In Love with God and All Humanity
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ,
1. Towards the end of the fourth century, Bishop Paulinus of Nola wrote to Bishop Nicetas of Remesiana (today Bela Palanka in Orthodox Serbia): "Thanks to you, the barbarians are learning to sing praise to Christ with a Roman heart". For Paulinus, Nicetas was the author of the Te Deum, the hymn of praise to the divine Trinity, which a later tradition attributed instead to Ambrose of Milan. Today, scholars who favour one or the other author agree about joining the two schools and say that the Te Deum has a heart that is both Roman and Ambrosian, thereby combining these two venerable liturgical traditions.
In the spirit of the Te Deum, let us celebrate this moment of great joy for the Dioceses of Rome, Milan and Brescia, and with them for all the Bishops of Italy and the Catholic community of the whole world. We are celebrating, in fact, the successful conclusion of the diocesan process for the canonization of the Servant of God Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Paul VI, which has consisted in a rigorous investigation of his life, his work, his virtues and his reputation for holiness. It lasted almost six years, during which many testimonies were collected, also through the appropriate rogatory commissions. This concluding act means that shortly it will be possible to begin the procedures reserved to the Holy See; thus we are closer to the time when the heroic virtues of Paul VI can be proclaimed.
A living example of fidelity and humility
Let us give thanks to God! And let us also thank everyone who has contributed to these proceedings: Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Archbishop of Milan, Archbishop Bruno Foresti, Bishop emeritus of Brescia, and his recently appointed successor, Bishop Giulio Sanguineti, and most especially Archbishop Pasquale Macchi, who was the exemplary secretary of Archbishop Montini and later of Pope Paul VI. We also thank Mons. Gianfranco Bella, president of the Ordinary Tribunal of the Diocese of Rome, Fr Paolo Molinari, S.J„ postulator for the cause of the servant of God, and Dr Giuseppe Camadini, president of the Paul VI Institute of Brescia, and with them all their staff, for all the documents they made available.
2. At this moment, the biographical data about the candidate for the honours of the altar should be mentioned. However, since they are well known to everyone, let us take this occasion instead to reflect on his Christian virtues, as we wait with trust for the Church's authority to give solemn approval of their exemplarity.
I think we can say that Pope Paul VI, a true servant of God, faithful to one love with an undivided heart and without reservation, was first and foremost a living example of humility. He accepted the See of Peter with an extraordinary sense of responsibility. On the one hand, he felt he was the object of a supreme love that called for an unlimited response: "Peter, do you love me more than these?" (Jn 21:15); however, his human limitations seemed overwhelming to him and totally unequal to so lofty a task, had the Lord's grace not filled the gap and sustained his feeble efforts. He did not hide these feelings: indeed, he spoke of them and repeated them with that intensity which caused his voice to quiver and almost tremble whenever a strong emotion flowed from his heart.
As a young priest, Montini had no ambitions for an ecclesiastical career; he would have liked to have been the pastor of souls in a parish, in his Diocese of Brescia. Instead, his life was taken in hand by others, in reality, by his Lord, and he obediently underwent a remarkable asceticism in the heart of the universal Church, in the shadow of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII. However, when he could freely take the initiative, he would be seen kneeling in the muddy snow on the outskirts of Milan, kissing the ground of that Archdiocese Which the Lord, through Peter, had entrusted to his pastoral care. He was seen kissing the ground of the new countries he visited as an apostolic pilgrim, starting with Jesus' own land, which he wanted to visit just a few months after his election.
Today kissing the ground may seem like something taken for granted and no longer makes an impression. Nonetheless, it was and still is the sign of total submission to God's will and to his plan of salvation, giving a Christian value to that precise place and moment, like Jesus, who in the Gospels appears so attached to the times and places of his earthly journey. It was not enough. Paul VI knelt to kiss the feet of the Orthodox Metropolitan Meliton, who was disconcerted by such humility; he knelt before the "men of the Red Brigades". He removed from his head the tiara with its three crowns, the dear gift of his Milanese people, and offered it to the poor, exchanging it definitively for a simple episcopal mitre. He abolished the papal court with its traditional pomp, keeping for himself just body guards and a security force. Some people noticed that although he used the traditional "We" throughout his life in his writings and talks, he used it less in his later years and often wrote it with a small letter rather than a capital: so great was his desire to humble himself. He lived the lesson of the Gospel: "... whoever would be great among you must be your ... slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:26-28).
Charity translated into a broad vision of the Church
3. To give one's life is the supreme expression of charity, the queen of the virtues; the greater it is, the deeper the humility. He was taught this by the Apostle Paul, whose name, surprisingly, he made his own. Many of Paul's sayings were like a flame that burned within him: "The love of Christ impels us"; "I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls" (2 Cor 12:15); "To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (cf. 1 Cor 9:22). Jesus had said: "Greater love has no man than this: than to lay down his life for his friends" (cf. Jn 15:13). True love, in fact, is summed up in the giving of one's life, body and soul: in an active sense, by arousing it in others, as well as in a passive sense, by mortifying or sacrificing one's own life. Paul VI, pastor of souls, did this: he practised the highest degree of charity in his personal choices and in the exercise of his apostolic responsibilities.
Throughout his life he respected everyone; he loved friends and enemies alike; he forgave, helped and consoled; he considered without favouritism those near or far, and perhaps prodigal sons the most: he performed individual acts of kindness and sensitivity known to many, which time wilt reveal. Without ever losing sight of individuals, he was active in institutional charity on a large scale. During the war years he was Pius XII's trusted assistant. These were years of demanding service in the Secretariat of State, but also of feverish activity to help the victims of the world conflict. Pius XII's charity was also expressed in institutions such as the Vatican Information Office, which exchanged and searched for news about soldiers, prisoners and civilians, or the Pontifical Assistance Commission; and Montini was their soul, the man who overlooked nothing in providing the most generous relief possible for those who were painfully stricken. In the meantime he also practised charity in word and spiritual direction, leaving a deep impression on many souls.
Then there were his years in Milan: he organized the great city mission on the theme of "God the Father", the first experiment in reaching out to all types of people; he promoted projects for new churches; he cared for seminarians; he paid great attention to the world of culture and the arts, but also to priests in mountain areas, whom he personally went to see, visiting every parish in his immense Archdiocese.
As Pope, his charity was translated into a broad vision of the Church, especially in the Encyclical Ecclesiam suam, with its great circles of dialogue: domestic, interdenominational, interreligious, global. Within the Roman Curia, he strengthened John XXIII's institution for Christian unity and then created new ones for relations with Jews, non-Christians, Muslims and non-believers; he created the commissions for social communications, for the spiritual care of migrants and itinerants, the council for the laity, the commission "Iustitia et Pax" and the council "Cor Unum"; he called people from around the world to work in these offices. He foresaw the changing times, the growing need for religious faith, and for reflection on an ever increasing spiritual aridity. He felt that the witness of the Gospel should be taken directly to every corner of the earth, and he undertook his great apostolic journeys, while supporting the missionaries ad gentes with all his intellectual and practical efforts. But the Church is made up of local communities. He devoted his attention to them, starting with the Church of Rome, which with his urging and inspiration became more and more a Diocese and community of believers. Meanwhile he fulfilled one of the Council's wishes by establishing the Synod of Bishops for true co-responsibility in evangelization.
To know the depth of the servant of God's charity, it is helpful to recall one episode in his life. A Lufthansa plane was hijacked; the captain was killed and the terrorists' ultimatums came one after another. At the height of the tragedy, the Pope telegraphed his condolences to Cardinal Hoffner, President of the German Bishops' Conference, and added this sentence: "If it would be useful, we would offer our own person for the release of the hostages". This sentence was not meant for effect: it was himself, it was Montini.
Inwardly sustained by the virtue of hope
4. With him, charity went hand in glove with faith and hope. Every time he spoke as a Pastor, people realized that he was not speaking his own words but those of Another, or in the name of Another, the One who is man's all. When he spoke of Christ, he was transfigured. His prayers to Christ set his discourses on fire. His faith shone through his personality and was radiant in his words. In 1967 he inaugurated the Year of Faith to mark the 1,900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. He closed it in 1968 in St Peter's Square, proclaiming "The Credo of the People of God". This is a profession of faith, as he himself said, based on "the creed of Nicaea, the creed of the immortal Tradition of the Holy Church of God", but enriched by the fruits of the Council and prompted by the difficult problems of the new era. At the time his Creed was not well received, either in or outside the Church. But he said: "We deem it our duty to fulfil the mandate entrusted by Christ to Peter, whose Successor We are, though the least in merit, namely, to confirm Our brethren in the faith"; the duty to "give witness to Our steadfast will to be faithful to the Deposit of Faith"; the duty to "take the greatest care not to harm the teachings of Christian doctrine". And in the text, after the many "We believe's", there is a revealing sentence: "We confess that the kingdom of God begun here below in the Church of Christ is not of this world whose form is passing, and that its proper growth cannot be confounded with the progress of civilization, of science or of human technology, but that it consists in an ever more profound knowledge of the unfathomable riches of Christ" (L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 11 July 1968, pp. 4-6).
Paul VI was inwardly sustained by the theological virtue of hope. His alleged pessimism is an invention of the media. Of course, he was a lucid and rigorous analyst of the evils before his eyes; and when he denounced the most serious evils, especially if they appeared in "his family", the community of believers in Christ, he does not hide his human and Christian anguish. But he was not an anguished Pope. He believed in the Church's future, in a new flourishing of Christianity. A Pastor who was not enlivened by great Christian hope could not have written so many programmatic documents, much less an Apostolic Exhortation on Christian joy, and could not have "redeemed the times" with such an abundance of apostolic projects.
5. Prudence, a cardinal virtue, inspired his life to such a point that it was easy for the malicious to distort and mistake it. According to the case, they described him as a progressive or a conservative; but no one could settle on either definition. Prudence never held him back, but was an incentive to justice and fortitude, which he practised and taught in the official exercise of his episcopal and later Petrine ministry, as well as in his daily, tireless, even if less obvious, opposition to the forces of evil.
With all his strength he tried to draw the Church's and the world's attention to the insanity of war and to global injustices, all the more serious and culpable because of humanity's wealth of material and technological resources and its fatal experiences of war. He was the first to go to the UN headquarters in New York, on 4 October 1965, and to cry out to the world: "No more war, war never again! It is peace that must guide the destiny of nations and of all humanity!". It was he who wrote in Populorum progressio that "development is the new name for peace" (n. 76). It was he who initiated the World Day of Peace.
Another scandal to which Paul VI repeatedly called attention was slums, then existing in large numbers even in Rome. He spared no effort in urging the clergy and public authorities to remedy them, but he himself had a village built in Acilia with 99 apartments, to house an equal number of families from the slums in a dignified way, which he gave to the municipality of Rome. Visiting the village a few months after its inauguration, he said: "Many think of the Pope as a fortunate man: well, you should know that all the sorrows of the world are in some way felt in his heart.... And suffering of others who still live in slums or are homeless; I feel the limitations of my means, the immense gap between the needs of the poor and the limits of my resources. But I hope, at least, that everyone will see in this project the sign of my sentiments and know that wherever help unfortunately does not reach, at least there is affectionate love". From this kind of sentiment a new term was coined which would be widely circulated in the Church: the "civilization of love".
Paul VI calmly bore his daily cross. He bore without complaint the serious ailments of age, as well as the sometimes negative impact from a public in part hostile. He was not an immediately popular Pope. He was an intellectual, from a middle-class family, and therefore suspect to the populist culture of the time. He was an innovator, but yielded nothing to vapid or libertarian fashions. And when he had to take a stance on a very delicate matter regarding Christian morality such as birth control, he consulted everyone and then listened to his inner conscience and his charism, publishing the Encyclical Humane vitae despite the foreseeable tumult it immediately unleashed.
His self-denial and temperance prompted Paul VI each day to sacrifice every type of comfort, to dedicate himself without respite to his apostolic work, audiences and travels. He kept late hours during his nights in Rome, closed in his private study, examining, annotating and settling pending matters, so that no one would have to suffer due to culpable delay. He never spared himself. In the last days of his life, he would still leave Castel Gandolfo to visit Frattocchie di Marino to pay homage at the tomb of Cardinal Giuseppe Pizzardo, his former superior and teacher; and he granted a private audience to the Hon. Alessandro Pertini, the new President of Italy, who had earnestly begged for one. Then, on 6 August, he rested in peace in the Lord.
6. We can therefore say that Paul VI was a true servant of God, faithful to a single love with an undivided heart and without reserve, that he loved Jesus Christ and all the humanity of the redeemed, as well as the beauty of human life on earth and the marvels of creation. In addition to the tasks he fulfilled and the words he spoke, the writings he left, many of which are private and unpublished, attest to his great heart. The praiseworthy Paul VI Institute in Brescia is gradually collecting and publishing them in their original manuscript form, where one can admire his distinctive, clear and regular handwriting, which makes a deep impression. I would tike to recall, among others, his "Unpublished Meditations", "Letter to the Red Bridages", "Thoughts on Death", "Testament" and, lastly, the manuscript text of his first Encyclical, Ecclesiam suam, which was written, corrected and finished entirely in his own hand.
I close by recalling that the Apostle Paul used these famous words in his Letter to Titus to express how much God loves us: "The goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared" (Ti 3:4). The Servant of God Pope Paul VI, a disciple and imitator of Christ, also made his life a revelation of the benignitas et humanitas brought to earth by the Son of God: he possessed great goodness and humanity. For this reason he was able to proclaim and bear witness in a genuine and effective way to that new world of which Zechariah, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sang at the birth of his own son: "You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people ... to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace" (Lk 1:76-79).
For all these reasons, we wait with confidence for the beatification and canonization of the Servant of God Giovanni Battista Montini, for which we will unceasingly offer fervent petitions and prayers to God.
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