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Papal Mystery and History
by Benjamin Wood Westervelt
The book currently at the top of the precarious piles on the desks of journalists all over the English-speaking world is Dr. John-Peter Pham's HEIRS OF THE FISHERMAN: BEHIND THE SCENES OF PAPAL DEATH AND SUCCESSION (Oxford University Press, 2004.) Pham's book, which is both a history of papal elections and an insider's look at the modern Vatican, can now claim the virtue of timeliness in addition to verve and historical accuracy.
Pham's credentials for writing such a book are impeccable. He is a scholar at James Madison University, an alumnus of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy (a sort of finishing school for careerists in the Vatican civil service) and a former Vatican diplomat. The text of his volume is brief -- a scant 174 pages if one does not take into account the nearly 200 pages of appendices, notes and index. A great deal, however, is packed into those 174 pages. Pham's ambition is to take in the 2000-year history of his subject at a glance, and he is largely successful. Although most of the curious, fascinating, and sometimes grotesque information he offers is available in other sources such as J.N.D. Kelly's THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF POPES (1986) and the three volumes of Philippe Levillain's incomparable THE PAPACY: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA (Routledge, 2002,) it would be, as Aquinas observes in another context, "known only by the few, and that after a long time, and mixed with many errors." Pham has done a great service for scholars as well as the merely interested by summarizing and cataloging his material so effectively and in so readable a fashion.
The beginnings and the ends of papacies generate a particular kind of book that usually contains three distinct parts. First, it offers the curiosities of the oldest of all curiosity shops. How did Benedict IX become pope on three separate occasions between 1032 and 1057? Why does the papal tiara consist of three crowns? Why did the camerlengo (cardinal chamberlain) tap dead popes on the forehead with a silver hammer? Why was the corpse of Pope Pius XII so putrid that it blew the seals off his casket during a brief memorial at the Basilica of St. John Lateran en route to St. Peter's? The answers to these and many other questions can be found in the pages of this book.
The second part of a book of this sort provides the insider baseball of contemporary Vatican politics and culture. Thus Pham identifies which cardinals are likely to be the so-called "grand electors" in a conclave, which ones will go into it as papabile (likely candidates to be elected pope), which cardinals' chances have been dashed and why.
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And finally, such a book always offers a speculative glance at the future. What will be the issues likely to preoccupy the man we now know as Benedict XVI, and how might he respond to them?
Certainly the most ephemeral part of this sort of valedictory inaugural is the middle one, and a brief reference to Pham's contribution to the genre will indicate why. Speaking of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the first of the grand electors of the recently concluded conclave whom he profiles, Pham observes, "Ratzinger might have been considered papabile, a serious contender for the papacy, if it were not for the almost visceral reaction that mention of his name elicits in some quarters."
But unlike political candidate biographies and party platform manifestos, Pham's book will not go from the top of the pile to the wastebasket. Its historical offerings make it an invaluable and entertaining reference work, and Pham's insider experience and access to what he calls the Holy See's "oral traditions and ... rich lore" qualify him to speculate on the contours of the road stretching out ahead of Pope Benedict XVI. Pham's predictions about that road may turn out to be wrong when examined at the end of Benedict XVI's reign or at the beginning of the papacy of a John Paul III, but they serve as a fine vademecum for those who are beginning that journey.
The final reason Pham's book will last is its exhaustive treatment of the impact John Paul II has had on the rituals and obligations of papal death and succession. Long after his death, John Paul II's reordering and rationalizing -- in short, modernizing -- of those rites will exert an influence on the selection of his successors, and Pham indicates why and how this is the case.
HEIRS OF THE FISHERMAN may have already surrendered its place of distinction on cluttered newsroom desks, but the wise journalist will put it in a handy drawer, for it is likely to prove its usefulness again before too long.
Benjamin Wood Westervelt is associate professor of history at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
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