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THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
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33. Africa's Burning
IN MID-MARCH 1994, ALVARO DEL PORTILLO MADE A PILGRIMAGE TO the Holy-Land, where Opus Dei was moving closer to assuming an active role in protecting the Holy sites. He spent a week 'following the footsteps of Jesus Christ. During those days he had pastoral meetings with numerous Christians there whom he encouraged to be promoters of peace ...' [1] Christianity was endangered in the Holy Land, and that concerned Opus Dei. 'In a world which is witnessing the re-emergence of hitherto dormant religious and ethnic identities, this situation is extraordinary and demands attention,' wrote Said Aburish, a Palestinian Muslim. He believed that 'a Jerusalem without believers in Christ would be more serious than Rome without a pope.' [2] The latest in a long series of burdens that the Christian community had to endure was Intifada -- the Palestinian rebellion in the territories occupied by Israel. It had brought with it an increase in Islamic extremism, which seemed only natural, but it was a pervasive extremism that made Palestinian Christians fear for their future when the territories -- especially Bethlehem -- came under control of the Palestinian National Authority 'in December 1995. The Jerusalem Post reported 'dozens of cases' of Christian clergy being attacked by Muslims and concern was felt that after the first Palestinian elections Christians in Bethlehem could become 'second-class citizens with no protection for their religious rights'. [3] That Christianity would be impoverished without a strong presence in the Holy Land was undeniable. Opus Dei seemed to be giving the problem the attention that Aburish suggested was needed when it opened a new centre in Bethlehem. Only 4,000 Christians then remained in Jerusalem and in the whole of the Holy Land there were perhaps not more than 130,000. Property that had been Christian for hundreds of years, including Saint John's Hospice in the Christian quarter of the Old Town, had been expropriated or sold. The imposing Notre Dame of Jerusalem centre (formerly the Notre Dame de France) opposite Jaffa Gate was itself facing seizure for non-payment of taxes. Opus Dei's solution for that centre's financial problems, if accepted, would make the Prelature the dominant Christian organization in the Holy Land. But these plans were not to be fulfilled under Don Alvaro's prelatureship. After his week-long visit to the Holy Land, on the evening of 21 March 1994 he celebrated Mass for the last time in the Church of the Cenacle and returned to Rome on the following day. That night he died of a heart attack. He was eighty. The vicar general, Don Javier Echevarria, was at his side and took possession of the piece of the True Cross originally worn by the Founder. Within the next twenty-four hours, John Paul II visited the prelatic church of Our Lady of Peace and knelt before the funeral bier of Don Alvaro. This bending of protocol -- a pope only kneels before the earthly remains of a cardinal -- was more than papal esteem for the prelate general of Opus Dei but a sign of fidelity to the organization that had done everything in its power to raise him to Peter's throne. The Pope immediately confirmed Don Javier as the new Prelate and within eight months elevated him to titular Bishop of Cilibia, once a town in the African Limes of North Africa. Days after thousands of mourners had filled the Basilica of Sant'Eugenio for Don Alvaro's funeral, the first-ever Synod of African Bishops opened in Rome. Vatican communicators said it burst into life amid 'the sound of drums, the singing of hymns, the burning of incense, and the expression of feelings through motions of dance'. More accurately, it opened to bursts of machine-gun fire, rape and looting that erupted in Kigali after the assassination of Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, supposedly by Tutsi rebels. Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian convert from the African animism of his parents, described the Synod as an opportunity for 'exchanging gifts' between the Church of Africa and the universal Church. There was little mention of the Church's dialogue with Islam in spite of pre-Synod expressions that this was one of Africa's most urgent needs. Some Vatican observers believed that Arinze had been primed to play down interreligious strife because of the delicate contacts then in progress between the Vatican's AOP specialists and certain Islamic fundamentalist regimes. Cardinal Arinze's pre-Synod message did reveal that the gathering of African bishops 'looks toward the year 2000 when the continent is expected to be divided roughly equally between Christians (48.4 per cent) and Muslims (41.6 per cent)'. The Synod's working paper stated that Islam was an 'important but often difficult partner in dialogue'. [4] But that was all, A curtain of silence descended over the question of Christian-Islamic relations as if intrigues were afoot about which the faithful should not be informed. Members of the Vatican press corps have expressed dismay that since it came under Opus Dei's domination the public information policy of the Holy See has been one of reducing news that comes out of the Vatican to a level of relative banality. 'This appears to be a conscious policy of Navarro-Valls. The press corps is told nothing meaningful about what is actually taking place inside the closed sessions of the Synods,' complained Father Nikolaus Klein, editor of a Jesuit magazine. 'Press conferences feature participants selected by Navarro-Valls because they have nothing to say. This was especially the case at the Synod of African Bishops,' he noted. His sources told him that relations with Islam were, in spite of official mutism, one of the most seriously debated topics. He found only one person -- Archbishop Henri Teissier of Algiers -- willing to talk of the danger represented by radical Islam. Islamic fundamentalism is 'the gravest problem facing the Church in Africa today'. The 1994 African Synod closed as it had opened, under the sign of death. In Algiers, a French Marist priest and a Little Sister of the Assumption, who ran a library in the Casbah, were shot dead in broad daylight. Archbishop Teissier called it a 'senseless crime', and said it was 'more important than ever to increase the number of places where Christians and Muslims can meet and get to know and like each other'. His words provoked the anger of the Armed Islamic Group, whose leaders declared him an 'enemy of Islam'. Navarro-Valls's reasons for not drawing attention to Christian-Islamic strife during the African Synod became discernible in the meeting's closing document. It said the Synod had been concerned that the UN Population Conference -- scheduled for Cairo that September -- was planning to promote unrestricted abortion and contraception. The document, apparently approved by the African bishops, stated: 'We all condemn this individualistic and permissive culture which liberalizes abortion and makes the death of the child simply a matter for the decision of the mother.' Calling the UN's agenda an 'anti-life plan', the bishops appealed to all countries to reject it. Meanwhile, Africa was burning and bleeding. The undermining of the UN Population Conference demonstrated one area where John Paul II was diametrically opposed to the intentions of Papa Luciani, who had been hoping to work out a common strategy with the UN Population Fund, sponsor of the Cairo conference. It was said that John Paul II -- or his Pro-Life policy-makers -- were prepared to wreck the UN Population Conference unless references to artificial birth control and pregnancy termination were removed from all conference literature. To defeat the UN's 'anti-life plan' the Vatican strategists had decided it would be smart to form, for this one issue only, a common front with Islamic fundamentalists. But because it is a sovereign city-state, the Vatican is the only representative of a world religion to have permanent status with the United Nations. While this does not give it a seat on the Security Council, its delegates can attend General Assembly sessions, and, by extension, meetings of other UN bodies, such as the UN Population Conference. No Islamic organization enjoys a similar status which meant that in forming its one-time alliance the Vatican would have to deal with those radical Islamic states that shared the same rabid abhorrence of abortion and contraception. A month before the Cairo conference opened, the Holy See sent an envoy to Tehran to drum up support for its Cairo position. The Iranian deputy foreign minister Mohammed Hashemi Rafsanjani concurred: 'Collaboration between religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields.' [5] One week later, the Vatican ambassador to Algeria, Monsignor Edmond Farhat, an Arabic-speaking Lebanese, went to Tripoli to sew up Libya's participation in the fundamentalist alliance. Farhat had already been there a few weeks before with the deputy secretary of state, Monsignor Jean-Louis Tauran, who, in addition to discussing the UN's 'anti-life plan', informed his Libyan hosts that 'the Holy See is against maintaining the UN's economic and political sanctions against Libya'. Navarro-Valls denied, however, that any deal had been struck with either the Iranians or Libyans. Nevertheless both hard-line regimes reaped propaganda benefits from the attention shown them by the papal envoys. The official Libyan news agency, Jana, quoted Archbishop Farhat as stating: 'The dialogue to find a peaceful solution to the Lockerbie crisis is continuing.' He added, 'an identity of views emerged on the UN Conference on Population and Development, and notably as far as concerns the family.' So by linking the controversy over Libya's supposed role in the December 1988 mid-air bombing over Scotland of Pan Am flight 103, in which 270 people were killed, and the UN Population Conference, it was logical to assume that a deal had been struck after all. On population questions, then, the Vatican made common cause with Islamic extremists. This opportunist plan -- the forming of an alliance of convenience -- Pro-Life insiders affirmed, was the work of Opus Dei, once again demonstrating that the Prelature was capable of directing Vatican policy. The Cairo strategy was crafted within the Pontifical Council for the Family, assisted by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the John Paul II Institute for the Family. All three were under Opus Dei's influence. The Council for the Family was headed by its ally, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, and among the Council's consultors were two members of Opus Dei's priestly hierarchy and their close associates, Bishop James Thomas McHugh and Monsignor Carlo Caffarra. The founding of the Pontifical Academy for Life in February 1994 was made possible by the financial backing of the Prelature and the Knights of Columbus, [6] whose supreme knight, Virgil Chrysostom Dechant, had since the mid-1980s drawn close to Opus Dei. Dechant had hired as the Knights' public information officer senior Opus Dei supernumerary Russell Shaw. As the chief executive officer of the world's largest Catholic fraternal society, with 1.5 million members, Dechant paid himself a princely salary, declaring income of $455,500 in 1991. Most of this, he said, was contributed by the Knights of Columbus insurance operation, which has policies in force totalling more than $20,000 million. Such wealth enabled the Knights to give away in excess of $90 million each year to Catholic causes, including those of Opus Dei. For example, it supported the US Bishops Conference anti-abortion campaign with $3 million annually. In addition to his Academy for Life duties, Dechant is a member of the Pontifical Councils for the Family and for Social Communications, the central directorate of the IOR, and an honorary consultor to the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State. The Academy for Life's directorate is headed by Professor Gonzalo Herranz Rodriguez of the University of Navarra, and among its members are Professor Caffarra and Cristina Vollmer, a French-born countess who was married to Venezuela's ambassador to the Holy See, Dr Alberto J. Vollmer Herrera, both supernumeraries. She headed the World Organisation for the Family which in 1986 organized an international conference to promote family solidarity in Paris under the presidence of Princess Francoise de Bourbon-Lobkowicz and Bernadette Chodron de Courcel, wife of French president Jacques Chirac. Countess Cristina's husband, a lay consultor to the administration of the Holy See's Patrimony, also served on the Pontifical Council for the Family. The John Paul II Institute for the Family, founded in October 1982 with funding raised by Opus Dei, is headed by Professor Caffarra, with former White House aide Carl Anderson as vice-president and director of the Institute's US campus in Washington, DC. Another member of the Institute's Washington staff is the Knights of Columbus spokesman Russell Shaw. The Vatican delegation to the Cairo Population Conference was solidly in Opus Dei hands. Its number-three man was Bishop McHugh, whose Pro-Life lobbying in the US is financed by the Knights of Columbus. However McHugh and his two superiors deferred to Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who had set aside his duties as head of the Vatican's Sala Stampa to insure that Rome's directives were followed to the letter in Cairo. McHugh and Navarro-Valls were assisted by the Academy of Life's Cristina Vollmer. By adopting the Opus Dei's Cairo strategy, the Vatican went against the common position of the Western powers not to deal with states that sponsor international terrorism. For some Catholics, dealing with international renegades seemed a stratagem imagined by the Devil. Navarro-Valls later issued a justification, claiming that at Cairo 'the future of humanity was at stake', which even he might admit was an exaggeration. He denied that the Vatican had been intent on blocking a population-control consensus. 'We were interested in a consensus on the true well-being of men and women, not in a consensus on words and, even less, on slogans,' he said. The issues dealt with at the Cairo Conference were everyone's concern. It would have been immoral to impose the permissive standards of Western secular societies, particularly in matters of abortion, upon the Third World. Nevertheless acceptable ways of solving the world population crisis have to be found. The world population could burgeon from 5.5 billion in 1995 to 10 billion within twenty years. The UN Population Fund had hoped that from Cairo would emerge a plan to stabilize world population at 7.2 billion by the year 2050. Instead of constructively working towards an acceptable stabilization programme, the Opus Dei-inspired Vatican strategy was negatively geared to do maximum harm. Disgusted US officials qualified the Holy See's manoeuvring as 'the most vehement and concerted diplomatic campaign the Vatican has launched in recent years to influence international policy'. [7] Opus Dei indirectly boasted its structuring of the Vatican's alliance with radical Islam. While the Cairo Conference was in progress, the Prelature's AOP specialists organized conferences with members of local Islamic communities to affirm support for the joint anti-Cairo line, By being seen publicly to participate in these meetings Opus Dei could hardly be accused of having an anti-Islam bias. 'The Work is not against anyone and will never start a Crusade, however that word is taken, against any religion. Nor would it take part in one. Blessed Josemaria wrote: "A Christian lay outlook ... will enable you to flee from all intolerance, from all fanaticism. To put it in a positive way, it will enable you to live in peace with all your fellow citizens, and to promote this understanding and harmony in all spheres of social life" (Conversations, no. 117). Respect for the dignity and freedom of other persons is fundamental to Opus Dei,' maintained Andrew Soane. Five months after Cairo, Opus Dei organized a seminar on illegal European immigration at one of its retreat centres outside Barcelona that was closed to the public. The Barcelona seminar supported a view opposed to the one expressed by Andrew Soane. The seminar concluded that the growing rate of Islamic emigration to Europe risked provoking serious social conflict in the years ahead. 'By the year 2000 all major European cities will be multicultural. The traditional European population is ageing, while the immigrants are young and proliferating,' Opus Dei ally Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles, the Archbishop of Barcelona, pointed out. 'Such a demographic rift can only bring instability and strife for future generations,' he added. Therefore it was felt that if these trends continued, a relatively affluent and secularized European society, being capricious and morally bankrupt, would be unable to stand up to a more motivated, spiritually disciplined and determined immigrant population. 'Cardinal Carles drew a parallel between the present situation in Europe and the fall of the Roman empire, whose citizens were unaware of their own decadence. In our day, the Cardinal pointed out, the three Christian values of work, liberty and love have been debased,' a report on the seminar concluded. [8] The Barcelona seminar was clearly concerned with the Islamic threat to Europe and the fact that, being more dynamic, Islam was winning recruits among European Catholics by the hundreds each year. After smothering Christian belief in its historic cradle-lands -- the Middle East and Asia Minor -- Islam was now challenging Christianity in Europe, and in times of a shrinking world economy it was doing not too badly. For the protectors of the Church, these were worrying signs. If Cairo offered one example of how Opus Dei conducted its AOP, and Barcelona another, yet a third was provided by the Institute for Human Sciences, a think-tank that had been founded in Cracow under Wojtyla's guidance. Later, while Lopez Rodo was Spain's ambassador to Austria, the Institute moved to Vienna. After Wojtyla's election as Pope the Institute began holding regular symposiums at the papal summer palace in Castelgandolfo, chaired by John Paul II himself. In August 1994 the Institute organized its fourth Castelgandolfo symposium. The focus of the three-day meeting was the 'Next Crusade', though it was given the more anonymous title of 'Identity'. The Pope sat slightly apart at a small wooden table, listening intently. He was planning a trip to Croatia, and the Vatican -- in preparation for the Millennium Jubilee -- had just established diplomatic relations with Israel. The Institute's president, philosopher Krzysztof Michalski, put forward the view that the collapse of the Soviet empire made it necessary 'to search for a new order'. The search implied that one of the West's first priorities was to turn back the wave of Islamic migration. Six months later, NATO's Secretary General Willy Claes confirmed that a strategy to protect Europe from radical Islam had become the Western Alliance's primary concern. Coincidence? Other topics covered were the Islamic world's attitude to its own identity, and also whether Europe would be able to absorb its growing Islamic minorities. The participants concluded that unless centuries of mutual hostility and misunderstanding were overcome the West's collision with Islam would dominate world relations at the beginning of the third millennium. They noted that it had become fashionable to talk of the Middle East as a 'Crescent of Crisis'. But what if one of the Crescent powers developed a nuclear capacity? What if Algeria turned seriously fundamentalist? According to Rabah Kebir, the exiled Islamic Salvation Front president, Islamic rule in Algeria was inevitable. 'Western nations must understand that, sooner or later, Muslim countries will be governed by Islamists. This is the wish of the people,' Kebir told the French religious daily La Croix. [9] Bosnia's Izetbegovic would have agreed. But neither Kebir nor Izetbegovic were invited to the Castelgandolfo symposium. John Paul II believed he had made an important step towards a 'Crusade of Understanding' when he spoke out against US policy during the 1991 Gulf War, refusing to accord Operation Desert Storm the Just War label because it did not meet 'the rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy'. He thought his stance had impressed the Islamic world. That seemed doubtful as Islamists continued to regard him as a political agent who -- in the words of his would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca -- though 'disguised as a religious leader is the Crusade commander'. [10] The depth of the Islamic hardliners' hatred and mistrust was sadly brought home in December 1994 by the killing of four White Father missionaries -- three French and one Belgian -- in Algeria. In a fax sent to news agencies in Nicosia, the Armed Islamic Group said their killing was part of a campaign 'for the annihilation and physical liquidation of Christian crusaders' in Arab lands. [11] _______________ Notes: 1. Javier Echevarria, 'A Priest and a Father', L'Osservatore Romano, 24 March 1994. 2. Said K. Aburish, The Forgotten Faithful: Christians of the Holy Land, Quartet Books, 1994. 3. 'Christians fear Muslim takeover', The Tablet, London, 28 October 1995. 4. Cardinal Francis Arinze, 'An Agenda for Africa', The Tablet, 9 April 1994. 5. Jim Hoagland, 'The Pope Sups with Two Devils', The Washington Post, 23 August 1994. 6. Hebblethwaite, The Next Pope, Op. cit., p. 119. 7. Alan Cowell, 'Vatican Finds Sin in Text for UN Population Session', International Herald Tribune, Paris, 9 August 1994. 8. 'Immigration: le Cardinal de Barcelona craint une proliferation des delits en Europe', APIC No. 40, 9 February 1995. 9. La Croix, Paris, 20 January 1995. 10. Brodhead, Frank, and Herman, Edward S., The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, Sheridan Square, New York 1986, p. 52. 11. Three of the 'crusaders' were aged 69, 70 and 75. They were, respectively, Father Jean-Marie Chevillard, Father Charles Deckers and Father Alain Dieulangard. The fourth victim, Father Christian Chessel, was 36.
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