There is no need to declare oneself and consider oneself an observant and practicing Catholic to feel deeply saddened and embittered by the sad events involving the Vatican: nonchalant behavior on money, questionable bankers who first rise to positions of very high responsibility and then are kicked out of those very high prelates who had previously placed them in those places. It was Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone himself who called Ettore in 2008
Gotti Tedeschi to manage the finances of the Governorate of the Vatican City. THE
meanwhile is leaking news from and in all directions, while even the butler of the Holy Father is under accusation. And in the Vatican there are those who, before worrying about the truthfulness or otherwise of the facts, and the origin of that news, take it out on the journalists who publish and disseminate it. As if a vigorous censorship intervention were enough to solve the problems of a Church in obvious difficulty and with little credibility.
So sadness and bitterness. Particularly felt in Italy not only by Catholics in the round. Yes, because it is difficult, even for those who believe themselves to be convinced secularists, not to remember the importance and contribution of ideas and behaviors that some (Italian) Popes have given to the prestige and sometimes to the stability of our state. The first reference is to Pope Roncalli. Succeeded Pius XII (the prince Pope who often and not always opportunely spoke in Italian politics and with whom even the very Catholic Alcide De Gasperi had relationship difficulties), John XXIII did not hinder the dialogue between Italian Catholics and socialists, from which the first centre-left was born. Those were the years in which the policy of international détente began, with the Pope, Kennedy and Khrushchev as protagonists.
But it was mostly a Montini that we must think with gratitude for how he managed to help our country, without ever crossing the frontier of undue interference, in one of the most dramatic moments of our Republic: that of Moro crime. When the Christian Democrat statesman was found murdered by the Red Brigades after his long imprisonment, the family refused to participate in the state funeral and was Paul VI, who (unique case in history) attended and presided over the funeral ceremony in San Giovanni, to put all its prestige and authority alongside the Italian state. Those were times when it was fashionable to say: "Neither with the state nor with the Red Brigades".
It is in this frame of memories that one thinks of the deep anguish that must have hit the Italian Catholic community in recent days. Above all that part of it that has always been concerned with keeping its being Catholic in a rigorous balance with participation in Italian public life. Certainly in the times of Pope John and Pope Montini there was still the DC. But it was not only in the DC that Italian Catholics recognized themselves. Just as the DC did not identify its presence in politics only in referring to the Church. It is true that the DC promoted referendums against divorce and then against abortion. He lost them. He took note of it and avoided that there was a negative repercussion on the political balance on which the government of the country was based.
Today the DC is no more. And in recent years we have seen that the Church prefers to have its say in politics without reference parties. In theory it could be good, progress. But in reality it has not always been so. Without the mediation of the Catholic party, the interventions of the Church have appeared to many lay people increasingly outstretched. Think of Cardinal Ruini's invitations to desert the polls on the occasion of the referendum on assisted fertilization. And ready to collect without ifs and buts the indications from beyond the Tiber were precisely political forces that had something to be forgiven both as regards public and private ethics.
It is in this context that the figure of Pope ratzinger, received by public opinion and by most of the media with high expectations: a great and rigorous theologian, capable (in the opinion of many) of containing an anti-traditionalist and relativist drift, and as such exposed to the bullying of other religious faiths, especially the Islamic one. It is no coincidence that casual commentators exalted the speech of Pope Benedict at the University of Regensburg with tones and references of a crusade.
These days Ratzinger he did not hide his sadness for the events that have shaken the Church. At the same time it has neither taken nor announced measures against the protagonists of those events. Indulgence of a Shepherd of souls? The irresoluteness of a scholar more attracted by theological studies and the relationship with faith than by the leadership of a complex entity such as the Holy See? Appropriate prudence of a Pope far advanced in years? It could be a bit of all these reasons together. The fact remains that the Church and the Catholic world are crossed by discouragement and sadness.
The Pope has been in Milan since yesterday evening for a three-day visit to the Ambrosian Church. It could be an opportunity to relaunch the image of the Church: meetings with families and pilgrims, a great concert at La Scala, "a bath of affection away from the problems of the curia", as Il Foglio wrote, which however did not hide " the bewilderment” of those who welcome the Pope.
And here it is worth remembering that the Lombardy region, of which Milan is the capital, is led by another much-discussed figure in today's Catholic world:
Robert Formigoni from Communion and Liberation. Formigoni and his system of power, largely founded on friends of that ecclesial community, are at the center of
relevant scandals centered on lavish vacations that would be offered to the Governor,
from his CL friends who were also interlocutors of the Region and beneficiaries of contracts for the complex Lombard health system. Formigoni has repeatedly said that he has no intention of leaving his (fourth) post.
In short, the difficulties of the Catholic world do not stop and even go beyond the confines of the Vatican palaces. Montanelli once wrote that when Giulio Andreotti accompanied De Gasperi to mass, of which he was undersecretary, while the prime minister spoke to God, he preferred to speak to the priests. To think badly is a sin. But from the stories of the "crows" in the Vatican and the holidays of the chaste Lombard governor, we get the impression that those who, like the Trentino statesman, go to church to talk to God, are increasingly in difficulty and probably also in the minority.
