Roamer's Column

The vacuum felt since Easter Saturday, when Pope John Paul uttered his "so be it", will soon be filled. The media enjoyed the vacuum.

Here is the Religion correspondent of The Telegraph last Thursday:

"A battle for the soul of Catholicism was unfolding yesterday as progressive cardinals struggle to head off a conservative victory in next week's conclave"; "...the Bavarian-born Cardinal Ratzinger has the early momentum and has garnered the support of more than a third of the electorate"; but "the riformisti have yet to concede defeat, say insiders" (naturally) who were believed "to command a third of the votes" as well. So it's neck and neck, as they say at the races, isn't it?

As if to confirm this metaphor, yesterday's edition referred to the Honduran Cardinal as "still in the running", the Nigerian "as also a good bet" and as for the Patriarch of Lisbon, he "could make a late run". The British love their horseracing.

It has otherwise been a strange week. For all the references to the dead Pope and contrary to his exhortation "Do not be afraid", we experienced a taste of what the first Easter Saturday was like, wondered what would happen next. There was something illusory about the whole business. It was as if the dead Pope refused to go away or, more correctly, as if we refused to let go of him. "...Amid the encircling gloom" he remained our link and that of the Church to the future.

Nor was the gloom dispersed with the performance of Mark Montebello, who seems to have made it his mission in life to be something of a pain. Why else the contribution he is reported to have made on Super 1 with references to "hate language" used by the Pope and the hope that whoever succeeds him will not use it? I know. It makes Fr Montebello sound different but is this urge ever an excuse for offensive extravagance? I think not.

Fr Montebello also seemed to blame the Pope for a failure to bring religions together and gave as examples the wider gap that now exists between Rome, as they used to say, and Canterbury as well as the Russian Orthodox Church. Not a word about Islam and the Jews and Pope John Paul's strenuous efforts to draw the three religions nearer to one another? (Fusion is impossible until the New Coming).

In the context of what everybody else had to say, these observations confuse us in the sense that we cannot understand how they do not embarrass this troubled friar. For if one thing was heard over and over again, if the man in the street, the intellectual, the high and the mighty were agreed upon one thing, it was Pope John Paul's embracing love of humanity and his service in that love, his outreach for more unity without forfeiting integrity (Assisi). The sense of loss they expressed was precisely because of the love he preached, the level and the integrity of that love.

His choice throughout his pontificate was to excite humanity in favour of the culture of life - and love. At a World Youth Day in Denver in 1993 he spoke strongly against a culture of death that sought "to impose itself on our desire to live and live to the full. There are those who reject the light of life... Their harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence. In every age, a measure of their apparent success is the death of innocents... and the massive taking of lives of human beings even before they are born or before they reach the natural point of death". Hardly the language of hate.

And he spoke his language of love when he chose the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1994 to invite survivors of concentration camps: "We are", he is quoted in Tad Szulc's eponymous biography of Pope John Paul published ten years ago, "very honoured by the presence here today of the survivors of the Holocaust". Later, at the same occasion, the Chief Rabbi of Rome and Italy's President sat on either side of the Pope in a packed auditorium where a concert commemorating the Holocaust was held.

He spoke the same language to Islamic leaders and when he died they remembered and paid tribute, Jews and Muslims.

'Lead kindly light'

It was a good thing, an edifying decision the cardinals took. Engaged in an 'election campaign' that few outside the Church really understand, the cardinals imposed upon themselves a period of public silence from the day of the Pope's burial until the day, this week, when a new pontificate will start. The cacophony of the media would not have been conducive to any prayerful preparations. Not that the self-imposed silence has stayed the media or prevented its predictions.

Newman's hymn must have been in the minds of most cardinals during the past eight days; never more than it will be tomorrow when they meet in conclave to initiate the process that will end in the choice of Pope John Paul's successor. They know their grave responsibility and with Cardinal Newman must have felt at times, perhaps even recited: "The night is dark... Lead Thou me on".

What will Cardinal X be like in five, ten years' time will be a tempting question for any cardinal to make as he assesses this one and that and then, in faith, "Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene - one step enough for me".

This Papacy of ours, based as it is on the Petrine claim, must seem to be a rum proposition for those not of the faith, as is the process in the choice of a man who is suddenly elevated to be the Vicar of Christ; but not as rum in retrospect when one inspects it against, compares it with, all other earthly powers that have ever been. For the Mycaenean civilisation is long gone, the Greek and the Roman, the Spanish and British empires, too. Emperors, kings, queens and tsars have come and gone, leaving their mark but not their succession.

The Papacy on the other hand, divinely ordained we Catholics believe but run by very human individuals with very human failings, is even now into its third millennium as intact as it ever was, its endurance a source of wonder to its enemies within and without. It had its patches, some very bad ones with anti-Popes, Popes deposed, some murdered (why be surprised at the last? It nearly happened in Rome in 1981), some with blemished lives.

Where other institutions wracked by similar turbulences and power struggles withered away, the Papacy prevailed and, in terms of a historical graph, grew stronger even when it was thought it was growing weaker, that its days were numbered. None of this is meant to be triumphalist; on the contrary it is a historical fact that cannot be gainsaid, only recognised with a sense of at least some wonderment. Re-read Macaulay.

Their residence in Rome, whither St Peter went and was crucified turned Rome into "the eternal city". It was a residence punctuated by occasional absences such as the time when the Papacy had to function from Avignon, in France, but for all that, Rome and the Papacy were interchangeable. You could not, it seemed, have one without the other - although there were men who tried to have it otherwise. Nobody goes to Rome without visiting Vatican City and St Peter's, which "sent a shiver down the spine" of Dostoevsky. Henry James thought it was "the greatest of all human achievements".

This and so many churches and buildings were built by Popes for the greater glory of God and, one cannot suppress the suspicion, their own. Around the Rome of antiquity, they employed the greatest architects, artists and sculptors the world has ever known to construct a New Rome, the eternal Rome. Some trivialise this achievement, criticise the blood, sweat and toil that went into it all, profess shock at the opulence. The sensible and the aesthete, the pilgrim and the tourist, the faithful and the faithless register the point and disagree.

A sense of history will not be missing from the cardinals' witness of the signs of the times.

'I was not ever thus'

Each of the Cardinals has a momentous task to perform. Some went to Rome thinking they could see "the distant scene", confident they knew what virtues and heroism were needed for the next Prapacy, certain they understood the relevance of any choice they had to make. Few if any assumed when they receive their hat that one day it could be their turn to receive the keys. Those that did may yet discover that their brothers in Christ had different ideas.

Tomorrow, in conclave, those who "loved to choose and see (their) path", who on this matter had not thought of asking that they should be led, will be asking "now lead Thou me on". They will have completed their self-examination, the examination of their motives and conscience, recognised that perhaps in the past "Pride ruled my will" and plead: "remember not past years"; so, "Lead Thou me on", even if in asking for guidance "I was not ever thus". There can hardly be any doubt that before the first vote is taken, tomorrow, Newman's cry for guidance will become central to the process that will lead to the announcement: Habemus Papam.

The figure in white that will finally emerge at the balcony on St Peter's Square will only disappoint if the conservatives and the liberals fail to acknowledge that the ultimate choice made by the cardinals is, after all, the best choice; that there was nothing random or capricious about it; that, on the contrary, an informed consensus had ultimately prevailed. Many will make an immediate comparison with his predecessor and, in all probability, find him wanting in this or that sphere. Others will question what the new Pope can bring to the Papacy, to the See of Peter, what his vision for the Church in the modern world will be, whether he can accommodate the modern world without betraying the integrity of the Church - and if so, in which specific areas?

It is highly unlikely that the new Pope, 'conservative' or 'liberal' will proclaim good what his predecessor had declared bad. He may place a new emphasis on this or that doctrine - this is, after all, what the development of doctrine is all about. He may take off from where Pope John Paul had arrived, make poverty and human rights where these do not touch on the culture of life and death central to his pontificate. What he will first have to do, of course, is to open himself to Christ and to his neighbours. Perhaps if an Englishman becomes Pope he may, with Newman, pray:

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.

The end of the affair?

Dr Pierre Mallia has courteously allowed me the final word in the difference of opinion we had after his contribution on biotechnology legislation and IVF appeared in this newspaper last month; and asked me to please be charitable.

In answer to my questions - What happened to the report on IVF drawn up by a panel of experts ten years ago? What has been happening in this field in Malta? What precautions are taken to safeguard the existence of extra embryos? What arrangements, if any, have been made, as was alleged in Il-Gens as far back as last September, between Maltese doctors and those in other countries to offer services that are illegal in those countries? - Dr Mallia managed to answer one: yes, there was a report commissioned by the government, he helped to draw it up and "it has not been considered". This leads me to suspect that the answers to the second, third and fourth question are probably controversial - and possibly negative.

Reluctantly and in charity I found his letter none too clear in the points he tried to make - for example, what are we to make of this: "If we are to defend the right of the unborn child we must honestly take a look at the many children already in separated marriages - the moral being that legality in itself is not a guarantee". What does that mean? And: "Couples seeking IVF usually have a commitment towards each other much more than we give them credit for". Without even entering into the merit of that observation, and in charity, who is he to say and how is that commitment to be discerned?

As to the degree of embryocide involved in the technique and the slipperiness of the slope of in vitro fertilisation we are no wiser.

It is clear that we are not at the end of this affair, nearer the beginning; which makes the significance of legislation that is being drafted on the subject even more marked.