Letter #35, 2025, Tuesday, May 6: A father

Pope Paul VI during his journey to the Holy Land, 4-6 January, 1964

Ice-covered Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, in February 2010, looking north toward the Sandwich mountain range

Letter #35, 2025, Tuesday, May 6: A father

There is now less than one day — from this morning until tomorrow morning — before the beginning of the papal conclave on Wednesday, May 7.

***

This morning in Rome, Andrea Tornielli, 61, the Editorial Director (we might say “Editor-in-Chief”) for the Holy See’s Dicastery for Communication, published a sensitive, moving piece about Pope Paul VI (1963-1978), and about how Paul conceived of his role as Pope.

He conceived of it as being a father.

Tornielli’s very simple, very tender piece is below…

***

His piece about Pope Paul VI reminded me of my own father, William, who died in 2020.

During the whole time in which I edited and published Inside the Vatican, from 1993 on, my father was in almost daily communication with me, sometimes encouraging me to take a stronger stand, sometimes contributing his own essays. I looked at the Church and the Vatican partly through his eyes.

And he was always respectful, when he visited me in Rome. He made me feel I was accomplishing something with the magazine, even though I knew it was a very small effort, just a little magazine in a world of mega-corporations which, together, digested and crafted and even carefully “spun” the news of the Church, and the Popes, and the Vatican.

I remember Dad meeting with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger more than once after his Thursday morning 7 a.m. Mass in the Campo Teutonico church.

My father was born in 1926, Ratzinger in 1927, an American and a German. My father poured through Ratzinger’s books, took copious notes on them, as I have mentioned before.

And I felt an inexpressibly gentle communion when my work, my reporting on the Church, brought my father together with Ratzinger, not long after dawn, on a Thursday morning, at the heart of Vatican City, a world equidistant from Bavaria and Connecticut.

It was a still point in the turning world, a still point in which my physical father, who was also the companion of my intellectual and spiritual journey, met quietly after Mass with the German theologian who guarded the Church’s doctrine, and who would become, as Benedict XVI, my spiritual father, but also the spiritual father of my father.

Similar thoughts came to my mind when my father and I would, on two occasions, attend the private Mass of Pope John Paul II. There is a photograph… my father greets John Paul, and I, looking boyish, look on, in the middle, between two fathers, my own father, and the Holy Father.

We also had a memorable dinner in Trastevere with Miriam Zollidaughter of Rabbi Israel (later Eugenio) Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome in the early 1940s.

I remember this now: that I went with my father on his 85th birthday, in June of 2011, 14 years ago now, to Red Hill near Center Harbor, New Hampshire, above the great lake of that state, called by the Indians Lake Winnipesaukee (link).

“The Abenaki name Winnipesaukee (often spelled Winnipiseogee in earlier centuries) means either “smile of the Great Spirit” or “beautiful water in a high place.”

“I would like to climb to the top, one more time,” my father said to me. (We had climbed and clambered up the hill, with my six brothers and sisters, many times over more than 50 years, since the 1960s, my father sometimes carrying the youngest on his shoulders for part of the way.)

We began slowly, and after about half an hour my father stopped, took a deep breath, and looked at me. “We will have to stop here. I can’t go on.”

Yet he did not turn and start down the trail. He just stood where he was.

So I said, “Dad, we can still make it. We’ll just go slower. We will walk five or 10 steps, then rest. You can do it if we go slow.”

And so we did. We walked slowly, within his breath, and drank water, and spoke a few words on this and that, and together, we reached the top of the hill and looked out over the lake the Indians called “smile of the Great Spirit.”

And my father put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

And I said, “Dad, it was all you.”

***

Here is Tornielli’s piece this morning, in Rome, a day before the opening of a papal conclave to elect the new Pope.

–RM

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The fatherhood of Peter

Our Editorial Director, Andrea Tornielli, reflects on the fatherhood of the Apostle Peter, the first Pope, and remembers Pope St. Paul VI’s words, which embodied the identity of the papacy: “I feel like the father of all humanity.”

By Andrea Tornielli

In the intense hours leading up to the beginning of the Conclave convened to elect the new Successor of the Apostle Peter, it is worthwhile to recall a fundamental aspect of the ministry of the Bishop of Rome—one particularly perceived by the People of God: fatherhood.

Millions of people, upon the unexpected announcement of the death of Pope Francis, felt orphaned—bereft of a father.

Pope Saint Paul VI reflected on the experience of fatherhood during a conversation with his friend, the philosopher Jean Guitton, upon returning from his journey to India in December 1964.

The Pope had been greeted in the streets upon arrival by more than a million people from all religions. It was an unforgettable embrace. The crowds filled the streets, surrounding the open-roofed Lincoln that Paul VI would later donate to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

For two uninterrupted hours, the Pope greeted and blessed the people.

Recalling that encounter with the crowd, Pope Paul VI confided to Guitton:

“I believe that of all the dignities of a Pope, the most enviable is fatherhood.

“I once accompanied Pius XII during solemn ceremonies. He would throw himself into the crowd as into the pool of Bethesda. They clung to him, tore at his garments. And he was radiant. He regained strength.

“But between witnessing fatherhood and being personally a father, there is an ocean of difference.

“Fatherhood is a feeling that invades the spirit and heart, that accompanies us every hour of the day, that cannot diminish, but only grows—because the number of children grows.”

Pope Saint Paul VI added:

“It is not so much a function as a fatherhood.

“And one cannot cease being a father…

“I feel like the father of all humanity…

“And this feeling, in the Pope’s conscience, is always new, always fresh, always in a state of birth, always free and creative.

“It is a feeling that does not tire, that does not grow weary, that relieves every fatigue.

“Never—not even for a moment—have I felt tired when raising my hand to bless.

“No, I shall never grow weary of blessing or forgiving.”

“When I arrived in Bombay,” he said, “there were twenty kilometers to travel to reach the Congress venue. Immense crowds, countless, dense, silent, motionless, lined the road—spiritual and poor crowds, those eager, packed, half-clothed, attentive crowds that one sees only in India. I had to continue blessing. A priest friend who was near me—I believe that by the end he was supporting my arm, like Moses’ servant. And yet, I do not feel superior, but a brother—less than all—because I carry the weight of all.”

As such, the Successor of Peter is a brother, “less than all,” because he carries the burden of all.

Several months before that experience in India, Pope Paul VI had already felt what it meant to be quite literally “swallowed” by the embrace of the people. This was the case in January 1964, during his first Apostolic Journey, which was to the Holy Land, a visit deeply desired by the late Pope.

In Jerusalem, at the Damascus Gate, the crowd was so immense that it disrupted the planned welcome ceremony.

The Pope’s car swayed like a boat, and he, exiting with difficulty and shielded by King Hussein’s soldiers, passed with great effort through the Damascus Gate—his entourage unable to accompany him.

Paul VI walked the entire Via Dolorosa, hemmed in by the tightly packed crowd in the ancient alleys of the Holy City.

At times, it seemed he would be swallowed up by the throng.

His face remained serene and smiling, hands lifted in blessing.

That evening, Father Giulio Bevilacqua, a personal friend of the Pope, told a group of journalists gathered outside the Apostolic Delegation in Jerusalem that many years earlier, Giovanni Battista Montini had confided to him, “I dream of a Pope who lives free from the pomp of the court and the imprisonments of protocol. Finally alone, in the midst of his deacons.”

And therefore, Fr. Bevilacqua concluded, “That is why I am convinced that today, although overwhelmed by the crowd, he is happier than when he descends into Saint Peter’s seated on the gestatorial chair…”

[End, article by Tornielli on fatherhood]

Bio: Andrea Tornielli

A graduate in History of the Greek language, at the University of Padua, in December 1987, Tornielli became a Roman Catholic journalist and writer. He collaborated at the Catholic newspaper Il Sabato and at the monthly 30Giorni, from 1992 to 1996. He was a journalist at the conservative daily Il Giornale, from 1996 to 2011. He started collaborating at La Stampa, in March 2011, as a Vaticanist, and he is the coordinator of their website Vatican Insider, published in three languages and entirely dedicated to information related to the Vatican and the Catholic Church. He also has a monthly program at Radio Maria.

Tornielli has published many books, mostly on religious matters, which have been translated into several languages, including several biographies and on subjects like Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, the historical Jesus and Padre Pio.

On 18 December 2018, Pope Francis appointed Tornielli manager of the editorial department of the Dicastery for Communication.