Scholar, linguist and diplomat

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32462, 24 November 1970, Page 12

Scholar, linguist and diplomat

Giovanni Battista (John the Baptist) Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan, was elected the two hundred and sixty-second Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church on June 20, 1963. He took the name Pope Paul VI.

Now aged 73, the Pope is a slight, ascetic figure with piercing blue eyes, who is said to enjoy the music of Mozart and the French Jesuit guitarist, Father Aime Duval. He is the second of three brothers, one of whom became an Italian politician, the other a physician. Like his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul is a Lombard, but he comes from a landowning upper middle-class family, unlike Pope John who was notable for his peasant origins. With degrees in theology, civil and canon law, and philosophy he served first in the apostolic nunciature in Warsaw in 1923. He was then only 26 years old. In the next 10 years he served mainly in Rome as spiritual adviser to the Italian Federation of Catholic University Students at a time when that organisation was attempting to maintain its independence in Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. Montini’s anti-Fascist work caught the attention of the Vatican and from 1930 onwards he was singled out for special grooming. By the time of the Second World War he was a close friend and adviser of Pope Pius XII. He dealt with much of the Papal correspondence, handled many delicate diplomatic problems during the war, and afterwards supported the liberal wing of the Italian Christian Democrat Party in its vigorous anti-Communism. Montini became Archbishop of Milan in 1954; he was among the candidates for the Papacy on the death of Pope Pius in 1958. He was not elected then, but the new Pope created him a cardinal. Throughout his life he has earned respect as a scholar 'and linguist. At his coronation as Pope in St Peter’s Square he delivered his serImon in nine languages— I Latin, Italian, French, Engllish, German, Spanish, Por-

tuguese, Polish and Russian. His declared intention, he said, was “greater mutual comprehension, charity and peace between peoples.” But in Milan, as Archbishop of the largest archdiocese in Italy, he had revealed another side of his character. The city was a Communist stronghold and Montini attempted to bring the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to bear on the city’s enormous postwar social problems. He visited the poorest districts, the factories and mines; he preached a doctrine of Christian love to what he called “the unhappy ones who gather behind Marx.” So great was the contrast between the scholar and the evangelist that Pope John described him as “our Hamlet in Milan.” As Pope he has continued the attitude of Pope John in recognising the needs of the Church to adjust to changing world conditions and to deal directly with problems instead of ignoring them. “Pope John has shown us some paths which it will be wise to follow,” he said in a funeral oration for his predecessor. But for all his apparent concern for the problems of the world, the Pope has disappointed many Roman Catholics with his conservative approach, particularly on the basic questions of divorce and birth control. He has explored tentatively less rigid ways of reaching decisions in the Church but the return to the hierarchic and. authoritarian principle was swift two years ago when the findings of the majority of a committee set up to consider the church’s attitude to birth control were rejected in favour of the Pope’s own pronouncement. Because of his complexity, Pope Paul VI has been presented to the world as a baffling, contradictory, and independent man who defies classification and prediction. But his own conception of the papacy is clear enough. Ten years ago he wrote: “The papacy seems a solitary, unique phenomenon in the world of today. Upon the Pope must depend the destinies of civilisation, not because he disposes of riches, or means, or forces, or power, but because he is in sympathy with every human need, feels repugnance for every human injustice, courage for every ideal principle, and keeps the humility and dignity of the man of God.”