Remembering the Roncalli Years in Paris A Visit to the Apostolic Nunciature in France In late 1934 Archbishop Angelo Roncalli was made apostolic delegate to Turkey and Greece. He arrived in Istanbul in January 1935 and though troubled by the impact of Atatürk’s secularisation on the tiny Catholic minority, which found itself deprived of many schools and its diocesan newspaper, made a point of befriending those diplomats he met and working hard to overcome needless divisions between Catholics and Orthodox. During World War II, Roncalli issued thousands of documents to help Jews escape from occupied Greece. When the German ambassador to Turkey was tried at Nuremburg, Roncalli wrote to say that while he did not wish to interfere with any political judgments, Franz von Papen had given him ‘the chance to save the lives of 24,000 Jews’. In 1944 Angelo Roncalli was astonished when he was transferred to newly liberated France, where the Church was suspect because the previous Nuncio had been accused of collaborating with the German occupying forces during the Second World War. The French evidently didn’t want another Italian aristocrat, and at his appointment, it’s speculated that Pope Pius XII said that, “if they don’t want an aristocrat, let them have a peasant.” General de Gaulle had demanded the removal of the wartime nuncio, and Pope Pius XII needed a diplomat wholly free of any stain of collaboration or Nazi sympathies. Roncalli smoothed the path for the French Catholic philosopher and founder of Christian democracy, Jacques Maritain, to become France’s ambassador to the Holy See, was able to reduce the number of bishops de Gaulle wanted replaced from more than two dozen to a mere seven, mingled in the streets with ordinary people, and encouraged Catholics in the newly-established UNESCO to engage in dialogue with atheists, agnostics, and those of other faiths. In his eight years as the Nuncio in France, Roncalli diffused the situation with characteristic diplomacy, humility and integrity. He hired one of the best chefs in France and used his dining room table to entertain, host, dialogue, discuss and make peace in a very complex and tense situation. Made cardinal in 1953, he returned home to Italy at last as Patriarch of Venice; it is one of the more striking ironies of Roncalli’s life that a man who would become known as a pastor and father to the whole world had no formal pastoral appointment until he was 71. Here are two memorable photos: the first of Fr. Thomas Rosica and Archbishop Luigi Ventura, current nuncio to France. Dining Room at the Paris Nunciature where St. John XXII entertained so many people during his 8 years in the French capital.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 10:02:40 +0000
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