News- Vatican

When Secrecy Backfires

For several months the Vatican refused to answer questions about the Holy Father's health, thereby feeding a frenzy of speculation, when the simple truth was really quite prosaic.

By Rev. John Smith*

Late in January, an ordinary rash of influenza began sweeping through Rome, sending hundreds of the local citizens to their beds with high fevers and sore throats. On February 5, the flu claimed its most famous victim: Pope John Paul II abruptly cancelled his regular Wednesday public audience, and cleared his schedule to allow a few days of rest and recuperation, on his doctor's recommendation.
Italian journalists duly noted the Pope's illness, and carried the medical diagnosis, which was surprising to no one living in Rome. It was an ordinary story, about an ordinary illness. Yet in a peculiar way, the routine treatment of this incident was remarkable--not because of what reporters said, but because of what they did not say. Virtually no one suggested that the official Vatican explanation of the Pope's sickness was an effort to conceal some more serious disease.
Boom in a favorite pastime
For most of the calendar year 1996, journalists in Rome indulged in precisely that sort of speculation. Week after week, the Italian newspapers carried stories alleging that Pope John Paul was suffering from cancer or some other deadly disease. Although the Vatican consistently denied the substances of those stories, the denials were so maladroit that they served only to inflame the writers' curiosity.
Speculation about a pope's health is, of course, one of Rome's favorite parlor games. It begins as soon as a new pope is elected, and only gradually ends in a flurry of second-guessing after he is buried. For the first several years of his pontificate John Paul was immune from the worst displays of this obsession, by virtue of his relative youth and his obvious fitness. Naturally the rumors flew across the grapevine in 1981 when he was felled by gunfire, but they subsided when he returned to action, seemingly as hale and energetic as ever. Then in 1992, when he underwent surgery to removal a tumor from his intestine, the level of speculation began to rise again. It has risen more or less steadily ever since that time.
As long as the Pope appeared healthy, the rumors about his health were contained to an under-current of gossip around the Eternal City. They were, after all, purely speculative; there were no facts to buttress the various theories. But in 1996, anyone who follows Vatican affairs carefully began to notice some very tangible evidence that the Pope's health was slipping.
More and more often, the Holy Father appeared to be badly fatigued--and even sometime to be in pain--during his public appearances. His walk was noticeably slower, and he often appeared unsteady on his feet. (Twice in recent months he had fallen and hurt himself--a suspicious pattern for a man with such an athletic background.) His face was rapidly taking on the characteristics of old age, and his features looked almost as if they were frozen into a mask. Above all, his left hand shook, at times uncontrollably.
By the time he returned from a summer vacation in the Italian Alps, it was obvious to even casual observers that John Paul was suffering from something more than merely the slow process of aging. Official Vatican reports flatly denied that the Pope was ill, and dismissed the sensational stories which periodically appeared in the Italian newspapers. But very few people accepted those official statements; the Vatican was asking people to ignore the evidence they saw clearly before them.
Why would the Vatican cover up an illness? There is an widespread belief in the Vatican bureaucracy--illogical, but supported by some of the more byzantine traditions--that if a pope becomes seriously ill, that news should be kept secret, to discourage speculation about the future of the Church. In an era of instant communication and electronic media, that policy has precisely the opposite effect.
By August 1996, every regular reporter covering the Vatican could see that the Pope was ill. When the Vatican denied what was obvious, those reporters concluded that the old bureaucratic tradition was at work, covering up the unwelcome news. So speculation ran amok, with one story after another proclaiming that the Pope was close to death.
Penalized for the truth?
All through August and into September the Vatican parried rumors with flat denials. As the Pope prepared for a pastoral visit to France, the daily Il Messagero reported that he would enter the hospital soon after his return. Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls promptly shot back: "No stay at the hospital is scheduled for the Holy Father." But by that time, even Navarro-Valls himself had encouraged some speculation--in what was probably the most outlandish episode in a public-relations effort which could only be called disastrous.
The episode began during the Pope's trip to Hungary earlier in September. On the first evening of that visit, the Holy Father led a Vespers service at the ancient Benedictine monastery at Pannonhalma, and delivered a lengthy address on the importance of the Benedictine tradition. Hungarian, a notoriously difficult language, is one of the few European tongues which the Pope has not mastered, so it had been arranged in advance that he would deliver the first few paragraphs of his homily in person, then turn the text over to another reader. Two German reporters, ignoring that arrangement, led the next day's news with a breathless report that the Holy Father had been forced to interrupt his speech, because he was close to collapse. An accompanying photo of John Paul--who definitely was showing signs of extreme fatigue--shot that story into the headlines.
Angered by that clear misrepresentation, Navarro-Valls rebuked the reporters involved, and lodged a complaint with their editor. Smarting, the reporters apparently sought their revenge the next day. As Navarro-Valls was conducting a briefing for the press--which he thought was off the record--one of the same reporters asked him why the Pope had undergone so many bouts with minor intestinal ailments recently. Navarro-Valls, who is trained as a physician, acknowledged that the Pope did seem to prone to intestinal problems, and might eventually submit to tests to determine the cause of that weakness. To his dismay, Navarro-Valls then saw his own speculation in the newspaper headlines.
At the Vatican, the response to this story was one of shock and outrage; the papal spokesman, the curial bureaucrats charged, had been encouraging the rumor-mongers! Navarro-Valls was subjected to brutal criticism--simply because he had said what everyone already knew. According to numerous reports, which were never vigorously denied, the criticism became so intense that Navarro-Valls actually submitted his resignation, and remained in office only after a lengthy one-on-one luncheon conversation with the Holy Father himself.
The keenest irony in this weird episode is the fact that while Vatican officials belabored Navarro-Valls for being too forthright, journalists blasted him for not being forthright enough. He was, for example, still vigorously denying that the Pope was scheduled to enter the hospital --just a few weeks before the Pope did exactly that!
Only appendicitis?
When the Vatican did finally admit that the Holy Father was scheduled to check into Gemelli Hospital, the explanation came as a crashing anticlimax to all the spectacular earlier reports. John Paul, the press office said, had been suffering from a chronically inflamed appendix, which would be surgically removed. Early in October, that operation was performed without incident. After a short period of recuperation, the Pope resumed his normal working schedule, and speculation about his health gradually subsided--although it did not disappear.
The questions that remain today surround a serious problem at the Vatican: not the health of the Pontiff, but the public-relations instincts of his staff. If the Pope was really suffering for all those months with nothing more serious than a bad case of appendicitis, why was that information released much earlier, to quiet all the sensational rumors? How could it possibly be viewed as beneficial for the Church to endure weekly scares of terminal cancer, rather than disclosing a minor--no doubt painful, but eminently treatable--disease?
And even today, have we been told the whole truth? Several months after the appendectomy, the Pope shows no signs of that medical problem. But he still exhibits the same symptoms that fueled the first rounds of speculation last summer: the rigid facial features, the halting gait, the trembling in his hand. Those are the classic symptoms of Parkinson's Disease.
Needless to say, the Vatican officially disavows reports that the Pope is suffering from Parkison's. But then, the Vatican also denied that he was ill last summer, and that he was planning a hospital stay. Perhaps this time the official statements are accurate, and the Holy Father's symptoms are merely coincidental. But when they are not speaking for the record, most Vatican officials think otherwise. As one informed monsignor put it simply, "Everyone knows the Pope has Parkinson's."
If that is so, then the Vatican is indulging in an absurd public-relations game once again. Parkinson's Disease is a serious, debilitating condition, but by itself it is not usually fatal, nor should it--at least in the foreseeable future--deprive the Holy Father of his ability to lead the Church.
Parkinson's runs its course slowly, very gradually robbing the victim of his physical strength and coordination. But it ordinarily does not affect the mental faculties, and it usually takes many years to become a life-threatening condition. Muhammed Ali has been afflicted with Parkinson's for years, and although he is now a shell of the imposing physical specimen who once ruled as world heavyweight champion, his life is not in danger. Like the Pope, US Attorney General Janet Reno shows symptoms of the early stages of Parkinson's; her condition was not even a factor in public discussions about whether or not she would retain that position this year.
If the Holy Father is suffering from Parkinson's--or some similar disease--what possible benefit could be gained by disguising that fact? It is not a happy prospect to anticipate that the Pope will steadily need more help moving around. But it is no happier--and certainly no more healthy to the life of the Church--to suspect that John Paul is really suffering from some more virulent illness, which the Vatican is trying to hide. It is easy enough to begin preparing for life with a Pope in a wheelchair; it is much more disruptive to begin preparing for a new Pope.
Parkinson's Disease would be a severe trial for a man as vigorous as Pope John Paul. It could be edifying to millions of people to watch him struggle with this mortification. But before we can be edified, we must be informed.
Father "John Smith," an American priest, has spent the past year studying in Rome. His reluctance to use his real name is, he says, "a symptom of the problem I am trying to describe. If people can identify me, they can identify my sources, and those sources will be treated like Navarro-Valls."