Word: francesco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both traditions were faithfully upheld as Italy last week got its 42nd postFascist government: a three-party minority coalition headed by Christian Democrat Francesco Cossiga, 51, a surprising but respected choice. The formation of the new Cabinet ended what had appeared to be an insoluble political crisis lasting 186 days-a new national record-and dating back to January when Premier Giulio Andreotti was toppled by the Communists' withdrawal of their parliamentary support. It also showed every sign of being a stopgap. "We will have a government of truce," quipped a deputy in a cartoon in Turin...
...Francesco is dogged by a destiny that oscillates between a quest for sanctity and demonstrations of hubris. He is crowned with the triple tiara that Popes John Paul I and John Paul II rejected, to let men know precisely who is running the church. When police in Spain murder priests under the approving eyes of Cabinet ministers, Francesco revives medieval precedent and threatens to place the entire country under interdict unless the culprits are punished. When a cabal of Cardinals plots to depose him, he dispatches them into exile with all the brutal efficiency of a Nixonian Saturday Night Massacre...
...Neither Francesco nor the novel that contains him is without great flaws. The barracks vulgarity of Part 1 is as tedious as basic training, and the narrator's stilted diction in Part 2 is hardly more en dearing. Women serve principally as walk-ons in The Vicar of Christ, including Declan's wife Kate, whose tragic death drives him to the monastery...
Ultimately, though, Murphy's work is a novel of ideas: political and religious, sa cred and profane. The moral problems of war and peace, life and death, change and tradition, poverty and riches are questions that pursue every human. Murphy can not fully answer them, nor can Pope Francesco I. But they are asked in a way that cannot be ignored, and they will haunt the reader long after this remarkable epic is finally laid down...
Murphy's researches in Rome in 1973-74 and last year gave him an eerie prescience. In the novel, Pope Francesco visits Mexico and enunciates the church's position on political involvement: "The church must be independent . . . We can not have a material stake in the status quo or in revolution or in any of the other possible political events in between. We must be free to preach justice and to do justice." Those were the precise ideas, if not the very words, of Pope John Paul II on his visit to Mexico last January, well after...