Angeles' Loyola Marymount University recalls how, carrying a cake in a pink box for the participants, Luciani once walked 25 minutes from his residence to the meeting of an ecumenical commission.

Pope John Paul I is a thoroughly patriotic Venetian.

His favorite saint, Ryan says, is Venice's Pope St. Pius X, whom Luciani has often cited in his sermons. (Pius X is often remembered as the Pope who condemned Modernism, but that act was largely the work of his eminence grise Cardinal Merry del Val; Luciani, though, has revered Pius as the man who encouraged frequent reception of Communion and attendance at Mass.) The Venetian connection

also binds in Luciani's love of music. He especially admires the works of a Venetian baroque master, a priest named Antonio Vivaldi.

Never too big for his red hat, the patriarch always kept a confessional to hear the sins of penitents in St. Mark's Basilica. It was there, says Ryan, that he picked up much of his rough talent in German and certain Slavic dialects. He speaks French well but English dreadfully. His personal habits are not forbiddingly ascetic. He smokes cigarettes and an occasional cigar and, like nearly every Italian, enjoys his wine.

It may be months, perhaps years, before the world's Catholics can adequately take the measure of their new Pope. But they can take comfort from his insistence that "I am only a poor man, accustomed to little things, and in silence." That is a humble assessment, worthy of a man who would take the Chair of Peter and become the Vicar of Christ.

* A largely honorary title, derived from the Venetian churches' dependence on the Byzantine Empire during the centuries of barbarian invasion. In 1451, consolidating earlier patriarchal titles, it was bestowed by Pope Nicholas V. But the Pope himself remains the ultimate "Patriarch of the West."

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