David Norris (Independent)

——even though many other people, some of whom are obscure and of questionable background, are now standing in the serried ranks of the saints. Pope John XXIII was universally loved and revered for his humility, which was not one of the qualities of the recently deceased Pope John Paul II.

The intellectual powerhouse of Catholicism, the Jesuit Order, was marginalised and sidelined under the papacy of Pope John Paul II while Opus Dei was promoted and elevated. That is a problem because the church "belongs to all", as John Donne said at the start of the passage from which I quoted. I certainly feel that the church belongs to me — in my ancestry I have a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church during the penal period. It is my church — in my genes there are those who fought for the church when it was not popular. Perhaps the Jesuit Order was marginalised because of its honesty, which was evident during the recent period of the Pope's dying and death. I heard a Jesuit saying it was a pity to distort the emphasis on Easter by focussing on the deathbed of the Pope, rather than on the passion and agony of Jesus Christ on the cross. That was a courageous comment to make.

Many people have been implicated in cases of clerical sexual abuse, an issue that has troubled this country. It is a pity that Cardinal Law was given such a prominent role in Rome in recent days. The lead is often given from the top in matters of this nature. The Pope sent a letter of sympathy to Cardinal Groer of Vienna when the cardinal had to leave his position following sustained allegations of sexual interference with young priests. It is a pity that the letter did not mention the victims of abuse. I am not sure why that was the case but it happened and I regret it.

The Pope's decision to forbid the priesthood from becoming involved in politics affected some priests who had wonderfully and courageously defended the poor in Latin America. He had no such inhibitions in his native land, Poland, where he endorsed Solidarnosc and Lech Walesa. He ruthlessly sought to stamp out liberation theology in Latin America. The list of the victims of Cardinal Ratzinger's office is a roll-call of the most profound spiritual thinkers of the Catholic Church in the 20th century. I refer to people like Leonardo Boff, Hans Kung, Charles Curran, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen and Professor Dr. John McNeill. Today's edition of The Irish Times has reported that Hans Kung has suggested that Cardinal Ratzinger is attempting to manipulate the papal election in his own favour.

I could give a list of other people who have been silenced, such as Oscar Romero, who was initially conservative but had to learn from experience. He faced life with honesty and committed himself to the poor of his own country, but he was hung out by the Vatican not to dry, but to die. When his assassins came, he died silently. The people of Latin America, however, have made him a saint and they do not require the Vatican stamp of approval. When Oscar Romero appealed for protection from the Vatican, it reminded me of Imre Nagy appealing from Budapest over a crackling radio wave for help from those whom he had expected to help, but they denied him. I am on the side of Archbishop Romero.

I did not see humility, I saw hubris. I remember some striking visual images. When Sr. Theresa Kane in Chicago, at the opening of his papacy, courageously made a strong plea for the recognition of the position of women in the church, the Pope did not reply, he just put on an angry expression and pushed his hands down as if to say that she must sit down and not speak in his presence, a Pauline view of things.

Another image was that of him shaking his fist in the face of Miguel Descoto, the Foreign Minister who was also a Jesuit, in Nicaragua. Former President Bush and the Pope succeeded in destabilising that noble experiment. When Miguel Descoto was Foreign Minister, Nicaragua had the highest rate of literacy in South America and it now has the lowest. Its wealth has gone back to the rancheros and those others who hoarded it before.

I regret that this papacy appeared to be characterised by una duce, una voce, enforced by Cardinal Ratzinger. There were wonderful titles to so many papal encyclicals. Pope Paul VI issued Gaudium et Spes—Joy and Hope— and that is what young people need. Pope John Paul II issued Veritatis Splendor—The Splendour of Truth— but the truth was often denied. I recently attended a remarkable performance of Brecht's Galileo in which this great dramatist showed both sides and how troubling and difficult it was for the establishment and ordinary people to accommodate themselves in the complex world that was emerging where man and the earth were not the centre of the universe. It was challenging and shocking but there were people in the Vatican at that stage who knew he was right but they turned their faces against the truth. That is a great pity.

Young people need inspiration, love and the rights of women to be addressed. There are so many problems to be addressed: global warming, population control, AIDS and human sexuality. Everyone says they felt loved by this Pope but I did not. Any Pope who presided over a Vatican where the language of hatred was spewed forth and words such as "virus", "objectively evil" and "intrinsically immoral" were used was not using the language of love, not to me. On AIDS, the absolute refusal to accept international advice that condoms are essential in the fight against HIV condemns beautiful young, heterosexual men and women in Africa to a horrible death.

I could say much more but I will conclude by saying that I wish the soul of this Pope something that he did not give people like me during the time we shared on this planet — peace. I very much hope that the Holy Spirit, that moves in a mysterious way, will move through the appointment of so many deeply conservative people within the church and find, as it did in the case of that wonderful man Pope John XXIII, a truly Christ-like figure who will lead the church into this challenging century and will find for complex and difficult questions not the simplistic, dogmatic and biblically based answers that we were given under this papacy but, instead, answers that are humane, clear and practical.