Pope John Paul I had the 10th shortest pontificate in the history of the Catholic Church

Thirty seven years ago yesterday, 65-year-old Italian Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected on the fourth ballot during the second day of the papal conclave as pope on Aug. 26, 1978, taking the name Pope John Paul I, a combination of names honoring his two immediate predecessors, now Blessed Pope Paul VI and St. Pope John XXIII. He was consecrated as pope Sept. 3, 1978.

Known as the “Smiling Pope,” he died just 33 days later on Sept. 28, 1978, the briefest pontificate since Pope Leo XI’s in 1605, and setting the stage for the first Year of Three Popes – Blessed Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I and St. Pope John Paul II – since 1605 when Pope Clement VIII, Pope Leo XI  and Pope Paul V all sat on the Chair of Peter.

Born at Canale d’Argordo, near Belluno, 80 miles north of Venice, Luciani was consecrated as  Bishop of Vittorio Veneto by Pope John XXIII at St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 27, 1958, and subsequently was named Patriarch of Venice by Pope Paul VI on Dec. 15, 1969.  He was created a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Paul VI on March 5, 1973.

On Thursday, Sept. 28, 1978, Pope John Paul I shared a simple dinner of clear soup, veal, fresh beans and salad in his papal apartment with his two secretaries, an Italian, Father Diego Lorenzi, and an Irishman, Father John Magee.

The secretaries had a glass of wine each; Pope John Paul I drank only water. When dinner was over, the three men briefly watched a news program on television and shortly after 9 p.m.  the pope retired for the night, setting his wind-up alarm clock for 4:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 29, the hour he usually arose.

At 4:30 a.m., Sister Vincenza Taffarel, a nun who had served as housekeeper in his household during his decade as Bishop of Vittorio Veneto between 1959 and 1969,  took a flask of coffee to his study, as she had done every day for 20 years, knocking at his bedroom door and bidding him good morning. There was no reply. A quarter of an hour later she returned and knocked again and still no reply. Alarmed, she opened the door and Pope John Paul I was sitting up in bed, wearing his glasses, with some sheets of paper clutched in his hand. She checked for a pulse and found none.

Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, deputy head of the Vatican’s health service, estimated the time of death to have been about 11 p.m. the previous evening. The cause of death was said to be a heart attack.

While Pope John Paul I had a very short pontificate, it was by no means the shortest. That distinction is officially held by Pope Urban VII, an Italian, who was only pope for 13 days between Sept. 15 and Sept. 27, 1590. One of his first papal acts was to make a list of all the poor in Rome, so that he could help them. He paid off the debts of all the monts-de-piété in the ecclesiastical state, and ordered the bakers of Rome to make larger loaves of bread and sell them cheaper, indemnifying their losses out of his own pocket.

An even shorter pontificate, although one we can place an asterisk beside, because it was so short there wasn’t even time to consecrate him after being elected pope, resulting in him being now omitted from most modern lists of popes, was that of Pope-elect Stephen II, who only served for three days between March 23 and March 26, 752 before dying as the result of a stroke.

It’s a bit complicated really. It is, after all, a Catholic thing.

Pope-elect Stephen II was an Italian priest, whose predecessor, Pope St. Zachary, had made  cardinal presbyter seven years earlier in 745. But he hadn’t quite been episcopally ordained as a bishop yet when elected pope.

According to the canon law in effect when he was elected in March 752, his pontificate actually wasn’t to begin until his papal consecration, hence his name is not registered in the Liber Pontificalis, nor in many other lists of popes. Regnal numbering was also not used for popes until the 10th century, and their turned out to be a lot of Pope Stephens, complicating matters even further, if possible. Any regnal numbering attached to their pontificates has been applied posthumously.

However, since Oct. 1, 1975, a pope has been considered pope from the time of his election and acceptance, even before papal consecration, thus Pope-elect Stephen II has been sometimes  anachronistically called  Pope Stephen II again over the last 40 years.

And, of course, again history’s shortest pope with a three-day pontificate.

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Not for the faint of heart: Father Subhash Joseph to transfer from St. Lawrence Church to the Church of St. Gertrude in Pelican Narrows and the Church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in Sandy Bay, both in remote northeastern Saskatchewan

Days after he began what was originally expected to be a second three-year appointment as co-pastor of St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church here in Thompson, Manitoba, Father Subhash Joseph, a missionary priest from India, said July 18 he is being transferred to the repair-challenged Church of St. Gertrude in Pelican Narrows, Saskatchewan, located 120 kilometres northwest of Flin Flon; 388 kilometres northeast of Prince Albert and 525 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, and the Church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows in Sandy Bay, at road’s end for the gravel winding road, 72 kilometres north of Pelican Narrows. The transfer, requested by Father Joseph, as he is known, and approved by Archbishop Murray Chatlain, archbishop of the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas, will probably take place in October. He will serve in Pelican Narrows and Sandy Bay by himself, replacing  Father Susai Jesu, an Oblate, also from India.

Father Joseph, along with Father Guna Pothula, his co-pastor at St. Lawrence Church in Thompson, are both from India and members of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, founded by Father Peter Marie Mermier from Vouray in the parish of Chaumont en Genevois and the Diocese of Annecy in the Savoy region of France in October 1838 for parish mission, foreign mission and youth education. They are also known as the Fransalians. Pope Pius XI proclaimed St. Francis de Sales in 1923 as the patron saint of writers and journalists. Francis de Sales was born in France and lived at the time of the Protestant Reformation, becoming Bishop of Geneva. He had lots of exposure to Calvinism and predestination and was noted for his diplomacy in the volatile, heated religious climate of the day in Switzerland. He’s honored as one of the doctors of the Catholic Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The missionary order allows it priests to live abroad for up to 10 years. Father Joseph and Father Guna arrived in Thompson together three years ago in July 2012. Their requests to have their terms extended for a further three years were approved earlier this year by the provincial superior of their missionary order in India and the local archdiocese here. Father Guna, who will be staying on at St. Lawrence in Thompson, will now be joined in due course by another priest, likely from Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India where he is from, and also a member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales.

In Cree, Pelican Narrows  is called Opawikoscikcan, which means “The Narrows of Fear.” The community consists of the Northern Village of Pelican Narrows and Pelican Narrows 184B Indian Reserve, the administrative centre of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation. The combined population is about 2,700, with more than two-thirds of the population – about, 1,900 of the 2,700 residents – living on the reserve. Sandy Bay’s name in Cree is Wapaskokimawn, meaning “okimaw,” which is “boss” in Cree, or “non-native agent.” With a combined population of about 1,200, the community, like Pelican Narrows,  is also split into two parts: the Northern Village of Sandy Bay and  Wapaskokimaw Indian Reserve No. 202, with about one quarter of Sandy Bay’s combined population being members of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation.

Major businesses and industry in Pelican Narrows consist of the Co-op Fisheries and Fish Plant, The Northern Store, Mum’s Restaurant, Charles Confectionery, PBCN Band Store, Pearson Enterprises, Nikatosik Forestry and Pelican Narrows Air Services.

In 1876, Father Étienne Bonnald, a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.), often known simply as Oblates, and also a missionary order, sought to establish a Catholic presence within the Village of Pelican Narrows, which had started out as a Protestant community. St. Gertrude was erected two years later in 1878.

The Church of St. Gertrude in Pelican Narrows, where 90 per cent of the parishioners are Cree, had fallen into such a state of disrepair in recent years, Catholic Missions In Canada identified it as a mission church it was going to help fund repairs for.  St. Joseph’s Catholic Parish Social Justice Committee in Moose Jaw, at the suggestion of Catholic Missions In Canada, began helping with repairs through its “St. Gertrude’s Project” in 2010. You can watch a short YouTube video on the project here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeLwJCejEJQ

Les Oblats de Marie Immaculée, or The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.), established the first mission at Ile-À-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan in 1860.

Another Oblate priest, Father Ovide Charlebois, arrived as pastor of St. Gertrude in 1900. While in Pelican Narrows, he constructed a new church with a bell, and a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was erected. Ten years later,  on March 4, 1910 when the Vicariate Apostolic of Keewatin, forerunner to today’s Metropolitan Archdiocese of Keewatin Le Pas, was created from territory of the Diocese of Prince Albert, and Charlebois, elevated to bishop, was appointed as its first ordinary on Aug. 8, 1910 and installed as vicar apostolic on March 7, 1911.

The Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas takes in some 430,000 square kilometres and stretches across the northern parts of three provinces – Saskatchewan, Manitoba and a small portion of Northwestern Ontario.

The farthest point west is La Loche, Saskatchewan., near the Alberta border. The farthest point north is Lac Brochet here in Manitoba. The distance from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Cathedral in The Pas, which serves as the archdiocesan seat, to La Loche by car, is 850 kilometres – an 8 1/2 -hour drive – and the archbishop, as shepherd of the flock, has to travel through the Diocese of Prince Albert in Saskatchewan to reach La Loche in his own archdiocese on travelling pastoral visits.

The farthest point east travelled is Sandy Lake, Ont., a fly-in and Northern Ontario Winter Road Network-only remote Oji-Cree First Nations community in Northwestern Ontario, 450 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg and 600 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay.

The distance from The Pas to Sandy Lake is a combined six-hour drive to Winnipeg, followed by a one-hour plane ride.

Lac Brochet is reached by a four-hour drive from The Pas to Thompson and then an hour flight from Thompson to Lac Brochet. En route to Lac Brochet, the archbishop sometimes stays at the rectory at St. Lawrence Church on Cree Road in Thompson overnight waiting to catch a flight.

The Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales has long had a presence in India, dating back to 1846.  The Visakhapatnam Province of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales in India also has missions in Trinidad and Papua New Guinea, as well as the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas here in Canada.

Father Joseph joined the seminary at the age of 16 in 1998 and was ordained a priest in 2010. He is from Therthally in Kerala on the Malabar Coast in southwestern India, which dates back  some 20 centuries to the Christians of St. Thomas, named for Saint Thomas the Apostle, also known as “Doubting Thomas,” who is believed in apocryphal literature to have arrived in India around 52AD, seeking converts to Christianity. He was martyred, it is believed, about 20 year later in 72AD, near Mylapore, India, lanced by a spear as he prayed kneeling on a stone.

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Pope Francis’ remarkable rapprochement with Protestant evangelicals

Pope Francis, pretty much since his election as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in March 2013, has also been the de facto supreme pontiff of world religious leaders among the secular media. Other than the 14th Dalai Lama, long serving Tibetan Buddhist, most journalists would likely be hard pressed to name the current Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby), who leads the worldwide Anglican Communion, much less the leaders of any other Christian denomination.

Pope Francis, of course, rocketed into the media stratosphere on July 28, 2013, little more than four months after being elected pope, when returning on his first foreign papal trip from Rio de Janeiro on the Alitalia flight to Rome July 28, at the end of his seven days in Brazil, wandered back to the press compartment in the rear of the plane and took questions from 21 reporters travelling aboard the papal aircraft for 81 minutes with nothing off the record. Francis stood for the entire time, answering in Italian and Spanish without notes and never refusing to take a question. The Pope’s answer to the last question became the worldwide take-away quote: “If a gay person is in eager search of God, who am I to judge them?” While Pope Francis’ answer shot around the world – for the most part without benefit of being prefaced by the question or contextually situated – it didn’t break any new Catholic theological ground or offer up a new heresy. What it did represent was a change in tone.

And if there was any doubt whether that was the start of a new tone and emphasis, Pope Francis answered that less than two months later on Sept. 19, 2013 when the Italian Jesuit journal La CiviltÀ Cattolica published a 12,000-word interview that took place over three days in August at Santa Marta in Rome between the first Jesuit pope, until little more than six months earlier, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and Father Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit confrere and the journal’s editor-in-chief.

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” Pope Francis said. “This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

While it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the sex-and-morality hot-button issues of his pontificate, although it does garner some coverage, one of the most interesting facets of Pope Francis in action to watch is his truly remarkable rapprochement with Protestants, particularly evangelicals of all denominations. With no disrespect to either side of the now 43-year-old Joint International Commission for Catholic–Pentecostal Dialogue, Pope Francis has probably done more for harmonious and improved relations between the two groups, as he has with Christian evangelicals of various denominations and non-denominational identities, such as with his now famous impromptu iPhone video message for Kenneth Copeland and other influential evangelicals, done during a January 2014 three-hour breakfast meeting chat at the Vatican with his close personal friend Tony Palmer.

A young English bishop with the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a group that broke away from the Anglican Church and considers itself part of the Convergence Movement, founded by Anglicans and other Protestants and embracing a middle ground of Anglican identity, Palmer had known Pope Francis since his days in Buenos Aires where he and then-Archbishop Bergoglio had become friends in 2008 when Palmer was a missionary in Argentina and has asked the future Pope’s permission to work with charismatic Catholics in the city. Prior to becoming a Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches bishop, Palmer, married to Emiliana Serzio Palmer, an Italian Roman Catholic, was the director of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries’ office in South Africa. Palmer also served as the director of The Ark Community, an international interdenominational convergent church online community.

During their extended breakfast the Pope asked Palmer what he could do to encourage unity with evangelical Protestants and Palmer pulled out his iPhone and said, “Why not record a video greeting to the group of influential charismatic Christians I am going to meet at a conference in Texas next week?” Palmer was en route to a charismatic conference hosted by Copeland, the well-known American television evangelist who heads up Kenneth Copeland Ministries, at his Eagle Mountain International Church, near Fort Worth. With Palmer holding the iPhone, Pope Francis refers to him as “my brother, a bishop-brother,” saying they had been friends for years.

In that video, which was released publicly in February 2014, Pope Francis says to the evangelicals gathered at the Copeland conference, “Let’s give each other a spiritual hug.”

In introducing the Pope’s video at the Copeland meeting, Palmer pointedly remarked: “Brothers and sisters, Luther’s protest is over. Is yours?”

Pope Francis wound up meeting privately again on June 24, 2014 – a year ago today – with Palmer, and also this time with Copeland, co-host of Believer’s Voice of Victory, James and Betty Robison, co-hosts of the Life Today television program, Rev. Geoff Tunnicliff, chief executive office of the World Evangelical Alliance; well-known Canadian evangelical leader Brian Stiller, Rev. Thomas Schirrmacher, also from the World Evangelical Alliance, and Rev. John Arnott and his wife, Carol, co-founders of Partners for Harvest ministries in Toronto. That meeting also lasted almost three hours and included a private luncheon with Pope Francis.

The Pope told the evangelicals he believed the division in Christianity was not now between Catholics and Protestants but between those Christians who believe in a revealed religion and those who believe in a relative religion. “The real divide is between progressives who wish to alter the historic faith according to the spirit of the age, and those who believe the spirit of the age should be challenged by the eternal and unchanging truth of the Christian gospel.”

James Robison was baptized as a child in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church but as an adult became a Southern Baptist and in the 1980s was one of the first prominent Southern Baptist ministers to openly proclaim he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

He told the Fort Worth Star Telegram after the meeting last June with Pope Francis, “This meeting was a miracle … This is something God has done. God wants his arms around the world. And he wants Christians to put his arms around the world by working together.”

Tragically, Palmer, 48, died less than a month later on July 20, 2014 in hospital following hours of surgery after a motorcycle accident.

About a week later, Pope Francis made a private visit to the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, still under construction in Caserta in southern Italy to meet with Giovanni Traettino, its pastor, and 200 people, including members of Traettino’s congregation, other Italian evangelicals and representatives of Pentecostal ministries in Argentina and the United States.

The pope and Traettino first met in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s when Traettino was establishing ties between charismatic Catholics and Pentecostals. The then-Cardinal Bergoglio and Traettino also appeared together at a large ecumenical charismatic gathering in Buenos Aires in 2006. Traettino was present on June 1, 2014 in Rome’s Olympic Stadium when Pope Francis spoke to an international gathering of Catholic charismatics.

At the meeting with Traettino at the Pentecostal Church of Reconciliation, Pope Francis apologized for the the complicity of some Catholics in the fascist-era persecution of Italian Pentecostals and evangelicals.

“Among those who persecuted and denounced the Pentecostals, almost as if they were crazies who would ruin the race, there were some Catholics. As the pastor of the Catholics, I ask forgiveness for those Catholic brothers and sisters who did not understand and were tempted by the devil.”

Pope Francis made a similar apology two days ago on Monday of this week to the small Italian Waldensian evangelical community, seeking forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s persecution of members of the community whose leader was excommunicated and his followers branded as heretics during the Middle Ages.

Pope Francis made the appeal June 22 during the first-ever visit by a pope to a Waldensian house of worship.

The Waldensian church was founded in the 12th century by Pierre Valdo, a wealthy merchant from Lyon in France, who gave up his belongings to preach a Gospel of simplicity and poverty that condemned papal excesses. He was excommunicated and his followers persecuted as heretics by Rome.

The Waldensians today are united with the Methodist Church of Italy and claim 45,000 followers, mostly in Italy, Argentina and Uruguay.

“On the part of the Catholic Church,” said Pope Francis, “I ask your forgiveness, I ask it for the non-Christian and even inhuman attitudes and behavior that we have showed you. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us!”

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Irish Catholic Church needs a ‘reality check’ not a move into denial after overwhelming same-sex marriage loss, says Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the Primate of Ireland

It would be hard to overstate the magnitude of the loss the Catholic Church sustained in Ireland May 22 when voters went to the polls in a country where nearly 85 per cent of Irish people still self-identify as Roman Catholics in a referendum and voted overwhelming in favor of this simple proposition to amend the Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish constitution:  “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.” Seventeen words.  Unambiguous and straightforward, which effectively ratify the Marriage Equality Bill 2015 which was passed by overwhelming majorities in Ireland’s national parliament,  its Houses of the Oireachtas, made up of the lower house, the Dáil Éireann, on March 12, and the Seanad Éireann, the upper house, on March 30.

The final result was 62 percent in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and 38 percent opposed, making the Republic of Ireland the first country in the world to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote, rather than by elected legislators or the judiciary. And the turnout was large – more people voted on Friday than in any referendum since the independence of the Irish Free State on Dec. 6, 1922 – with more than 60 percent of 3.2 million eligible voters casting ballots, and only one district out of 43 voting against the measure, with broad support for the 34th constitutional amendment  allowing same-sex marriage across multiple categories of voters – the support cutting across age and gender, geography and income, urban and rural, young and old, liberal and conservative, middle class and upper class, and including Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the most senior politician in Ireland.

This in a country that only decriminalized homosexuality in 1993 when the offence of buggery was removed from Ireland’s statute books and where it has only been 15 years since the Equal Status Act prohibited discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Hard to believe, too, that it was only 20 years ago in 1995 during my waning days in graduate history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, I was eagerly picking up a copy of Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, to read how Irish monks in their remote monasteries saved classical Western Civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire by copying books being destroyed elsewhere by invaders that included the Huns and the Germanic tribes made up of Visigoths, Franks, Angles, Saxons and Ostrogoths.

Ireland somehow seemed very Catholic even in the mid-1990s in my imagination.

But just as in Canada and the United States during that same period 20 years ago, more and more clergy sexual abuse scandals were coming to light in Ireland. Perhaps the closest parallel here to what happened in Ireland in terms of the relationship between a people and the institutional Roman Catholic Church was what happened in Newfoundland with the Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada’s Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, which would lead to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Response of the Newfoundland Criminal Justice System to Complaints headed by a retired Ontario Supreme Court Judge, Samuel Hughes, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s of St. John’s own commission of inquiry into the sexual abuse of boys headed by former lieutenant-governor Gordon Winter, an Anglican.

Ireland for its part would have the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, known as the Ryan Report in May 2009, quickly followed by the Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, known as the Murphy Report, six months later in November 2009; and then 13 months after that the Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse against clerics of the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, known as the Cloyne Report, in December 2010.

In short, the people of Ireland, much like those of Newfoundland and Labrador, felt betrayed by the Catholic Church at a level so deep many will never darken the door of a church again, and consequently the Catholic Church has lost its moral authority to lead in places likes Newfoundland and Ireland.

But even that is only part of the explanation to what happened in Ireland on Friday. Economics. Secularism. Demographics. They, too, are part of the explanation, as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, seems to understand, at least partially.

“We [the church] have to stop and have a reality check, not move into denial of the realities,” Archbishop Martin told Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE), Ireland’s national radio and television public broadcaster. “We won’t begin again with a sense of renewal, with a sense of denial.

“I appreciate how gay and lesbian men and women feel on this day. That they feel this is something that is enriching the way they live. I think it is a social revolution … I ask myself, most of these young people who voted yes are products of our Catholic school system for 12 years. I’m saying there’s a big challenge there to see how we get across the message of the church,” he added.

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