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– Pope Paul VI, Vatican City, 1975

IN THE SPRING of 1971, I applied for the post of religion editor at the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, the Toronto Star. Within the shortest possible time, the publisher, Beland Hon-derich, had his secretary telephone to set up an interview in the old Star building at 80 King Street West (now the Bank of Montreal building) in the heart of the downtown financial district.

Going through the splendid brass doors and on up to the inner sanctum—the offices of the “Beast,” as some staffers referred to him—reminded me of how intimidated I used to feel as a student in the presence of the Provost of Oriel on the final day of term, when my tutors sat on either side of me and gave an account of my progress and overall conduct. Honderich could be a formidable force to encounter. He had little or no gift for small talk, a razorsharp mind, and a reputation for a flaring wrath when crossed or displeased by shoddy performance. But he seemed genial enough to me when we first met, and over the years I was to find him a generous, wise mentor whose word was always utterly reliable, come what might. He asked why I would consider making such a major change in my career, listened carefully to my answer, and asked me what I thought I should be paid. He then wanted to know when I could start, and showed me out of his office with the words that were to determine the shape of the next twelve years of my life and beyond. Honderich said, “Tom, I want you to travel the world and bring us stories from wherever you find them. The managing editor is up on the fifth floor. Go up and have a talk with him before you go.”

I had no idea just how much my life was about to change. A door had opened into a huge new arena and an experience about as far removed from my past—the halls of academic, conservative ecclesiasticism—as anyone could ever imagine. There was a surge of fresh energy and excitement within, but also a tinge of anxiety. There was risk involved. Bridges had been burned. The road to priesthood, with ten years spent in my college education and then a very minimum wage for eight years in a parish, had been intellectually rich but financially close to a disaster. With no house (a residence had always been provided and counted in as part of my remuneration or stipend) and very little in the way of savings, and unused to deadlines, I had to follow the course of everybody else at the Star: three months on probation and a very steep learning curve to boot.

Writing articles for a newspaper is definitely not the same thing as composing sermons, lectures or pious talks for the Women’s Auxiliary. Mr. Honderich believed a story should be such as your average cab driver could understand. He had little use for technical or deeply theological terms. He read every line of every issue, and was particularly critical with regard to any “artwork”—photo illustrations—especially on the Saturday religion page. It is said he had a habit of coming into the newsroom and throwing a quarter onto the head in a person’s photograph. If the head wasn’t at least the size of the coin, there was hell to pay for the editor who had approved the photo.

I had never been to a school of journalism. Having been shown around the newsroom on my first day, May 1, 1971, I sat down at the old Underwood typewriter and realized I didn’t even know where to find a pencil sharpener. I knew nothing about how to file stories from overseas—say, from London, Rome or Jerusalem. The first time I went down to the newsroom to ask for a photographer to take a shot for a feature story, the man who turned out to be the one in charge took one look at me as I approached and roared so all could hear, “Just what the hell do you want, Harpur?” I was so shocked that I almost forgot what I had come for. I didn’t know a photo editor from a copy boy.

I would go on to write about ethics, spirituality and religion for the paper over the next thirty-five years.

There was a time in the sixties when, as a professor at a seminary, I had felt a lot of pressure to publish a book—something, anything, that would have my name on it. It was the old “publish or perish” syndrome. I even canvassed a few publishing houses with a couple of what I now realize were pretty vague, pious ideas. Not surprisingly, they turned me down. I didn’t write my first book—though I was part of the three-man advisory team of Biblical experts for Charles Templeton’s book Jesus in 1977—until, in that same year, the popular American publisher of rather conservative Sunday school and related books, Thomas Cook, approached me. They wanted to see if I’d be interested in expanding a series of front-page articles I had written for the Star leading up to Christmas 1976. The series had been called The Road to Bethlehem and was accompanied by some remarkable photos by Star photographer Dick Loek. The original articles came from an idea I had had while walking to work from my home, which at that time was near the Robarts Library on the University of Toronto campus. I proposed to Star managing editor Martin Goodman that I would go to Israel, hire a donkey and walk the 160 kilometres from Nazareth to Bethlehem, staying at border kibbutzim each night. Accompanied by a photographer, I would file stories giving an account of what such an experience was like today as opposed to two thousand years ago. When I laid the proposal before him, Goodman asked one question: “Have you ever been to Israel before?” When I said no, he said: “You’re the religion editor. Isn’t your not having been there a little like the sports editor having to say, ‘I’ve never been to Maple Leaf Gardens’? I think it’s a great idea, and you’ve got to go.” I was to go to Israel several times over the ensuing years—and to Egypt as well.

The series was a huge success for the paper, especially the day they were able to run a headline saying STAR MAN FIRES DONKEY accompanied by a large picture of the stubborn animal being led along the road near Jericho. He (we were told his name was She-mon, or Simon) was supposed to carry our packs, but he was just too slow and so we had to call his owner in Nazareth to come and pick him up on the second day of our trip. With the coloured photos and a coffee table–type format, the book itself looked attractive and sold well. In retrospect, however, I think of it (as indeed I do of Templeton’s book, Jesus: A Bible in Modern English) as a well-meaning mistake.

While one can never forget the intimate sense of that severe yet awe-inspiring landscape brought on by walking all that distance down the Jordan Valley, I realize now that I was really helping to further literalize a story that was never meant to be taken that way in the first place. The account in Luke, the only place in the New Testament where a journey to Bethlehem from a putative hometown of Nazareth is mentioned, is flatly contradicted by Matthew’s Nativity story. According to Matthew, the star that allegedly was followed by the Magi “stopped over the place where the child was” and “on entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother . . .” In other words, in this version, the house of Mary and Joseph was not in Nazareth at all but in Bethlehem. Luke’s story of a birth in a manger resulting from a lack of room in the inn is totally ignored by Matthew. There are other technical details that add to one’s unease over my Road to Bethlehem venture. Suffice it to say that when one is dealing with myth, it is always folly to lapse into the literal and/or historical. I still had far to go and much to learn on my own inner intellectual and spiritual journey.

For some time, as already mentioned, I had been deeply concerned about the failure of religious institutions to communicate their message to ordinary men and women, especially those on the edges and those completely outside. I was almost painfully aware of how much we in the religious establishment relished talking about spiritual matters in a language few others could understand. It seemed time that somebody “religious” made the effort to learn how the media work and how to use contemporary means to spiritual ends. Apart from Malcolm Muggeridge and C.S. Lewis before him, I knew of very few Christians who had made such an attempt.

The past three and a half decades have been a fantastic experience for me. Perhaps in some small ways I have been able to help in pioneering or attempting to set certain standards in the mass communication of religio-spiritual truths. But that’s not the big news for me as I look back. It’s what I learned through the privilege of being a religion journalist at a top paper during one of the most exciting periods of theological and spiritual change in our history. Yes, and how this experience has shaped me as well. It has been a far more thorough and radical course of instruction than all the years at university and theological college ever were. In particular, the twelve years as religion editor were a whirlwind, but they gave me a global experience and held a richness that enlarged my heart and mind beyond measure. All of it formed a new and fertile matrix out of which the many columns and books of my later life as a freelance author and broadcaster were to be born.

I had only to come up with a compelling idea for a story in order to receive permission to go—to Israel, to Japan, to Africa, to Central America, to Scandinavia, to Rome, and to more other places than I have space to list. Star photographers and I travelled deep into the territory east of James Bay with Aboriginal hunters tracking caribou in the depths of winter while we did a story on the James Bay hydro project. We flew into the Sinai Peninsula and slept on the mountain where Moses is traditionally said to have received the Ten Commandments. We travelled to Central America to report on Canadians working with children orphaned by war. We spent time in San Francisco with the world’s first all-gay police squad, and we went fishing for Arctic char out on the ice beyond Baffin Island with an Inuit Anglican priest. We spent time with film director Franco Zeffirelli while he made his epic Jesus of Nazareth in the Moroccan foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Anne Bancroft and the other stars were eager to discuss Jesus with a former teacher of New Testament in the long breaks between scenes. One day, during a shoot in Meknes, a small Biblical-looking town, there was a sudden downpour and I found myself sheltering in a doorway with Bancroft and Zeffirelli. We had a lively discussion. Zeffirelli told of his difficulty in maintaining a sense of majesty or divinity in the Jesus character while at the same time portraying him as human. “He cannot yawn or burp,” he said. Bancroft, who was surprisingly well informed about the Gospels, had some challenging questions, such as why no actual description of Jesus’s appearance or mannerisms seems to exist. It was a very stimulating half-hour before the rain ceased.

Money was no object in those heady days of the 1970s. For my first trip to London, the secretary for the Insight section, which at the time included the religion pages, decided I should stay at least one night at the Dorchester Hotel. She seemed very pleased with herself when she told me. I had no idea at the time that it was considered at the top of London elegance or that such notables as T.S. Eliot, General Dwight Eisenhower, Sir Winston Churchill and a host of others had at various times regarded it as home. The Queen, when she was still Princess Elizabeth, and Prince Philip had announced their engagement there, and today it remains the first choice of Hollywood film stars and leading politicians from all over. Situated on Mayfair’s stylish Park Lane and overlooking Hyde Park itself, it is in the very heart of London. I was naturally more than pleased to be able to tell the cabbie at Heathrow the name of my destination.

However, pride indeed goeth before a fall. When the cab pulled up in front of the hotel, a doorman wearing more gold braid on his hat than a rear admiral, stepped smartly down the front steps and opened the cab door for me. I was suddenly somewhat self-conscious. My one suitcase had seen much better days and in fact was of lowly origin to start with. In short, it was cheap and old. The doorman whipped it out of my grasp and turned to lead me up to the entrance. Suddenly, to my dismay, the handle came off in his hand and a sort of yellow, fluffy stuffing burst out of it. The unfortunate suitcase landed on the edge of one of the steps and popped open, spilling the entire contents—socks, underwear, shirts, everything—all over the entrance. Red-faced, I hurriedly grabbed the bits and pieces and packed them away while wilting completely under the scornful eye of my former helper. I could tell he wanted nothing more to do with me and I avoided him thereafter by using another door. I changed hotels the next day.

Writing for the Star, one had the rare privilege of meeting and speaking with all the great spiritual leaders of our time, from the Dalai Lama to Billy Graham, Malcolm Muggeridge, three Archbishops of Canterbury and so many others. In many ways it was like a dream fulfilled. The most striking thing about the Dalai Lama was the great aura of calmness that radiated from him, as well as his constant smile and his deep humility. Muggeridge was noted not for humility but for his rapier wit, his ability to communicate through shock (he once told a Toronto audience that the two symbols of today’s culture are “the raised fist and the raised phallus”) and his fervent approach to religion.

Although he is now well over ninety, when most people think of Billy Graham they conjure up a tall, craggily handsome man standing at a podium with a large bible in his hands. His face is earnest, the eyes commanding, as he urges the crowds at his feet to make their decision for Christ. With the choir singing softly over and over again, “Just as I am, without one plea,” he presses his broad brow into his hand and stands seemingly lost in prayer. And the people stream forward by the hundreds.

Having been at many of his crusades both in Canada and abroad, I too can picture him that way. But it’s not the first image that springs to mind. Instead, I see him during his last crusade in Toronto. Wanting to get an edge on the competition, the Star had sent me to Minneapolis to travel with Billy to Toronto for the week-long series of sessions at Maple Leaf Gardens. We had already become good friends over the years, and as usual he and his staff proved very gracious indeed. I had a long interview with him in an airport hotel in Chicago, where we stopped over to enable him to be present at a crusade his brother-in-law, Leighton Ford, was conducting in Cicero. Then we sat together during the flight from O’Hare to Pearson airport. It was interesting how patient he was with all who wanted his autograph or to shake hands with the world’s best-known preacher. Several people on the plane, including a nun in very traditional black garb, interrupted him. He even autographed a cigarette package for a young woman who said she had nothing else for him to write on.

In an earlier book I told the story of once interviewing him at the boardwalk of the Beach area in Toronto, and of how the photographer attempted a very creative photo while I was busy speaking to the press officer. He asked Billy to remove his socks, roll up his pant cuffs and walk on a slimy concrete breakwater. He wanted to show Billy appearing to walk on water. Once the press officer and I realized what was happening, we quickly put a stop to it. The photos had already been taken, but Graham simply asked for assurances that we wouldn’t do anything “unwise” with them. They never ran in the paper, although they probably still remain somewhere in the Star’s photo files.

Since then I’ve always remembered Billy Graham with a chuckle. He was one of the best-dressed and most admired men in America, and the most famous of all contemporary evangelists, but to me he’ll be remembered with his pants rolled up, a stub of a hot dog still in his hand, graciously accommodating an overzealous photographer by doing his best to walk on water. Even at that time I differed greatly from him on matters theological, but he will always rank highly in my esteem for his integrity and humility of spirit in the face of fame.

As is the case for any would-be objective journalist, I wasn’t always welcomed in certain places. As the Star’s first ombudsman, the late Borden Spears, once told me, “Your beat causes more reaction than the crime reporter’s!”

I once was sent to interview the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was at that time the Most Reverend Michael Ramsey. He was in Toronto giving an address to the Canadian and Empire Clubs at the Royal York Hotel. Next to His Holiness the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the 63-million-member Anglican Church, is undoubtedly the most prominent of all Christian leaders. Those who occupy this ancient position are nearly always distinguished scholars and have the bearing proper to such an exalted ecclesiastical rank. Like the Pope, they live in a palace—in this case Lambeth Palace—and are treated with extraordinary tact and respect even by those who have no religious faith.

Ramsey was to me the quintessential Archbishop of Canterbury. His bald dome of a head was covered with fly-away wisps of white hair (it was said that even as a student he had looked ancient); his great hook nose was set between two darting bright eyes that seemed to pop out from under a thick thatch of eyebrows; he had a broad figure and a booming voice. He seemed a character ready for the stage in a real-life drama about a sturdier, bygone time. Added to his physical appearance were certain eccentricities of manner and character that he seemed to exploit. For example, he had cultivated a way of stuttering slightly when he spoke. Many English aristocrats and leading academics have affected this speech defect as a method of lending importance to their words. When someone of note stutters, it has the effect of keeping people on the edge of expectation—their attention is much keener. Ramsey was interviewed once on CFTO television in the early 1970s, on the usual topics one discusses with a world religious leader. When he was asked what he thought of the current “sexual revolution,” especially the growing trend towards sex before marriage, his eyes sparkled and the massive eyebrows jumped up and down as he began: “The Church has always been opposed to f-f-f-f-f-fornication!” The producer was holding his breath and on the edge of his seat, but Ramsey continued on, beaming like a cherub.

The Archbishop had consented to give me an interview over sherry after his TV appearance. At the end of the questions I told him I was an Anglican priest. He looked at my casual dress, a turtleneck sweater and tweed jacket, and quipped: “My, what an excellent disguise!”

In fact, I had first met him ten years previously, in 1962, while doing the year of postgraduate study at Oxford. I was walking up the High Street one October afternoon when just ahead of me I made out the figure of a stockily built man all in black who looked like the sheriff in a TV western. He was wearing gaiters and a frock coat together with a wide-brimmed hat. With his back to me, it was impossible to see the white clerical collar, but as I drew closer I could tell from his shape and the locks of bushy white hair fringing his neck that it was none other than Canterbury himself. I fell into step beside him and, plunging in, told him my name and that I was a visiting student priest from Canada. I can only describe the look in his eyes as one of startled alarm. He managed to mutter something about how nice it was to see me, but it was obvious from his body language that he wanted nothing to do with this philistine from the colonies who had dared to interrupt his reverie without a formal introduction. Suddenly he spied an opening in the walls on our right and, with a stuttered reference to “somebody I must see immediately” and a wave of his black arm, he darted down Magpie Lane beside Oriel College with the alacrity of someone trying to avoid a rattlesnake. Later, when I told some English clergy friends about my chance meeting, their merriment knew no bounds. Apparently it just wasn’t done for anyone to walk up to the Archbishop of Canterbury without having been at least spoken to first or introduced.

Ramsey was a great gift but also a challenge to the media, not only because of his style but because he knew well how to deal with reporters when he wasn’t keen on talking. In 1975 I was in England attending a conference of doctors and theologians on non-medical healing. After it ended I went to London to meet the Dalai Lama at a press conference and, perusing one of the papers, I learned that Ramsey was to attend a reception at Brompton Oratory the following day. Since there was a considerable debate at the time over the ordination of women in the Anglican Church, I decided to go in the hope of either talking with the Archbishop or setting up an interview for later in the week, and perhaps doing a news story for the Star.

I arrived late at the reception and was told by an antique verger that everybody was downstairs. I walked down to the large church basement wearing a trench coat and carrying my tape recorder, in search of His Grace. People were trying to navigate from conversation to conversation while holding cups of tea and plates of sandwiches and cakes. Looking about, I spied Ramsey sitting all alone at the head table, with an empty teacup and a plate with crumbs on it. I walked over boldly and was about to introduce myself when he looked up suddenly, got me in focus, held up his cup and saucer, and said: “How very kind of you . . . a little milk and sugar, please.” There was nothing I could do but go and fetch his tea.

When I took it over to him, he immediately dropped his eyes and seemed to withdraw inside himself into a world of his own. Coughing slightly, I quickly asked whether we could talk on the record for a few minutes. He gazed up very benignly and said he was much too busy with the reception just then to give his attention to so important an issue as women’s ordination, and he returned to his tea with Buddha-like concentration. Daring to interrupt once more, I asked whether I could call his secretary in the morning and arrange an interview for later that week. The enormous brows did pushups and he said twice, “Don’t count on it.” And with that he rose, collared a nearby Greek Orthodox prelate and became instantly engaged in a ferocious dialogue. I knew I was beaten. I had a cup of tea, climbed the stairs and reluctantly went out into the London fog.

During the summer of 1978, the bishops of the Anglican Church met at Canterbury, England, for the Lambeth Conference. The sessions were held at Canterbury University, up on a hill overlooking the ancient cathedral, but most of the religion journalists and some of the bishops stayed at hotels in the old city itself. I was covering the event for the Toronto Star and was lodged at the centuries-old Queen’s Head Tavern. The ground floor of the topsy-turvy two-storey building was the site of a very busy pub. My room, reached by way of a crooked set of stairs and a winding wood-panelled hall with a roof so low I was always in danger of increasing the size of my bald spot, was comfortable enough, but the floor, walls and closets all slanted in the most alarming fashion. One evening I had a couple of bishops up for a drink. As I put a glass for Archbishop Lewis Garnsworthy on the small table, only his quick reflexes saved it from sliding onto the floor. To my embarrassment, none of the closet doors would stay closed. No matter how firmly shut, after a moment’s pause and with the creaking of antique hinges, out they swung at you again.

Of course, this was before the era of computers and cellphones. Getting messages and stories back to the Star was a nightmare. There was one phone in the building other than the manager’s, and that was in the entrance to the pub below. One night, having written what I thought was a front-page story on women priests, and after waiting in line for the phone, I tried to dial the long-distance operator. You could hardly hear for the din of singing, shouting and banging glasses coming from within. When I did get through, the operator told me that the British post office workers and thus long-distance operators were working to rule over a labour grievance and it would be some time before we could get a line. Meanwhile, others behind me were starting to make noises about it being time they had a “go” at the phone. Then, inspiration struck. I told the operator to call me back when we had a line free, and then I put an “out of order” note on the phone. Eventually the manageress spotted the note and asked me what I was doing. I explained my dilemma and she said, “Come to my office. You can use my phone.” To my delight, I got an international line at once. I finally was answered by a familiar voice in the Star’s newsroom. But before I could get the words out, he said: “Hey Tom, that’s a terrible connection. Call back on another line.” Click! And he was gone. I almost cried with frustration. It was nearly two hours before I got through again and was finally able to dictate the piece. I don’t know if it made page one or page sixty.

During my two-week stay at the Queen’s Head two of my teenage daughters came to England for a holiday and we were able to spend a few days together in Canterbury. The hotel moved us to newer rooms at the rear of the second floor. I learned very soon that the rooms were directly above what was called the Golden Bar section of the pub. It was a rather sad episode with a bidet that caused my embarrassment. The girls had never seen a bidet before, and were amused by turning the tap on and off to see how it worked. What neither of them noticed was that the tap continued to trickle after it was shut off and, worse, that the plug was rusted in place. We went off to dinner and returned two hours later to find a stream of water flowing under the door of the room. I could hear sudden shouts and raucous laughter from the bar downstairs. We went inside to a mess with water everywhere. Just then there was a furious thumping at the door and the manageress thundered: “Whatever in the world is going on in there?” When she saw the extent of the flooding, she ran for her husband to fetch a plumber and for the hired help to bring mops and pails. “You should see what you’ve done downstairs,” she shrilled. “You’ve ruined the Golden Bar!”

Sheepishly, I descended to the bar area. Water was dripping down a series of light bulbs above the bar, having blown them all out. Some had popped in a mini-explosion and lay in puddles. One of the bishops’ wives, also staying there and who had imbibed somewhat freely, was catching the murky liquid in a cocktail glass and challenging all comers to drink “a Queen’s Head cocktail.” I retreated from the semi-dark pub as quickly as I could and discovered my bags being moved to yet another room.

I was not the only one who disgraced himself at Lambeth in 1978. There was an awkward moment at the special garden party at Buckingham Palace for the bishops and their wives. Normally, the attitude of British churchmen towards journalists is that of those who bask in their secure superiority to “lesser breeds without the law,” but at the last minute the reporters covering Lambeth had been invited to join the gala affair. We went through the palace gates, past a series of guards and footmen of various ranks, each of whom inspected our invitations, and then through the palace itself and on out to the magnificent lawns and gardens beyond. In the foreground were several large, open-fronted canvas marquees where maids in white and black uniforms poured tea and iced coffee to accompany the myriad plates of thinly sliced sandwiches and mountains of iced cakes. The bishops in their crimson ceremonial robes, together with their wives who were decked out in straw hats and white gloves with long gowns of every hue, made a splendid contrast to the emerald green of the immaculately cut turf. Behind it all lay copses of trees and, in the middle distance, a mirror-like miniature lake where pink flamingos preened themselves in the sunlight. A regimental band in smart uniforms provided a musical background.

The Queen was away on a tour at the time, but Princess Margaret was there together with the Queen Mother and the Duchess of Kent. They made their rounds to meet their guests accompanied by six Yeomen of the Guard from the Tower of London, each carrying an enormous halberd. It was a most impressive sight. The royal party was just passing the group where we were standing when one of the Canadian bishops’ wives, who was on the plump side, sat down firmly on one of the canvas lawn chairs. There was a loud tearing sound as the seat gave way and she sank through the frame to lodge there. The members of the royal family had been schooled not to look back, mercifully, but since the military band was silent at that moment, everyone else within earshot heard the ripping noise and stared at her as one man. Several bishops rushed instantly to her aid, their red cassocks matching the colour of her face. They tried to raise her to a standing position, but unfortunately the frame was wedged around her hips and the entire chair came up with her. It took some delicate manoeuvring to get it off, and as she finally struggled free she caught sight of me. With a hiss she threatened that if I ever wrote a word about this she’d come after me herself.

Two highly controversial stories came out of that garden party, one of which I filed for publication in the Star; the other I deliberately kept to myself. Idi Amin, the ruthless dictator of Uganda, figured in both of them. During the sixties and until 1971 there were a number of young Ugandan clergy who came to study at Wycliffe under a special “Ugandan program” that was conceived and directed by the principal, Rev. Dr. Leslie Hunt. Several of these men later became bishops soon after their return to Africa. One of them came over to me during the affair at Buckingham Palace and we had an enjoyable few minutes together catching up on what we had been doing over the intervening years. As we talked, I noticed a couple of black men with press credentials hanging about and obviously attempting to listen in. The bishop glanced over at them and, gently tugging at my shirt sleeve, motioned his intention of moving away. He whispered, “We must get away from them.” He led me quite a distance towards a small bandshell where a band of the Grenadier Guards was now playing. Out of earshot of the two (as it turned out) ersatz reporters, he grinned broadly and said, “You know why we’re here?” I said that obviously he was there to attend the conference. He shook his head while, still maintaining his smile, he swore me to secrecy and said, “Well, that’s not all. We are here to get guns to fight Amin!” I was somewhat startled, but agreed to keep it off the record.

As it turned out, the bishop, who still referred to me as Professor Harpur, had another revelation to make. He told me that the two men whom I had observed eavesdropping on our earlier conversation were not journalists at all. “They are spies for Idi Amin,” he said. When I pointed out that they seemed to be wearing proper press identification tags, and in the case of one, to be carrying a large Nikon camera, he explained that the men were intelligence agents of the Amin regime whose presence was being countenanced by Canterbury as part of a negotiated “deal” with Amin. The dictator had flatly refused permission for the Ugandan prelates—there were three or four attending—to leave their country unless his two fake reporters were accredited to come as well. I felt this was a scandal of some proportion and told the bishop I intended to report on it in my daily file that night. I assured him I would not reveal my source.

As luck would have it (bad luck), back at the University of Canterbury later that evening, I was dictating my story over a phone that was well away from the main concourse when the wrong person happened to intrude. Quite unexpectedly, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s press secretary, who was responsible for organizing all media coverage, came down a nearby staircase and heard some of my report. He made some angry gestures at me and grew very red in the face as he indicated he wanted me to hang up at once. I waved him off, finished the last couple of sentences and turned to face his wrath. He was very upset with me indeed, charging that I had gone totally against some “contract” he had made with the press not to make any mention of a “Ugandan deal.” He alleged that all the journalists covering the event had solemnly agreed to keep this matter out of their reporting for the sake of the safety of the Ugandan contingent and the required conditions of their being there at all. I replied that I had never been part of any such “contract” of silence and that I felt the safety of the bishops would be better protected by full disclosure of the intrigue. He refused to accept that and left in high dudgeon with a threat to report me to the Canadian Anglican primate, the Most Reverend “Ted” Scott.

I met Archbishop Scott during a coffee break the following morning. He confided he was “on a bit of a high” since he had just been offered, and had accepted, the prestigious post of Moderator of the World Council of Churches. He then told me he had been complained to by the press secretary but that, off the record, he thought I had done the right thing. Ted Scott remained a personal friend for many years, until his tragic death in a car accident on June 21, 2004. The Right Reverend Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of South Africa, preached the sermon at his funeral in St. James’ Cathedral.

The year 1978 was to become known as the Year of Three Popes because of a series of major events that began to unfold rapidly in Rome in the late summer and autumn of that year. I had been home barely a week after the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury and London when the Star switchboard managed to trace me to a poolside dinner party. It was a hot, lazy afternoon and to be honest the last thing on my mind was going anywhere on a story for the newspaper. However, the operator said that wire services were reporting that Pope Paul VI, who had been in poor health for several weeks, had died at his summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo, not far from Rome. According to the managing editor, the Star’s London bureau chief would head to Rome and cover the story until my arrival, but a hotel room near the Piazza di San Pietro in the heart of Rome had been booked for me, and airline tickets and money were waiting at the airport for a flight that night.

Rome was enduring one of the hottest summers in recent memory when I arrived there the following morning. The news of the day was that a crowd was expected to line the streets as the cortège carrying the dead Pope delivered him to the Vatican for some final rites and preparation of the body for his lying in state before the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. Paul, who was baptized Giovanni Bat-tista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, had been in office for fifteen years. He never smiled much and was perceived as a rather Hamlet-like figure by the media and also by many of his followers. He is no doubt best known for his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), which, in contravention of the proposals of the commission he himself had established to study the issue of the birth control pill, firmly banned its use by the faithful. It was to become a principal source of discontent and of the erosion of the moral authority of the papacy in our time. Rome’s stand on abortion made some sense to the majority; the simultaneous stand against birth control and contraception did not. Paul VI was eighty when he died in the late afternoon of August 6.

One of the wonderful things about covering a story like this one was that once a daily report had been written up and then wired home from the Reuters office in the Via Propaganda Dei Fidei, close to the Spanish Steps, I then had the rest of the day to spend as I wished. It was one of the greatest pleasures of my life to be in such a romantic and historic city—my favourite over any other city on the planet—and to be able to wander at will through the narrow, twisting streets in search of the distant past. I was able to make several visits to the catacombs beneath the ancient sites, especially that of St. Sebastian along the old Appian Way, outside the crumbling walls of the earlier medieval town. Also there was the opportunity to do some research on the Mystery Religion that was so much older than Christianity and that was such a rival in the first two centuries of the Christian era, Mithraism.

The cult of the Persian-originated man-god Mithras had arrived in Rome in approximately 100 BCE and had so many similarities to Christianity that the early Fathers and apologists of the faith were forced into some very strange contortions in the attempt to discredit them or explain them away. Unlike some modern ultra-conservatives who try to deny the parallels altogether, the earliest defenders of the faith knew only too well that such an approach would be in vain since the Mithraists lived as neighbours and their places of worship and their rituals were only too well known.

Mithraism is in fact a primordial form of sun worship whose Roman version ultimately worshipped Sol Invictus, “the Unconquerable Sun.” Mithras was believed to have “slain the bull of heaven”—perhaps a reference to the timing of his appearance with the close of the zodiacal age of Taurus. There are several hundred monuments or ruins connected with Mithraism in and under Rome, including more than one Mithraeum, or cultic shrine. These were built over a cave or hole in the rocks. In other words, the saving light was thought of as having been “born” in the womb of a cave. Mithras was believed to have had a virgin birth and twelve followers or disciples. He was viewed as a saviour figure who died and rose again from the dead; his birthday was December 25; he performed miracles of healing, laid down a high standard of personal morality and was called, among other things, the Light of the World. Mithraism had its sacred meal of bread, water and wine, and these elements were consecrated by priests who were called Fathers.

In the light of all of this, it is not surprising that the great African Church Father Tertullian (c.160–c.220 CE) was so disturbed by the similarities that he tried to explain them away by the highly unconvincing dodge of saying that the devil had inspired them to parody the Christian counterparts or “originals.” In any case, I knew that Mithraism had had considerable appeal for soldiers in Rome’s armies and that its monuments could still be found today in abundance all along Rome’s ancient and far-flung frontiers. The time I spent in first-hand examination of some of these remains while awaiting the funeral of Paul VI played an important part in my research over a decade later for what became The Pagan Christ. The influence of Mithraism and the other Mystery Religions upon earliest Christianity cannot be denied.

Rome, which is always thronged with eager tourists in the summer months, was filling up even more with every passing day. Meanwhile, the blazing heat of August baked the streets and squares relentlessly. In St. Peter’s, where the body of the pontiff was beginning to emit an increasingly distinct odour, making it plain that the limited embalming and the hidden ice beneath the flowers were no longer adequate to the task, large fans were installed and the crowds filing past were kept at a greater distance than earlier. There were still three days to go before the funeral itself. The 116 cardinals who were eligible to vote in the upcoming conclave (after the death of a Pope a conclave to elect his successor must be held not fewer than fifteen days or more than twenty days following) were already flying in from around the world, and speculation about the likeliest candidate was the sole topic of lively journalistic debate over the wine and pasta in the trattorias flourishing in the streets surrounding the Vatican. Rumours of all kinds were flying, but the consensus was that the next Pope would be Italian as well, given the more than four hundred years of tradition—the last non-Italian to be elected Pope was Adrian, a Dutchman—and the fact that with a total of thirty-three candidates the Italians were by far the largest single bloc.

In his will Paul VI had made it plain that he wanted his funeral to be “pious and simple,” with no elaborate catafalque—a raised platform to facilitate public viewing to the end—or other special frills. So the man in charge, Cardinal Villot, the Secretary of State, did his best. Nevertheless, the decision was made to have the funeral Mass outdoors in the Piazza di San Pietro itself. On the day, the TV cameras rolled and the Vatican choirs, the scarlet-robed cardinals and the hundreds of white-surpliced priests, against the magnificent backdrop of Bernini’s great colonnades and the Basilica of St. Peter, accompanied by some of the most sublime music on earth, combined to make the day indelibly memorable. The following day I left for Toronto and a brief return to the Star before preparing to come back again for the papal election two weeks later.

By the time I arrived back in Rome, August was all but over and the city was recovering slowly from the “tourist shock” of midsummer. I was able to book into my favourite hotel, the De La Ville, on the Via Sistina close to the top of the Spanish Steps and not far from the Villa Borghese, with its classical artifacts including sculptures by Bernini and Michelangelo. The roughly half-hour walk from there down the steps to the Piazza d’Espagna, along the Corso to the Piazza del Popolo, across the Tiber and along its bank past Castel St. Angelo to the Vatican press office just off St. Peter’s Square was one of the joys of being in the Eternal City.

The assembled cardinals met briefly on the evening of August 24 to prepare for the conclave, and the first session in the Sistine Chapel was held on the following morning. A Vatican press officer pointed out the quaint, somewhat frail-looking metal chimney now sticking out from the roof of the chapel and told the large crowd of reporters crushing around him in the piazza that after each ballot it would emit black smoke if there was no clear winner and white in the event of an election. The tension around St. Peter’s was palpable as banks of TV cameras were mounted and uptight journalists stood around in buzzing knots on every side swapping rumours and floating theories about a liberal–conservative split among the cardinals. The first ballot was cast before noon the next day. The first wisps of smoke that emerged were a pale grey, causing some confusion. However, it soon changed to black and everybody relaxed. In the afternoon there was a similar flurry of excitement but with the same result.

On the Saturday morning, a very hot and sunny day, I met Ken Briggs, religion editor of the New York Times and a former Methodist minister, and we had coffee at a sidewalk table on the Via Conciliazione, just outside the Piazza di San Pietro. Our location afforded an unobstructed view of the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Our work had thrown us together a number of times in unusual places around the world, and there was a lot to discuss and learn from one another. Eventually there were some puffs of black smoke again; the third ballot was over. We agreed to meet at the same spot later that day.

It was a sleepy, simmering kind of afternoon, and we were again at the sidewalk café enjoying a cold drink while speculating that nothing would now likely happen until Monday when suddenly a plume of white smoke billowed up and everybody began running around and shouting at one another. A Pope had been elected on the fourth ballot! Almost miraculously the word spread and thousands of excited people began streaming through the colonnades and streets into the square. By the time the official announcement “Habemus Papam”—“We have a new Pope”—was made from the loggia above the entrance to St. Peter’s, the piazza was filled to overflowing. The sense of anticipation as we awaited the name of the new pontiff was a unique experience for nearly everyone there. Then it came: Albino Luciani, the Patriarch and Cardinal of Venice—a man not on anyone’s list of likely contenders—was the surprising choice. The crowd, chiefly Italians though heavily laced with representatives of virtually every country, roared its approval as the man who would shortly be known far and wide as Il Papa di Sorrismo, “the Smiling Pope,” was introduced and waved his greeting to a sea of upturned faces.

I have seldom worked harder in my life than I did for the rest of that Saturday and well into the early hours of Sunday, reading up on Luciani, writing and rewriting the story of who he was and how surprised everyone was at his being chosen. He was the total opposite of Paul VI and in every way a breath of fresh air for Christians of all backgrounds everywhere. What made it doubly difficult was that my right arm had become sore and inflamed during the day, and it was soon clear as I typed away that an infection of some kind was making the elbow red and badly swollen. When he saw me the next day, Briggs thought it was clear I was running a fever and he persuaded me to go to a small clinic near the Colosseum run by some Irish Catholic nuns. I stayed there for two days receiving wonderful care, minor surgery and an eventual clean bill of health. The important thing was that the account of the election was filed in time and ran on the front page at home that Sunday.

With regard to Luciani, I was startled from the outset at how much this man resembled my own father, especially when the latter was showing his kindliest, most winsome side. Their backgrounds could not possibly have been more different, but I truly liked Papa Luciani from the start. Perhaps what was most appealing about the man was his complete lack of any pretence or side. He was open, unassuming and apparently bent upon a fully reformist approach to the papacy. Luciani had already scandalized some Church authorities by the way in which, while Patriarch of Venice, he had sold off certain Church assets in a determination to live more simply on the one hand and to do charitable works with the proceeds on the other. There were rumours he would do the same in Rome. He made it clear from the beginning that he intended to humanize the Church’s leadership and to dispense with unnecessary frills. For example, shortly after his election it was announced that instead of the customary coronation ceremony and the wearing of the papal tiara, symbolic of worldly power and status, he had chosen a plain investiture without the crown. Luciani was only days in office when he gave a sermon in which he said it was right to speak of God as “Mother” as well as “Father.” He also made it clear he intended to clean up the Vatican Bank scandal that was ongoing at the time.

People were genuinely moved by the gentle simplicity of the new Pope when it was learned that in his book Illustrissimi he had written a series of letters to famous people, including Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and even Pinocchio. In short, while he was soon said to have many critics and even enemies within the Vatican itself—one senior official was reported to have said contemptuously, “We’ve elected Peter Sellers to the Chair of Peter”—people were quickly growing to love him. Mother Teresa called him “the greatest gift of God, a sunray of God’s love shining in the darkness of the world.”

Because of the incident with my arm, the foreign editor sent a message to my hotel telling me to take myself out of the coverage in Rome and return to Toronto as soon as possible; the wire services were always available, and the major news was now over in any case. Things returned to normal as I resumed the religion page responsibilities and made several appearances on CBC and CTV television with commentary on the new leadership in the Roman Catholic Church. And then the wholly unexpected happened. At 1:30 on September 28, I was awakened out of a deep sleep by the telephone. I answered and heard a familiar voice saying, “It’s the night editor at the Star . . . The Pope is dead!” Annoyed, I said, “That’s not very funny,” and was just about to hang up when he insisted I should hear him out. As everyone was soon to discover, Luciani had passed away—apparently while sitting up in bed reading—and the Catholic Church had once again been “orphaned,” as one Italian paper described it. He had been in office only thirty-three days, one of the shortest pontificates in the Church’s history.

My immediate task was to contact Cardinal Roy, the Archbishop of Quebec, who was the senior Canadian Roman Catholic prelate at that time, to get his reaction to the tragic news. My call to his residence got him out of bed, and I leave it to the reader to imagine how completely stunned and upset he was as he struggled to come to grips with what had happened. I made several other calls to some key contacts, both Catholic and non-Catholic, and then took a cab downtown to the Star newsroom. We watched TV and wire services from Rome for a while and then I sat down to write the story for the earliest edition. Meanwhile, arrangements were already under way for a flight to Rome that evening. The cycle was to begin again: funeral, a two-week break, another conclave, another papal election, and an enthronement or investiture. I was back and forth so many times that, taken with all that had gone on in the previous months, including the Lambeth Conference in England, the job of religion editor seemed more like that of chief foreign correspondent.

One of the problems with covering stories in Rome, I found, was that one arrived for work after a long, tiring overnight flight during which it was seldom possible to get comfortable enough to catch even an hour or two of sleep. When the story was hot, as tired as one might be, you then had to hit the ground running. First there was the long cab ride to the hotel, getting settled, then racing to the Vatican press office to find out the latest. Confusion seemed the order of the day on September 29. At the first briefing, reporters were told that Papa Luciani had possibly suffered a heart attack but it was too soon for a full verdict. At the same time, it was made clear that there would be no autopsy. There never was, although at one point a couple of days later the Spanish Conference of Bishops sent a message to the Vatican expressly urging that an autopsy be held. Apparently the late Pope had had a history of low blood pressure, but as skeptical journalists told the reporting press officer, that didn’t usually result in a myocardial infarct. There was confusion also over who had first discovered that the pontiff had died, and when. In the first account we were told that a nun, Sister Vincenza, had found Luciani sitting up against a pillow with a book propped against his knees. Then, realizing that the notion of a nun having access to the papal sleeping quarters was open to considerable misunderstanding, the story changed. At a hastily called subsequent briefing, it was announced that a male papal secretary had made the find. Unfortunately, when the press asked to have either the sister or the secretary appear and be questioned, we were told that neither person was available. It seems they both (separately) had had urgent reasons for leaving the city. In any case, no more was heard about either, with reference to the Pope’s demise.

For these and a host of other reasons, all of which are fully discussed in journalist David Yallop’s book In God’s Name, where he puts forward the view that Luciani was murdered, Rome was understandably full of rumours. (Several books on this theme besides Yallop’s have since been written.) On my first day there, coming down the Spanish Steps, a headline on a satirical journal pinned up at the news kiosk caught my eye. The cover had a full cartoon-style picture of the small figure of Luciani propped up in bed reading while a cassocked man looks back over his shoulder at him. He is in the act of pouring a vial of what is obviously poison into a mug with the symbol of the papal keys on it. In case anyone should miss the point, the caption below asked bluntly: “Who killed the Pope?”

The newspapers in Rome were filled with speculative stories and commentaries. The Vatican kept making the situation worse by repeating answers that were either evasive or wholly contradictory. A further example of this was the simple matter of what it was that the Pope was reading when he met his demise. The first response seemed to say (piously) that it was The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. That soon changed to a report on some scandalous state of affairs in a large, prestigious American diocese (unnamed). One account I heard being set forth as gospel truth by a well-known religion journalist said that Luciani had been reading an insider’s analysis of the conduct of Archbishop Marcinkus, head of the Vatican’s banking institution. (Marcinkus was soon to be under investigation by the Italian police and would have to remain under virtual house arrest inside the Vatican’s walls to avoid going to jail.)

There was so much more, but with so very little light shining on any part of it, it still remains muddy and unclear and to many, myself included, all very sad. Oddly enough, it rained without let-up day after day all through the lying in state, the funeral and its aftermath. Rome gets rain in the autumn, but even the native Romans were saying that it seemed as though nature itself had been saddened by the passing of Il Sorrismo. I wrote a letter to him in the style of his own letters to the famous cited earlier, and the Star ran it front-page on the day of the funeral itself. I have to admit that, standing as I was on the steps of St. Peter’s when Luciani was carried out on a bier for the service and seeing up close the bright red papal slippers, still so new and shiny, I felt quite moved. Because of the resemblance between them, I was reminded very powerfully of my father and of his sudden passing exactly ten years earlier.

The second conclave of 1978 opened on the morning of October 14 with a High Mass for the participating cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica. The buzz among the international press corps as it gathered once more was that there was again a liberal–conservative split in the college, with two strong leaders emerging. Both were Italian. There was Giuseppe Cardinal Sin, the Archbishop of Genoa, on the conservative side, and Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, the Archbishop of Florence, on the other. Later speculation in the Italian press had it that the conclave was very quickly deadlocked between the two opposing forces and that the Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow—who had received a few votes in the preceding election of John Paul I—was put forward as a compromise candidate on the second day. In any case, late on the afternoon of October 16, just as dusk was descending on the city, the white smoke could be seen twisting up in the glare of the searchlights now flooding the facade of St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel roof. A thunderous roar went up from the crowd already swiftly gathering below when the announcement came ringing out once more into the piazza, “Habemus Papam.”

Knowing from experience that it would be some time, perhaps thirty minutes or more, before the official proclamation of the identity of the new pontiff was made, I made my way quickly through the growing crush of people to the press office just off the square. Inside, there was a bank of about a dozen phone booths. I immediately put through a call to the foreign desk at the Star and told them the election had just taken place on the eighth ballot. I asked them to have the Star’s highly skilled operators keep the line open until the new Pope was named and said I’d be back at once when that happened. I quickly drew up a note, as official-sounding as possible, indicating that the line had been reserved, said a brief internal prayer and tore back to the edge of the still-growing throng. It seemed I waited an eternity and I was sure that in the meantime somebody else would take the line. But in less time than in the case of John Paul I, Cardinal Villot appeared on the balcony and announced that Karol Josef Wojtyla, the Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, had been chosen to fill the “shoes of the fisherman.”

The crowd’s first reaction was one of utter astonishment. There was a vast hubbub of murmuring as people asked one another, “Cardinal who?” Though I didn’t see this reported in any of the accounts I read the next day, the largely Italian gathering was frankly stunned at first with sheer disbelief: the conclave was the first to elect a non-Italian in almost five hundred years! (The last non-Italian elected was Pope Adrian VI of the Netherlands in the 1520s.) I had with me a book of dossiers on all the eligible cardinals—part of an earlier Vatican press office handout—and quickly checked to read the brief description of Wojtyla. Then, rushing back, I found to my immense relief that the line in the press office was still free and that there was an editor waiting on the other end in Toronto. So, in a matter of moments, there was the thrill of being told that I had got the news to them before any of the other available services had reported it. Because of the time difference—six hours between Rome and Toronto—the brief story I dictated was just in time to make the front page of the final edition of the day. Considering just how significant a role the new Pope was to play on the international stage for the next twenty-six years (he died in April 2005, after one of the longest documented pontificates in Church history), it was a great privilege to be able to be there and to have had a tiny part in making his arrival on the scene known to the wider world beyond. All of this, of course, was before the current wizardry of the Internet and all the other instant news-gathering technology of the present day. Newspapers and radio were still the primary sources of breaking news for the world back then.

Cardinal Wojtyla chose the title John Paul II to signify his intention to walk a middle path between the adventurous liberal spirit of Pope John XXIII and the quieter, more conservative stance of Paul VI. Papa Luciani had had the same kind of dream a month or so earlier, hence his choosing of the title John Paul I, but fate had cut him short. John Paul II also followed Luciani’s example in refusing a coronation, and so was inaugurated, or invested, in a stately ceremony on October 22. Then things promised to grow quieter for a while, but what nobody knew at the time was that this Pope was to become not just the most travelled pontiff in history but one of the most travelled world leaders of all time, eventually visiting 129 countries in all.

While the moment of his election is still fresh at hand, I want to set out briefly my own take on Pope John Paul II, formed after years of observing him up close on his earliest travels and then many years as a religion columnist watching from afar. He clearly was one of the most influential men ever to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He was all the things the media said about him—or nearly all. He was obviously charismatic, eloquent, courageous, and persistent in carrying out his vision for the Church. But to me it was clear from the first long peroration he delivered at his first angelus to the crowded Piazza di San Pietro that he loved too much the limelight and the feel of his own personal power. Throughout his papacy he gave speech after speech and sermon after sermon, but he never ever listened to the cries for help coming from his clergy or indeed from his own enormous flock. The media adored him and gave him a wholly free ride as far as critical analysis went. Few figures in the modern era have so completely escaped a truly objective, balanced reportage as he did. He was portrayed as a fully modern man when he was in fact anything but. Underneath the charismatic exterior was a wilfully stubborn, undemocratic temperament ill suited for the huge task of giving guidance to a Church heading into the third millennium of the Common Era. His successor, Benedict XVI, is just beginning to reap the fruits of his planting, and there will be much more to come. (As a matter of fact, Benedict is in many ways very much like Pope John Paul II in mind-set—but without the charisma.)

People forget that the New Testament emphasis upon loving your enemies is there not because it sounds pious but because there is a terrible spiritual truth behind it. Those who have enemies and are unable to love them (not “like” them, but as far as possible wish them nothing but good) are fated to become like them. Wojtyla knew life under the hated Nazis and then under the Communists in his native Poland. Unfortunately, in dealing bravely with them, he also became very much like them. At heart he was to prove every bit as autocratic as they—only in a much kinder environment. That is why, for example, though on the surface he gave every appearance of being willing to make overtures of peace to the Orthodox churches, the Anglican Church, the Jews and other non-Catholic religious groups, nothing really solid resulted from any of it. The words were there, but the action was not. As a matter of fact, at times even the important words were wanting. The Buddhist leader and leading spiritual figure Thich Nhat Hanh, in his bestselling book Living Buddha, Living Christ, rightly points out the latent intolerance in the late Pope’s thinking. Commenting upon Wojtyla’s manifesto, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he chides him for maintaining that Jesus Christ is “the one mediator between God and humanity,” that he is “unique.” The Buddhist monk writes: “The idea behind the statement . . . is the notion that Christianity provides the only way of salvation and all other religious traditions are of no use. This attitude excludes dialogue and fosters religious intolerance and discrimination. It does not help.”

Wojtyla did, of course, assist in the dismantling and fall of Communism in Poland and then the rest of Europe. But he was very far from accomplishing this by himself, as most uncritical and overly enthusiastic commentators would have us believe. It was instead rather like the case of a large decaying tree that eventually takes little more than a firm, strong push to make it come crashing down. The signs of Communism’s decay and imminent collapse were in evidence on all sides before the Solidarity movement began. Of course, the question of whether or not I personally liked Pope John Paul II is not of great consequence. But for the record, I did not. There was much about him to admire, but the total package, spiritually speaking, was a matter for regret.

Early in December 1978, with Toronto well into the winter doldrums, the streets already dismally wet and the first real storm of the season predicted to arrive that evening, I walked my customary three miles to the office. There was a note from the city editor stuck on the edge of my computer screen. It said that she and the managing editor wanted me to come up with some suggestions for another Christmas special. In the wake of recent gloom-and-doom events filling the pages of the paper, she added: “P.S. Something on the hopeful side would be a great help!” It was in essence an offer no journalist with a yen for adventure and an inquiring mind could ever refuse. As long as there was a story to be told, it was a ground rule that expense was not an issue; I could travel wherever necessary to track it down.

With the phone and other interruptions I couldn’t think straight, so I put my parka back on and walked down by the harbour for an hour or so. Then I went in, did some fact checking and typed up a memo for my editors with an outline for a Christmas series of four feature stories. It would be called Signs of Hope, Christmas 1978. For the first story I proposed going to visit Jean Vanier at L’Arche (“The Ark”) in the French village of Trosly-Breuil, in the Forêt de Compiègne, close to the River Oise and the site of the historic railway carriage in which the armistice papers ending World War I were signed. From there I proposed going to a remarkable orphanage and school for needy children on the Bay of Naples, Casa Materna. It first came to prominence as a response to the large number of destitute children running in the streets of that teeming city at the end of World War II. Next I would take the readers to Krakow, Poland, the city where the newly elected Pope, John Paul II, had spent his youth and where he became the cardinal archbishop. Finally we would journey to one of the farthest boundaries of Europe, the holy island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides, where new life had been breathed into a site that once was so crucial in the spread of Christianity in Ireland and beyond to Britain and even as far away as Russia.

I had never been to any of these places before, and so the sense of discovery would be the same for writer and reader alike. The response of management was a very enthusiastic “Go!” So, about a week and a half later, I set out once more, feeling like the most fortunate man alive. Looking back, I realize just how fortuitous it was that my days as a full-time working journalist at the Star came just when newspapers were still at the height of their powers, so to speak, and the current cost-cutting, survivalist mode had yet to arrive. It gave me on-the-ground insights into the contemporary religion scene that few writers could ever afford to have.

There are today more than 130L’Arche communities for people with developmental disabilities all around the world. But in 1964, when Jean Vanier began his work, he little thought about numbers or the world fame he would one day garner. The son of the former Governor General of Canada, Georges Vanier, Jean had a brilliant career ahead of him as a professor at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, having earned his doctorate at the Institut Catholique in Paris. Returning to France, however, he found himself deeply moved by and concerned about the plight of intellectually challenged persons, who were for the most part shut away in institutions. He accordingly welcomed two men from such an institution to come and live with him in the tiny village cited above. His unique “ministry” is now so widely recognized and well known that there is little need to enlarge upon it here. The message he has distilled, however, and the theme he has so eloquently articulated in his many books, TV interviews and lectures has always resonated powerfully in my own life and thinking. Vanier has found that these often despised and neglected men and women have a message for every one of us. In living with them, he found he was being taught much more than he had tried to give to them. While most of us spend much time and energy trying to pretend that we are strong, successful and free from any kind of weakness, the disabled cannot hide behind any pretence. Their weakness is out there for all the world to see, and so they often have an unusual honesty, an ability to see through posturing and sham of any kind. When we see their courage and their ability to persevere in spite of often dreadful incapacities, they bring a challenge and a spark of hope to us in our lesser struggles. The spiritual impact can be profound. That’s why young people on every continent have responded so enthusiastically to Vanier’s message through the years. It is why so many international honours have been and continue to be showered upon him. It’s why he is such a sign of hope himself. I considered it a great privilege to be able to spend time with him at L’Arche, to observe him interacting with the larger community there and to sit in on a couple of “sharing” sessions with the men. Those who can handle tools have a variety of productive tasks to accomplish. There is a lot of laughter and a quiet joy running through it all.

Casa Materna (“a mother’s house”), situated in Portici, a small suburb of Naples on the Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi, had come to my attention through some neighbours in Toronto who were longtime, enthusiastic supporters of its cause. The large, rambling villa and school, with the Mediterranean lapping on the shore and the Isle of Capri off in the dazzling distance of the bay, was first founded in 1905 by an Italian Methodist minister, Rev. Riccardo Santi. He had a vision of providing home and a “mother” for homeless street urchins whose parents were either missing or so poverty-stricken they were unable to care properly for their youngsters. Santi at first used his own home as a centre, but eventually, with generous help from the U.S. navy stationed in Naples and a growing network of charitable donors in the U.S. and Canada, the Portici property was purchased, and classrooms, workshops and a large, productive garden were added to the original building.

When I visited Casa Materna, I found once again the indelible signs on every side of what even one person’s apparently impossible dream can accomplish when the central message of every world religion—active, practical, oftentimes heroic compassion—is lived out in the crucible of human suffering. In the children’s faces, hope and its companion, unquenchable joy, beamed forth whether they were in the classroom or at play. Thinking of the hardships both adults and students alike had faced there through the years—the two world wars with their resulting desolation, the lean times when the leadership of the country necessarily changed, the prejudices of an overwhelmingly Catholic majority of Neapolitans against this rare Protestant enclave—made one realize again that next to compassion, endurance is an essential element of any attempt at fulfilling the will of God.

The Kingdom of God, or however one expresses that spiritual reality in her or his own tradition, comes about not by words but by courageous, patient doing. Today some of the children who were themselves nurtured and educated as a result of Santi’s dream have taken over a new program for the needy children of Naples. Called Imparare Giocando, “learning through playing,” it is part of a larger successor to Casa Materna, now known as the Italian Children’s Mission. Significantly, the U.S. navy remains involved and deeply committed in its support.

Flying from sunny southern Italy to Krakow in December was a metaphor for leaving a democratic country for one still very much under the heel of Communism. There was, in spite of the enormous sense of pride and vindication felt by ordinary people in the street over the election of their fellow countryman as Pope, a pall of what one can only call glumness as palpable as the fog at the airport on our arrival. It reminded me of the atmosphere in Cuba when I had first visited there, a year or so earlier.

The churches were packed on Sundays and at other times—a far cry from the situation today, not only in Poland but increasingly throughout Europe—and there seemed to be considerable quality of life in the devotion of parents to their families, the way people seemed to enjoy walking together in the public gardens, or the clusters of elderly men watching chess matches near the historic city walls. But overall, the mood was heavy. The Solidarity movement among the workers was still almost two years away. Freedom of speech was severely restricted. There were plenty of fresh vegetables in the large open-stalled marketplace in the city centre, but if the fare at the hotel was anything to judge by, the joy had gone out of cooking some time ago.

I had to remember why I was there. It was important to get and to communicate a feel for the background of the new leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination, and to inform the readers of the newspaper that as all the great spiritual wisdoms of the world have taught, heaviness endures for a season, but “joy cometh in the morning.” In all the great mythologies it is at the moment of greatest darkness that the first light breaks through. As history went on to prove, Wojtyla’s confrontation with the Communist darkness through his support for Solidarity played an important part in the eventual dawning of a new day of liberation. In Krakow too I found the seeds of hope.

One of the places I had always dreamed of travelling to was Iona, a tiny, windswept island three miles long by about a mile wide, set in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. As Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “A man is little to be envied whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.” My feelings for that ancient, mystical centre of Celtic Christianity began very early in my life. My father’s heart was never far from the British Isles, and he loved to read to us about St. Patrick and the other missionary saints of old, particularly the Irishman St. Columba. He had filled my head with stories of their exploits and adventures. Columba was the Christian son of an Irish nobleman, and through his founding of a monastery on Iona in 563 he helped keep the flame of faith alive when it was flickering and in danger of going out in England, Ireland, Scotland and parts of northern Europe. One of my best memories of being with my father was just after my graduation from Oxford. He and my mother, together with my younger sister, had flown over for the ceremony. Afterwards, during a visit with relatives in Ulster, we took the opportunity and drove to Glencolmcille in Donegal on the rugged northwest coast. The Gaelic name means “the glen of Columba” and it is one of the wildest spots on earth, with the North Atlantic breakers crashing relentlessly upon the rocky shore. Seeing it, I was held spellbound because it was from this dangerous cove in 563 that St. Columba (a saint in both the Church of Ireland and that of Scotland) had set out with twelve companions to travel to the already sacred island of Iona. Knowing something myself of travelling in rough waters by canoe, it was nevertheless hard to conjure up the huge challenge of shipping out into such waters in a frail craft, a coracle, a round boat made of skins tightly stretched over a frame of willow poles.

I was reminded of that day and of so much more when, following the few days in Poland, a hired photographer and I drove from Glasgow up through the Scottish Highlands to Oban, from there by car ferry to the island of Mull, and then in a very much smaller, open boat across the turbulent seas to Iona itself. The weather was gloomy and cold and the crossing was very rough indeed. As the locals (the tiny village has about ninety people in and around it, mostly fishermen and shepherds) are fond of saying: “The weather can be pretty bad, but it’s often in places like this that people can come face to face with themselves.”

This was my chance to witness and reflect upon the Celtic Christianity that St. Columba and his monks brought to Iona. It was so different in many ways from that officially being promulgated then by Rome. What’s more, it radiated outwards far and wide and today brings over 200,000 pilgrims annually from around the world into its embrace. Celtic Christianity, instead of stressing human sinfulness and a need for personal salvation, boldly affirms the glory of the natural world, the connectedness of everything and everyone to God, and the centrality of justice and peace in human relations. That’s why, in 1938, a maverick Scottish clergyman, later to become a peer as Lord George MacLeod of Fuinary, came to Iona with a handful of students, some unemployed workers from the Glasgow shipyards and a couple of other ministers and began work on restoring the ancient abbey and rebuilding part of the ruins of the monastery. He went on to found the Iona Community, which today has members scattered across the globe.

MacLeod, who was awarded the Military Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for his heroism both at Ypres and at Passchendaele in World War I, had worked in the slums of Glasgow and had served at one point as Moderator of the Church of Scotland. But he had become increasingly disenchanted with formal “Churchianity” and had become a champion of “a connected Christianity”—a Celtic-type spirituality that stressed that work and worship, humans and their environment, matter and spirit must always be understood as deeply interwoven in one fabric of life. MacLeod was also aware that in Columba’s spreading communities long ago women had an equal voice; an abbess could tell a bishop what to do, and priests could marry. I remember avidly reading MacLeod’s books over the years and realize now that I finally was able to express his kind of “incarnational theology” in my own writing, especially The Pagan Christ and Water into Wine. One phrase of his in particular has always stayed with me. He said that Christianity is not so much about “Glory to God in the highest” but about “glory to God in the High St.” There is only the letter e missing, but a world of difference all the same.

We were only on Iona for three days, but I left there with a full heart and a lighter step. I could see why MacLeod had once described it as “a thin place.” By that he meant that the “other side,” the spiritual dimension of life, seems so much closer there. Any mental “tissue of separation” is so thin it virtually disappears. In other words, there is an end to erroneous dualistic thinking and all of life is one again. I needed to be reminded of that. We all do. It is a message of hope.