Thousands pay last respects to liberal papal contender

Thousands of faithful flocked to Milan Cathedral yesterday to pay their final respects to Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a hero among reform-minded Catholics, as his body was laid in state.

Solemn crowds looked on as pall-bearers carried to the cathedral the coffin of Cardinal Martini, a former Archbishop of Milan who commanded widespread respect and advocated reform on issues such as contraception and women in the Church.

“The Church has been left 200 years behind. Why doesn’t it rouse itself? Are we afraid?” he asked in his last interview, conducted by a fellow Jesuit in early August and published in the Corriere della Sera newspaper yesterday.

The cardinal, who had once been tipped as a possible future Pope, had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for years and died on Friday, aged 85.

“He was a man of dialogue, a pastor who tried to knock down walls,” a pilgrim who had come to say goodbye to Martini told Italy’s Ansa news agency. The cardinal was laid out on crimson velvet-covered platform and relatives and close friends gathered to pay their respects to the man who had dreamed of a Third Vatican Council, which would revise outdated dogma and attract new faithful.

His funeral will be held in Milan Cathedral tomorrow. His death was widely mourned in the northern Italy city, where he had been archbishop for 22 years. Inter Milan football club posted a message on its website saying Cardinal Martini “leaves us hope of a world in which it is possible for different cultures, ideologies, beliefs and passions to coexist”.

In a letter marking Cardinal Martini’s death, Pope Benedict remembered him as a “skilful teacher and preeminent biblical scholar”, and recalled his dedication to Christian works.

Martini retired because of his age in 2002 after 22 years as head of the diocese, revealing at the same time that he was suffering from a form of Parkinson’s disease, which hurt his chances of becoming Pope three years later.

A Jesuit intellectual, Cardinal Martini was reported to speak 11 languages. But his liberal opinions sometimes raised the hackles of Church conservatives.

He once told an interviewer that even issues as controversial as birth control and women priests could be seen in a different light in the future.

“Certainly the use of condoms in particular situations can constitute a lesser evil,” Martini said in an interview with the Italian magazine l’Espresso in 2006.

“There is the particular situation of married couples in which one of the spouses is affected by Aids. This person has an obligation to protect the other partner and the other partner also has to protect him or herself.”

The Catholic Church, which runs many hospitals and institutions to help Aids victims, opposes the use of condoms and teaches that fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence are the best way to stop the spread of HIV/Aids.

It says promoting condoms to fight the spread of Aids fosters what it sees as immoral and hedonistic lifestyles and behaviour that will only contribute to its spread.

Cardinal Martini remained a prominent voice in the Church, and in May spoke out about the leaks scandal that led to the arrest of Pope Benedict’s butler.

He appealed to Church leaders to “urgently win back the trust of the faithful” after the scandal.

After he retired from the Milan post, he spent about six years in Jerusalem, returning to his first love – Biblical studies.

After he lost the ability to swallow around two weeks ago, Cardinal Martini refused to be fed artificially, his neurologist Gianni Pezzoli said.