New England reflections
He was the pope who traveled the world, reached out to other faiths, inspired the young and the old. He led the Catholic Church during the fall of communism and the clergy sex abuse scandal. Pope John Paul II touched thousands of lives, many of them directly. Here are some New Englanders' stories.
By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff | April 8, 2005
Andrew Demaio
A gentle touch from someone 'genuinely holy'
His palms were uncalloused, so soft that ''it felt like he was wearing a velvet glove." The cross around his neck was bright, pure gold. The blue eyes were soft and direct.
But mostly, Andrew DeMaio remembers the hand: the way it rested gently on the right side of his head, as Pope John Paul II offered a quiet blessing, for healing.
It was 1998, and DeMaio, then 32, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. A doctor in Virginia had told him he had a year to live.
The trip to Rome came up by happenstance: A neighbor of DeMaio's sister worked for the Flying Hospital, an airplane outfitted with an operating room, then owned by evangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. The hospital's patrons were headed to Rome on a fund-raising trip, and invited DeMaio and his sister. Sometime before the pope's public audience that week, someone had sent word to the Vatican that DeMaio could use a blessing.
So DeMaio and his sister gathered, with nearly 1,000 others at a huge auditorium at the Vatican. They marveled at the people who had come from across the world, the electricity that rippled through the room when the pope appeared.
''I don't know if everybody's jaws just dropped like mine did," DeMaio said.
And when, after waiting in a long, long line, he finally reached the holy man, the pope, without a word, pressed his palm on one side of DeMaio's head. The tumor was right there. And that brief blur of a moment, DeMaio says, left him with a lasting thought: This man was ''genuinely holy, something that I have not experienced from meeting any person other than him before."
DeMaio returned to the United States, where his health improved. In 2003 he moved to Boston, where he works as a docent at the Old North Church. The tumor is still there; he receives treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. But he said he feels good.
''I don't discount the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit," he said. ''I don't discount any of that. I like to believe that the pope had something to do with the fact that I'm still here today. It certainly didn't hurt, going to see Pope John Paul II."
Gary Bergeron
'Incredible man' though paths never converged
He never managed to meet the pope, though he got close. Gary Bergeron spent the better part of a week inside the halls of the Vatican, meeting with administrators, waiting in well-appointed chairs, asking for an audience, and asking again.
It was March 2003, and Bergeron, then 40, wanted Pope John Paul II to understand. Bergeron says he is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, a victim for years of the Rev. Joseph Birmingham at St. Michael Church in Lowell. Since the scandal had broken, Bergeron had met with accusations and cold responses from the Archdiocese of Boston. The Vatican seemed no different.
But Bergeron knew this pope's life story, the way he had fought communism and sought reconciliation with the Jewish and Orthodox communities. And he believed that if he sat with survivors face to face, if he heard their stories, John Paul II would understand, and would respond.
So Bergeron went to Rome uninvited, along with Bernie McDaid of Salem, another man who says Birmingham abused him, and Bergeron's father, Joseph ''Eddie" Bergeron, who said he had also been abused by a priest. For days, they went to the Vatican and knocked on doors. They went to church officials' homes. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican said they had made bets on how far the trio would progress. The staff at the cafe across the street from their hotel took messages when the hotel phones failed.
The evening before the Bergerons and McDaid were scheduled to return to the United States, the Vatican sent two officials to Bergeron's hotel suite. The group spoke for more than two hours. The next morning, a package arrived at the hotel: a note from the Holy Father, wishing for safe passage, and offering a gift of rosary beads.
It was something, but not enough.
''I would have liked to have given him the opportunity to know who we were and what we were about, and it was an opportunity missed," Gary Bergeron said. ''However, I judge a man by the sum of his life, and not by one deed. I still think of him as a pretty incredible man."
And he has spent the past week reflecting on two paths that -- despite his fiercest efforts -- never converged.
''Many people think the journey that, as a survivor, I've taken has been about vengeance," Bergeron said. ''You know what? This has really been a journey of peace for me, making peace with my past and finding the inner peace that I've never had in my entire life. This man was able to die in peace. My journey continues."
Thaddeus Buczko
He ate lobster at Jimmy's - and gave a lesson
Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had never eaten lobster.
He may have been a scholar, a skier, a poet. But when Wojtyla, then archbishop of Krakow, arrived in Boston in 1969, on one leg of his good-will tour of Polish-American communities, he had a hole in his culinary repertoire -- before Thaddeus Buczko got involved.
At the time, Buczko was state auditor and a friend of Monsignor Stanislaus Sypek, the Polish pastor of St. Adalbert's Church in Hyde Park. Sypek was guiding the cardinal through Boston, and asked Buczko to arrange for a luncheon with local leaders.
It was a fitting choice; like the cardinal, Buczko had managed to maintain a Polish identity in a firmly non-Polish milieu. The American-born son of Polish peasants, he had won a City Council seat in an Irish-Catholic district in Salem, served as state representative and, in 1964, was elected auditor statewide. He knew how to work the system.
But this was a new political problem: where to have lunch with a cardinal?
Buczko asked his administrative assistant, Jane Kelly, who suggested Jimmy's Harborside.
Two weeks later, Wojtyla, in dark cassock, joined politicians and local clergy in an upstairs room at the waterfront restaurant. He had two entree choices: beef or baked stuffed lobster. He chose the lobster. And as he sat beside Buczko, speaking in Polish with English interspersed, he offered a gentle lesson.
Buczko told him that his mother had always referred to lobsters as ''raki." Wojtyla explained that it was the word for crayfish or crab. Lobster, in Polish, was ''homar." From Latin, he said. Quite close to the word in French.
It was a gracious explanation, Buczko recalled -- almost as gracious as the speech Wojtyla gave, thanking Buczko for the gathering and making a cheerful prediction. Someday, he said, the state auditor might become governor, or senator, or even president of the United States.
When Buczko rose for his closing remarks, he had to return the compliment. ''Someday," he announced, ''Cardinal Wojtyla may actually become pope."
At the time, ''it was all in good fun," said Buczko, now 79. Everyone smiled, applauded, and laughed, certain it would never really happen.
Leonard P. Zakim
Papal blessing came with sneeze, knightly honor
Among the things Leonard P. Zakim wanted to experience before he died was a visit, in Vatican City, with Pope John Paul II.
Zakim had spent his tenure as New England director of the Anti-Defamation League working to improve interfaith relations. He and the pontiff shared a desire for reconciliation and cross-cultural understanding.
They also shared the need to be strong in the face of illness.
By November 1999, when the Catholic-Jewish pilgrimage -- which Zakim had helped to organize with his friend, Cardinal Bernard Law -- was scheduled to leave Boston for 10 days in Israel and Rome, Zakim's bone marrow cancer had worsened. He skipped the Israel leg of the trip and met the group in Italy. He wore a neck brace and brought a friend to help with medication. But his spirits were high, recalls Christy Jackowitz, the league's acting director.
And on a bright-hot Monday, he went with the group to St. Peter's Square. They sat beneath an open-air tent as the pope -- who stayed seated, his head bowed -- addressed the teeming crowd in 16 languages.
Then they drew close to receive a papal blessing.
Zakim brought the pope a book, ''And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews." The pope laid a hand on Zakim's head and prayed for his health. The pontiff sneezed. Zakim said, ''Gesundheit." Both of them smiled.
Afterward, the group was led to a private room inside the Vatican, where an official described, for them, the highest lay honor the church bestows: the Knight of St. Gregory. In front of the group, Jackowitz said, the official pinned a medal on Zakim's lapel and made him a knight.
''This is a kid from Wayne, New Jersey, who tried to play football," said Zakim's friend, Harold W. Schwartz. ''It's mind-boggling. No one's blowing this up bigger than it was."
Zakim sat behind Schwartz on the plane ride home. ''He was thrilled and proud," Schwartz said. ''He was beaming. But you could see that he was tired."
Zakim died a month later, at 46. His funeral, at Temple Emanuel in Newton, was attended by 1,800 people from various faiths.
The girls of Our Lady of Nazareth Academy
Young singers won't forget his 'peacefulness'
Patricia Tamagini saw the ad in a Catholic magazine, in 1994. It was a contest, seeking high school groups to sing original contemporary Christian music. At the Vatican.
This was a perfect opportunity, thought Tamagini, the director of performing arts and theology at Our Lady of Nazareth Academy in Wakefield. Her daughter Lora, a teacher at the school, had written contemporary Christian songs. The chamber singer choir had recorded a compact disc. Tamagini sent it along with her application.
Patricia Tamagini received an invitation to Rome. And 44 girls from Wakefield started furiously raising money, so they could sing for the pope in St. Peter's Square.
''It was never an option not to go. We had to go," said Jennifer Fontana, a sophomore at the time, now 24. ''I mean, Italy. To see the pope. My God."
They held concerts and bake sales and collected sponsorships. They planned a singing tour at churches in Rome, Florence, Sienna, and Assisi. On the flight to Rome, the crew asked them to sing from their seats.
And on April 16, 1996, they put on their school uniforms -- sweaters, plaid polyester skirts -- and headed to St. Peter's Square. They stood at the foot of the basilica steps, with groups of young singers from Poland, Spain, Austria, and France. The pope, still healthy and vibrant, stood at the top of the stairs, listening to the music. When the singing was over, the girls climbed up to him, and he walked over to thank them.
In English, he praised their voices, recalls Patricia Tamagini, now 66. He thanked Lora Tamagini for her beautiful songs. ''God bless you," she told him. ''No," he said. ''God bless you."
For a teenage girl -- Catholic or not -- he left a firm impression.
''He had amazing presence, just this feeling of kindness," said Laura White, a Congregationalist, now 24.
''He had this fantastic peacefulness about him," Fontana said.
But what struck Patricia Tamagini most was that this elevated man, the leader of his faith, had taken the time to linger with a group of girls.
''He was so gentle and down to earth. Just really down to earth," Tamagini said. ''Holding our hands and talking with us eye to eye."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
Friday, April 8, 2005
Saturday, April 2, 2005
Debate continues over pope's reaction to sex-abuse scandal
Debate continues over pope's reaction to sex-abuse scandal
Alan Cooperman - Washington Post
Apr. 2, 2005
During his long reign, Pope John Paul II apologized to Muslims for the Crusades, to Jews for anti-Semitism, to Orthodox Christians for the sacking of Constantinople, to Italians for the Vatican's associations with the Mafia and to scientists for the persecution of Galileo.
He apologized so often, in fact, that an Italian journalist compiled a book of more than 90 papal statements of contrition.
Yet the pope never apologized for the most shocking behavior that came to light on his watch: sexual abuse of children by priests and the church's attempts to hush it up. To some alleged victims, that is a puzzling omission and a deep stain on his legacy.
"I would hate to see all the good works this pope has done over his lifetime be overshadowed by this scandal. But that's what may happen," said Gary M. Bergeron, of Lowell, Mass., who says he was molested in the 1970s by Rev. Joseph Birmingham, a priest accused of abusing more than a dozen altar boys. Birmingham has since died.
John Paul's defenders contend that sexual misconduct by priests is a worldwide problem that began before he became pope in 1978. They say once it came to light, he reacted decisively. Summoning America's cardinals to the Vatican in April 2002, he declared that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young."
Those words became the basis for the "zero tolerance" policy adopted two months later by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Over the following year, hundreds of priests resigned, retired or were suspended as the bishops pledged to remove any clergyman who had ever abused a minor.
But victims' advocates argue that John Paul could have done more, and they hope his successor will set a new tone, beginning with a straightforward apology to victims.
Bergeron and other Boston-area survivors of clergy abuse traveled to Rome in 2003 to try to persuade the pope to meet with victims, issue an apology and condemn coverups. The small delegation included Bergeron's father, Joseph, who said that he, too, was abused as an altar boy but kept silent until he discovered many years later that the same thing had happened to two of his sons.
For five days that March, the Bergerons literally knocked on Vatican doors. Eventually they saw an official from the papal secretary of state's office. John Paul never met with them or any other known victims.
Still churchgoing Catholics, the Bergerons said they believe the pope was kept in the dark by his aides. "It's almost like a movie star complex where they don't let them read the bad press," Gary Bergeron said.
Others are more harsh in their judgments.
"I would say there's a significant amount of responsibility in the lap of the papacy for the sexual abuse crisis, not only in the United States but around the world," said Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former Air Force chaplain who has counseled many victims and advised them on lawsuits against the church. "Given that the Vatican insists on hierarchical authority and micromanagement, I think they have to take responsibility."
As a young canon lawyer in the mid-1980s, Doyle worked at the Vatican's embassy in Washington during the first major sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. church, which centered on a Louisiana priest, Gilbert Gauthe.
"Reports went over there, detailed reports," Doyle said. "I can tell you for certain that it reached the Vatican early in 1985, because I was working at the Vatican Embassy and I know that communications about the Gauthe case were sent to the Vatican - and they were seen by the pope."
But John Paul did not speak publicly about sexual abuse by priests until eight years later, after a furor over another pedophile priest, James Porter, who had more than 100 alleged victims in Fall River, Mass.
Addressing a group of visiting U.S. bishops in Rome in 1993, the pope said he shared their "sadness and disappointment when those entrusted with the ministry fail in their commitment, becoming a cause of public scandal." Much of his message, however, was an attack on "sensationalism" in the news media, leaving the strong impression that he believed the sex abuse problem was exaggerated in America.
"Woe to societies where scandal becomes an everyday event," he said.
Nevertheless, at the request of U.S. bishops, the pope in 1994 changed church law in the United States to lengthen the statute of limitations on accusations of sexual abuse to 10 years from the victim's 18th birthday. Previously, it had been five years from the date of the offense.
In 2002, a fresh scandal erupted when a Boston judge released church documents showing that Cardinal Bernard Law and his assistant bishops had secretly shuffled abusers from parish to parish. In response, John Paul amended canon law again by accepting the bishops' zero tolerance policy, though only after Vatican officials insisted on changes to protect the due process rights of accused priests. Law later resigned under pressure.
In recent years the pontiff also condemned sexual abuse more directly and forcefully. In his address to U.S. cardinals in April 2002, he said it was "rightly considered a crime by society" as well as "an appalling sin in the eyes of God."
"To the victims and their families, wherever they may be, I express my profound sense of solidarity and concern," he added. It was the closest he came to an apology.
To many victims and their families, however, the pope's actions fell short. Under John Paul, they contend, the Vatican was more aggressive about stamping out dissent within the priesthood over birth control than it was about protecting children.
"Everyone blames the bishops, but the pope's the one who picks them," Doyle said.
Papal biographer George Weigel argues that the critics' portrayal of an uncaring John Paul is wrong. He said John Paul was "deeply, deeply grieved" by the unholy actions of supposedly holy men.
Other Vatican officials have echoed the papal denunciations. As recently as March 25, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church's theological watchdog and one of John Paul's closest aides, made an apparent reference to clerical sex abuse in the meditations he provided for Good Friday observances in Rome. In a Vatican translation, Ratzinger assailed "how much filth there is in the church ... even among ... the priesthood...."
Like many traditionalist Catholics, Weigel contends that the origins of the scandal lie in the 1960s, under previous popes who tolerated dissent and allowed a gay subculture to develop in the priesthood. The solution, in his view, is to continue down the path set by John Paul: strict fidelity to church teachings that support celibacy for priests and condemn homosexual activity.
In his 2002 book, "The Courage to Be Catholic," however, Weigel acknowledged that the Vatican was slow to recognize the crisis in the U.S. church, tending to view the scandal as a creation of the secular news media, opportunistic lawyers and the church's enemies.
Debate over the pope's degree of responsibility for the scandal appears likely to continue for years.
Richard R. Gaillardetz, a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Toledo who has written several books on authority in the church, said that neither John Paul nor any church leader "consciously encouraged" clerical sex abuse.
But Gaillardetz said he would assign the pope some indirect responsibility for the hierarchy's attempts to hide the problem.
"He encouraged an ecclesiastical culture that emphasizes vertical accountability - priest to bishop, bishop to the pope - and very little horizontal accountability" of bishops to one another and to the laity, Gaillardetz said.
"In general that is going to be one of the most serious criticisms leveled against this papacy, that he turned away from the direction many people saw in Vatican II, which is the principle of subsidiarity or decentralized control," Gaillardetz added, referring to the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. "That is a disturbing pattern, a larger pattern of this pontificate."
David Gibson, author of "The Coming Catholic Church," a 2003 book about long-term change in the church, also attributes the coverup partly to John Paul's insistence on central control.
"The bottom line is: Cardinal Law was the pope's favorite son in America, and Cardinal Law's sense of a corporate church that he ran, with everybody else on a need-to-know basis, was very much an attitude that came from Rome. Rome did not want scandals. Rome under this papacy was focused on exalting the iconic image of the priest," Gibson said.
Rightly or wrongly, Gibson contends, the sexual abuse scandal and John Paul will be inextricably linked.
"After so many years as pope, people have almost begun to forget what a heroic figure he was and how close he came to being martyred on St. Peter's Square," he said. "The scandal is not going to define his legacy, but it does mean that every obituary, every discussion of his legacy, will have to say, 'But ...' "
Alan Cooperman - Washington Post
Apr. 2, 2005
During his long reign, Pope John Paul II apologized to Muslims for the Crusades, to Jews for anti-Semitism, to Orthodox Christians for the sacking of Constantinople, to Italians for the Vatican's associations with the Mafia and to scientists for the persecution of Galileo.
He apologized so often, in fact, that an Italian journalist compiled a book of more than 90 papal statements of contrition.
Yet the pope never apologized for the most shocking behavior that came to light on his watch: sexual abuse of children by priests and the church's attempts to hush it up. To some alleged victims, that is a puzzling omission and a deep stain on his legacy.
"I would hate to see all the good works this pope has done over his lifetime be overshadowed by this scandal. But that's what may happen," said Gary M. Bergeron, of Lowell, Mass., who says he was molested in the 1970s by Rev. Joseph Birmingham, a priest accused of abusing more than a dozen altar boys. Birmingham has since died.
John Paul's defenders contend that sexual misconduct by priests is a worldwide problem that began before he became pope in 1978. They say once it came to light, he reacted decisively. Summoning America's cardinals to the Vatican in April 2002, he declared that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young."
Those words became the basis for the "zero tolerance" policy adopted two months later by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Over the following year, hundreds of priests resigned, retired or were suspended as the bishops pledged to remove any clergyman who had ever abused a minor.
But victims' advocates argue that John Paul could have done more, and they hope his successor will set a new tone, beginning with a straightforward apology to victims.
Bergeron and other Boston-area survivors of clergy abuse traveled to Rome in 2003 to try to persuade the pope to meet with victims, issue an apology and condemn coverups. The small delegation included Bergeron's father, Joseph, who said that he, too, was abused as an altar boy but kept silent until he discovered many years later that the same thing had happened to two of his sons.
For five days that March, the Bergerons literally knocked on Vatican doors. Eventually they saw an official from the papal secretary of state's office. John Paul never met with them or any other known victims.
Still churchgoing Catholics, the Bergerons said they believe the pope was kept in the dark by his aides. "It's almost like a movie star complex where they don't let them read the bad press," Gary Bergeron said.
Others are more harsh in their judgments.
"I would say there's a significant amount of responsibility in the lap of the papacy for the sexual abuse crisis, not only in the United States but around the world," said Rev. Thomas Doyle, a former Air Force chaplain who has counseled many victims and advised them on lawsuits against the church. "Given that the Vatican insists on hierarchical authority and micromanagement, I think they have to take responsibility."
As a young canon lawyer in the mid-1980s, Doyle worked at the Vatican's embassy in Washington during the first major sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. church, which centered on a Louisiana priest, Gilbert Gauthe.
"Reports went over there, detailed reports," Doyle said. "I can tell you for certain that it reached the Vatican early in 1985, because I was working at the Vatican Embassy and I know that communications about the Gauthe case were sent to the Vatican - and they were seen by the pope."
But John Paul did not speak publicly about sexual abuse by priests until eight years later, after a furor over another pedophile priest, James Porter, who had more than 100 alleged victims in Fall River, Mass.
Addressing a group of visiting U.S. bishops in Rome in 1993, the pope said he shared their "sadness and disappointment when those entrusted with the ministry fail in their commitment, becoming a cause of public scandal." Much of his message, however, was an attack on "sensationalism" in the news media, leaving the strong impression that he believed the sex abuse problem was exaggerated in America.
"Woe to societies where scandal becomes an everyday event," he said.
Nevertheless, at the request of U.S. bishops, the pope in 1994 changed church law in the United States to lengthen the statute of limitations on accusations of sexual abuse to 10 years from the victim's 18th birthday. Previously, it had been five years from the date of the offense.
In 2002, a fresh scandal erupted when a Boston judge released church documents showing that Cardinal Bernard Law and his assistant bishops had secretly shuffled abusers from parish to parish. In response, John Paul amended canon law again by accepting the bishops' zero tolerance policy, though only after Vatican officials insisted on changes to protect the due process rights of accused priests. Law later resigned under pressure.
In recent years the pontiff also condemned sexual abuse more directly and forcefully. In his address to U.S. cardinals in April 2002, he said it was "rightly considered a crime by society" as well as "an appalling sin in the eyes of God."
"To the victims and their families, wherever they may be, I express my profound sense of solidarity and concern," he added. It was the closest he came to an apology.
To many victims and their families, however, the pope's actions fell short. Under John Paul, they contend, the Vatican was more aggressive about stamping out dissent within the priesthood over birth control than it was about protecting children.
"Everyone blames the bishops, but the pope's the one who picks them," Doyle said.
Papal biographer George Weigel argues that the critics' portrayal of an uncaring John Paul is wrong. He said John Paul was "deeply, deeply grieved" by the unholy actions of supposedly holy men.
Other Vatican officials have echoed the papal denunciations. As recently as March 25, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church's theological watchdog and one of John Paul's closest aides, made an apparent reference to clerical sex abuse in the meditations he provided for Good Friday observances in Rome. In a Vatican translation, Ratzinger assailed "how much filth there is in the church ... even among ... the priesthood...."
Like many traditionalist Catholics, Weigel contends that the origins of the scandal lie in the 1960s, under previous popes who tolerated dissent and allowed a gay subculture to develop in the priesthood. The solution, in his view, is to continue down the path set by John Paul: strict fidelity to church teachings that support celibacy for priests and condemn homosexual activity.
In his 2002 book, "The Courage to Be Catholic," however, Weigel acknowledged that the Vatican was slow to recognize the crisis in the U.S. church, tending to view the scandal as a creation of the secular news media, opportunistic lawyers and the church's enemies.
Debate over the pope's degree of responsibility for the scandal appears likely to continue for years.
Richard R. Gaillardetz, a professor of Catholic studies at the University of Toledo who has written several books on authority in the church, said that neither John Paul nor any church leader "consciously encouraged" clerical sex abuse.
But Gaillardetz said he would assign the pope some indirect responsibility for the hierarchy's attempts to hide the problem.
"He encouraged an ecclesiastical culture that emphasizes vertical accountability - priest to bishop, bishop to the pope - and very little horizontal accountability" of bishops to one another and to the laity, Gaillardetz said.
"In general that is going to be one of the most serious criticisms leveled against this papacy, that he turned away from the direction many people saw in Vatican II, which is the principle of subsidiarity or decentralized control," Gaillardetz added, referring to the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. "That is a disturbing pattern, a larger pattern of this pontificate."
David Gibson, author of "The Coming Catholic Church," a 2003 book about long-term change in the church, also attributes the coverup partly to John Paul's insistence on central control.
"The bottom line is: Cardinal Law was the pope's favorite son in America, and Cardinal Law's sense of a corporate church that he ran, with everybody else on a need-to-know basis, was very much an attitude that came from Rome. Rome did not want scandals. Rome under this papacy was focused on exalting the iconic image of the priest," Gibson said.
Rightly or wrongly, Gibson contends, the sexual abuse scandal and John Paul will be inextricably linked.
"After so many years as pope, people have almost begun to forget what a heroic figure he was and how close he came to being martyred on St. Peter's Square," he said. "The scandal is not going to define his legacy, but it does mean that every obituary, every discussion of his legacy, will have to say, 'But ...' "
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