Pope Faces Politics of Sainthood

V A T I C A N  C I T Y , Sept. 2, 2000 -- During history’s longest papacy, Pope PiusIX pitted the Roman Catholic Church against a changing world:condemning emerging freedoms of speech and religion, confining Jewsto Europe’s last ghetto and condoning the seizure of a Jewish boy to beraised as a Catholic.

When he died in 1878, revenge-seeking Italian liberals tried todump his body into the Tiber River.

On Sunday, Pope John Paul II will beatify Pius in a twinceremony with the 20th century’s Pope John XXIII, advancing the twopontiffs to the church’s last step before possible sainthood.

‘A Beatification Too Far’

Jewish groups are bitterly protesting Pius’ beatification. Evensome Catholics are challenging the church’s pairing of the rigidlytraditional Pius with the widely popular John XXIII, who has hisown critics among conservatives for convening thetradition-overhauling Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

“A beatification too far,” a respected English Catholicweekly, The Tablet, said of Pius IX’s beatification, calling it“the work of a small group of ultraconservatives.”

“It can only be seen as a political move, designed to provide aconservative and reactionary counterweight to the beatification ofJohn XXIII,” the weekly stated.

‘Caused So Much Suffering,’

“Really, I cannot understand it,” says Elena Mortara,great-great niece of the Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, who was takenfrom his weeping father’s arms in 1858 by papal police.

Pius “has caused so much suffering,” she told the Italianreligious monthly Confronti. “The wound of the ‘Mortara case’still aches in my family, and in all our community.”

Church authorities took the 6-year-old Edgardo from his familyin Bologna after a Catholic housemaid claimed to have baptized theboy when he appeared deathly ill. Under Pius’ patronage, Edgardogrew up a church ward and later a priest.

“Even in the 19th century, actions such as the Mortarakidnapping were viewed with shock and condemnation,” theU.S.-based International Jewish Committee for InterreligiousConsultations said in a letter of protest to the Vatican inmid-August.

Supporters See Justification

Supporters of Pius’ beatification say the taking of Edgardo wasjustified by his baptism.

Opponents are “using today’s mentality to judge the facts of150 years ago,” said Monsignor Carlo Liberati, one of the Vaticanclerics who shepherded Pius’ cause to beatification.

John Paul II himself has noted the “difficult” era in whichPius served — one in which the church often came under literalattack by the rising forces of nationalism and anti-clericalism.

Pius’ 31-year papacy saw the breakup of the centuries-old PapalStates, but he managed to bring the Roman Catholic Church out ofthe tumult intact.

An adamant upholder of all church customs, the noble-born Piusenforced restrictions on Jews in Rome’s ghetto until abolition ofthe Papal States freed the Jews in 1870. It was Europe’s lastenforced Jewish ghetto until Nazis brought back the idea ahalf-century later.

Denounced Free Speech, Progress

In 1864, Pius issued his landmark Syllabus of Errors, 80sweepingly negative points condemning modern ideas, such as freedomof speech and religion and separation of church and state.

Point 80 rejected the modern world itself, denouncing the ideathat a pope should “reconcile himself and come to terms withprogress, liberalism and modern civilization.”

Pius also fostered the Catholic dogmas of papal infallibilityand the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception, linking them in a waythat Pope John Paul II called a “service to the faith” in 1996.

At the time, Pius’ proclamation of papal infallibility promptedbitterly opposed dissenters to break away from the church — thechurch’s last major schism until the one that followed John XXIII’sSecond Vatican Council.

Reform Under John XXIII

The council went on to override much of Pius’ Syllabus of Errorsin an effort to make the church more accessible to ordinary people.The innovations included allowing Mass to be celebrated in locallanguages rather than Latin.

The liberalization John XXIII set in motion makes him a mistakenleader in the eyes of many church conservatives.

In Italy, however, Catholics are hanging crepe ribbons andballoons to celebrate his relatively quick-paced beatification. Thepeasant-born John is still known here as simply “The Good Pope” —more for his kindly manner than for any matter of church doctrine.

Ironically, John XXIII’s cause for beatification long had beencounterbalanced with that of another conservative Pius, the WorldWar II-era Pius XII.

But Jewish groups increasingly protested what they said was PiusXII’s silence against the Holocaust, and church officials quietlylet it be known this year that the wartime pope’s beatification wasoff the calendar for 2000.

Pius IX’s, with its then less-known Jewish issues, moved up.