To be bishop of Rome — that is, of the world — is not like being bishop of Krakow. We Italians are an ancient and tested bridge between past and future, and supported by 2,000 years of consummate political tradition. The popes knew how to bring into the melting pot of Christianity first Roman civilization, then barbarian cultures, and finally the many conquerors who came to Italy and were seduced by the imperial myth of the Rome of the emperors. Italy is also a secular school of political and religious mediation, run by the Catholic Church.
Even in modern times the highest Italian political class, the one most capable of a European breadth, the Christian Democrats of Alcide De Gasperi and Aldo Moro, was reared by the Catholic Church. And this church has been a master of mediation between historical contingency and the eternal — the child, often, of Machiavelli as well as of the Gospel.
John Paul II’s rigidity seems alien to this more farsighted and elastic Italian tradition.
Yes, that’s what we all want, all over the world, in our Pope. One dedicated to the Italian way of doing things.
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