Being Paul VI alive, was there any electoral campaign favouring Wojtyla? Did it continue during John Paul I pontificate?. How can it be explained (according to Mr Germano Pattaro testimony) that John Paul I knew (and, besides, soon) who would be his successor? Was there any political interference (from the USA) before the conclave that elected Wojtyla as pope?

From the times of the Council, the Polish Andrés Maria Deskur was “Wojtyla´s guide in the Vatican labyrinth” [1] . Deskur was the Council press secretary. During the week preceding the inauguration, he walked with him by the Vatican gardens, talking about the problems coming out and about the tendencies that could arise. He was his Vatican counsellor.

With discretion, Deskur ran the voice saying that Wojtyla was a new person worthing to meet. “In Rome many people had met the old Cardinal Sapieha and wanted to meet his successor”, says Deskur [2]

Named Cardinal in 1967, 47 years old, Wojtyla takes advantage of his trips to make himself known. Cardinal Wojtyla´s first trip to North America took place in 1969. He visits the polish communities in Canada and USA. He is accompanied by his secretary Dziwisz and his friends Macharski (present Craiova’s Cardinal) and Wesoly.

According to Wesoly, “Wojtyla had been advised to visit all the USA cities being seats of Cardinals and, following this, he went to Detroit, Boston, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Saint Louis, Philadelphia (where he knew cardinal Krol, a polish descendent) and New York” [3]

In Canada as well as in the USA, Wojtyla learns the social life techniques. He discovers the habit of the cocktail, a good idea to be able to stand with a drink in hand while talking with the hosts and other guests. He even gets to enjoy dinners and banquets, because they provide him with the opportunity to talk around a table. And he tastes the pleasure of the press conferences as far as his English language is improving on the way [4]

Wojtyla returned to Rome where he participated in an extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops. When reporting about his trip to Canada and USA by the polish service of the Vatican Radio, the Cardinal highlighted its “religious character”. He said that the USA bishops and Cardinals had received him “surprisingly well” and that he had had the occasion to see how second and third generation emigrants to the USA had prospered.

In 1973 he spent the month of February in Australia, New Zeeland and Papua Guinea: “Melbourne Eucharistic congress had been his trip apparent reason and Wojtyla had had the opportunity to make a splendid impression to cardinals and bishops, and also to make new ecclesiastic friends”

In 1976 cardinal Wojtyla took advantage of Philadelphia Eucharistic congress “to visit again all cardinal seats he had visited in 1969, and also the seats of Saint Francisco and Los Angeles” [5] . In Harvard’s Summer School he talked about “Alienation or participation” and in Washington’s Catholic University he gave a lecture about “The transcendence of the person in the human act and in the man´s auto definition”.

In 1973 a firm and graceful polish female aristocrat, called Ana Theresa Tymieniecka, came into Wojtyla´s office.  She was born in a farm of the region of Masovia (Poland), about 1925, and had left Craiova in 1946. She graduated in philosophy in Paris and got the doctorate in Friburgo.  She left for the USA in 1954, where she has taught philosophy in several universities.

In 1972 the female teacher bought an issue of the book Person and Action, published by Wojtyla in 1967. She was surprised that another philosopher had reached a point of view tuned with hers.

“The author was completely unknown to me. A quick reading showed me that the book contained some kind of affinity with my phenomenological production, as it can be seen in my book Eros and Logos (published in 1962). In my book I had strongly underlined the priority of the action over the knowledge… I had, finally, found a twin soul” [6] .

During the following four years they maintained a philosophic dialogue resulting in the English version of the cardinal’s book [7] . The history of this collaboration is gathered in the produced mail (more than ninety letters kept under key in Harvard’s university library), in the written report of Tymieniecka and in her interviews granted to the authors Bernstein and Politi,  and also in professor George Huntston Williams testimony

Williams is a Protestant minister, Church historian and Harvard theology teacher. [8] He was an official observer in the II Vatican Council, where he became a cardinal’s friend. In his book he explains the female teacher’s co-author roll, but he does not mention the personal relationship developed between both following that collaboration.

In 1973 spring, on the occasion of an international congress about Saint Thomas of Aquino, the teacher requested the cardinal to present a paper in the phenomenology section in which she would be the moderator.

“The cardinal, whom I contacted by letter, answered to the invitation granting me an audience on July the 29^th in his Craiova residence. He was surprised by the fact that I appreciated his philosophic thought, since every aspect of his work had been severely criticized by some catholic philosophers” [9]

Cardinal’s secretary, mother Eufrozia, was happy to see someone interested in Wojtyla´s philosophy. The teacher says: “I wanted to conquer her so that she convinced him. I told her that I invited him to talk in Saint Thomas of Aquino congress in Naples. I wanted him to represent the Catholicism; I had a Jew and a Protestant. I believed that he had some ideas very similar to mine… I delivered her a whole speech about the fact that we needed a catholic leader in the world because everything was wearing out” [10]

The congress took place in Fossanova´s abbey, southeast of Rome, from the 17^th to the 24^th April 1974. The cardinal launched his work about “Auto determination as nucleus of the theory of the person”. In this congress the foresight of Wojtyla as pope is explicitly formulated. Polish teacher Stefan Swiezawiski told it to the cardinal. Four years and a half later, John Paul II recalls him in a letter dated on October the 21^st 1978: “Well, my dear Stefan, your letter had brought to me the memory of those words you told me in Fossanova during the congress in Saint Thomas honour. Deus mirabilis! [11]

The cardinal accepted the invitation to write articles in the specialized magazine Analecta Husserliana.  He then thought in the possibility of an English edition of Person and action: “The condition that I set, says Tymieniecka, was to do it in common. He wanted me to do it by myself and I did not want. I said: Only if we do it in common” [12]

In November, the female teacher again went to Craiova. During her stay, for more than one month, they agreed to publish the English version of the book [13] and a contract was signed giving to the teacher the exclusive of the publication world rights.

The teacher organized the cardinal’s participation in other European philosophic conferences: for instance, in Rome, in March and September 1976. In 1975 she initiated the preparations to take him to the USA, coinciding with the Philadelphia Eucharistic Congress. She wanted “to launch this great thinker to the international community”

Book’s collaboration went ahead: “I went to Poland three times a year, says Tymieniecka, and also three times a year to Rome. Five weeks in Poland and two or three weeks in Rome each visit, for four years. I stayed in Poland at least three weeks in Craiova, during which we worked together if he had a little time… For five weeks I was available if he was too: two weeks in Warsaw and three weeks in Craiova. Full dedication. We sustained very long discussions, the most fascinating philosophic discussions about the book and some other of his works. As far as my works is concerned, he was reading all available at that time; well, not all of them, but those that I was giving him”.

For a period of four years, they worked altogether in the book in Craiova, Rome, Vermont, Switzerland and Naples. Every five week’s common working period in Europe, they met six or eight times: “Sometimes for one hour, other at lunch or at dinner, or at breakfast, or when he found some free time… We once went by car to Bologna, three hours to go and then back again, only to discuss about the book. He had no time. He travelled continuously throughout the dioceses. Once or twice (during his stay in Craiova) we made a one day’s trip, during which we got six hours of philosophic discussion. We walked through the forest… In these occasions Dziwisz [14] (his secretary) was present”

The cardinal’s driver tried to shake off the communist secret service agents. Apparently, when Wojtyla was named pope, polish communist sources and police documents were the basis for some voices and assumptions about the fact that Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop, had had a relationship with a polish woman. It could had been Mrs Tymieniecka.

They talked about everything. Says the teacher: “Ours was always a dialogue between philosophers, which went deeper than the book. This was the charm of that work. If we had not done it, he wouldn’t have had such dedication to the book. He was an incomparable philosophic partner” [15]

The main topics of the book were already articulated in the polish version: “He went against the ecclesiastic culture tendencies of the time. He underlined the auto determination of the human being: that every individual was able to determine his own existence, to plan his own life, and being so, the society and the political system ought to give the individual the possibility of his auto determination… In the other hand, if the society and the culture allow the persons to be strongly individualists and to ignore the communitarian ties that the auto determination itself requires and establishes, then social cooperation decreases”.

Translation problems were enormous. The original had countless gaps, unfinished phases, grammatical mistakes, vague expressions, too many repetitions and incomplete analysis. “Polish experts critics, says the female teacher, seemed really justified in many aspects” [16]

A pope with a USA backing

            Of course, there are no ordinary procedures about how a pope is made. Nevertheless, the teacher placed to Wojtyla´s feet the effective resources of the most powerful country in the earth. He made his propaganda, she helped him to plan his visit to the USA, he got the Harvard University to invite him to hold his first American conference. With the help of the nuncio in the USA, he got conferences for him in Washington. He even got an invitation to have a tea with President Ford in the White House, but the cardinal declined the invitation adducing the coincidence with another compromise. In short, “she flooded the information organs with press releases in which the distinguished polish cardinal that some Europeans considered like possible future pope was announced”.

            In 1976, the visit of cardinal Wojtyla to the USA (where, in general, the Polish people has no good image) was a triumph: “I wanted to present him like a great personality, a great statesman, but at the beginning nobody accepted him as such, says Tymieniecka.  He came from an unimportant country and nobody knew him. I got for him a dinner in the Harvard president’s home (250 people) and the university left him a car and a driver, and all Polish teachers went to receive the cardinal at his arrival”.

            The formal invitation to give a lecture in Harvard was made by professor Williams: “His lecture in Harvard was very well received by the academicians as well as by the Church´s leaders, and it was agreed to give it a large press coverage, including the New York Times”. In fact, lunch in Harvard to which attended university and press representatives, Tymieniecka´s husband, teacher Hendrick Houthakker, who was part of the Nixon’s economical advisors group, and who introduced Wojtyla as “the future pope”. [17] On July 27^th, after Wojtyla´s lecture in Harvard, the following headline could be read in the university newspaper: “Paul VI´s foreseeable successor” [18]

            The Catholic and of polish origins, professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later on would be President Carter’s security advisor, attended the conference and was stricken: “Would you have tea with me’”, the professor asked the cardinal. They had then “a splendid conversation” about Poland and the world situation. After that, they kept an epistolary relationship. And in 1978 advisor Brzezinski represented the USA in Wojtyla´s pontificate inauguration. [19]

            During the three weeks spent in the USA, the cardinal stayed twice in Tymieniecka´s home in the Vermont’s forests. It was a beautiful situation, says the teacher: “We did wonderful things, an incomparable philosophic dialogue. We worked in the kitchen. When he sits down in the table, he concentrates with an extraordinary intensity and he does not stand up until he is not finished… Later on, he thinks over the results… We all went to swim in the neighbours´ small lake. We celebrated mass under a tree, over a picnic table, at seven o´clock in the morning, so that my son could also attend (before leaving for work). Don Dziwisz (the secretary) acted as acolyte. We had animals – a horse, a goat and an ass – and they neared during the mass to see what was going on”

            “Sometimes, says the teacher, we work during sixteen hours a day, often with long walks, discussing about philosophy, society, literature, poetry”, “after Person and action, he was thinking in another work about anthropologic orientation, an ethics treaty, which, at the end, was the basis of Veritatis splendor” [20]

            To the teacher, Wojtyla´s knowledge was almost unlimited, but it had an exception: when they discussed about the West and the USA. Many of his impressions were wrong and his lack of information was disturbing. Tymieniecka´s husband, professor Houthakker, comments:

            “My wife believed that he considered the communists stronger than they really were. She had the impression that Wojtyla believed that in the long run the communists would have won and that he really was fighting a battle in some manner already lost. He was very conscious of the strength of the soviet system. He was not conscious of the western system strength… My wife was certainly worried for his lack of comprehension towards the West. He talked about the nature of this society that is so different to the society he had grown in… He tended to consider the western countries, especially the USA, like immoral, perhaps amoral: he really did not appreciate the virtues of democracy. At least in two occasions my wife implied to him that in the USA he would seem a Savonarola [21] , she explained to him that it is a wonderful country; there are, of course, things that he can dislike, but that there were things that he could not say. She persuaded him to do not put out his contempt and his alarm for the West decadence and, especially, that of the USA. This was very important, since with the things he was about to say he could ruin his reception in the USA” [22]

            That same year, cardinal Wojtyla directed the pope and roman curia Lenten retreat [23] . When the talks were finished, polish bishop Deskur was satisfied of his friend Wojtyla “whose promotion in the Vatican circles he was carrying without respite” [24] . That same year too, “the New York Times placed the cardinal in the list of the ten candidates more often cited to succeed Paul VI” [25] . And in 1978, according to the biographer Szulc, professor Williams predicted in the newspaper The Harvard Crimson that Wojtyla would be the next pope. [26]

A matter of image

            On March 1977, in a written introduction in the English version of the book, which he defines like the only definitive and authorized edition, cardinal Wojtyla openly acknowledges his debt with the professor: “I consider my duty to thank professor A.T. Timiniecka´s initiative in the publication of my work, not only with a warm thanking , but also with an explanation”, “I thank the editor, professor A.T. Tymieniecka, who, with his excellent knowledge of the western philosophical context, has given my text its final form”, “the author agrees that this definitive version of the book appear in the distinguished collection Analecta Husserliana” [27]

            Nevertheless, when Wojtyla was elected pope, a pontifical commission named to evaluate the management of his literary production, requested him the denial of the work that he had written with the professor, and the restitution of the rights to the original polish version, the ought to be taken like the authentic version. John Paul II made his, the commission’s recommendation and a coldness period between the pope and the professor followed, although the pope continued writing her regularly. At least once a month, she says.

            The professor put this matter into lawyers´ hands and thought over the possibility to accuse the pope of author’s rights violation. She began to collect documentation about the mutual collaboration and mail, and she delivered it to several persons and institutions for custody and to publish it after her death. Against Vatican´s desires, the professor continued the publication of the work, which stays in circulation like the authentic English version.

            Mrs Tymieniecka considered a personal betrayal the silence maintained by the pope in public during the controversy. Nevertheless, at the end, reconciliation took place.

            Joaquin Navarro Valls, Vatican´s speaker, says that the commission was “hyper protective” and he even praises the work: “The book is more phenomenological than tomist, but this is its beauty”, “from a philosophical and literary point of view, it is a notable analysis”, “I believe that it will be the last important book about the phenomenology”. The speaker explains the commission’s behaviour in these terms: “Imagine the situation of a new pope with some philosophic and literary production; besides he is a non-Italian pope and most people did not know Wojtyla´s works; they (the commission) thought they should protect pope’s image… The confusion in those circumstances could be enormous; the situation was so new (that the answer would have been): let’s pay attention to how can this be interpreted “ [28]

The conclave isolation

            The word conclave (from the latin cum clave, with key) designs the place where the cardinal meet and lock to elect pope. It also designates the same meeting of the cardinals that stay in strict isolation conditions while they elect pope. It was so established by Gregory X in his constitution Ubi Maius periculum (1274)

            Like the expert in Vatican matters Giancarlo Zizola says, “the conclaves have had a stormy history. Some of them only lasted some hours; others, full years. Some of them were sprayed by the Spirit’s strength; others by the power of money”.

            In the XV century, the conclaves are the theatre of the influences exerted by the cardinals of the crown, of confrontation between parties, of simony purchase and of sale of votes at gold price: “It is really surprising to state that is precisely a Medici, Julius II (who had really bought his post as pope), who established, in 1506, the first bull, Cum tam divino, that declares a simony election” [29]

            More recent is what happened in the conclave in 1903: the Craiova’s cardinal, Jan Puzyna, opposed the Emperor Francisco Jose I of Austria’s veto to the cardinal Rampolla, who had been Leon XIII´s secretary and who had at his disposition a large number of cardinals. Rampolla did not want to renounce to his candidature, since he did not wanted to give in to the political interference of the emperor of Austria. [30]

            In that conclave there was a problem in the kitchen: almost all the cardinals were indisposed, what could become symbolic and meaningful. The only who stayed well were cardinal Rampolla, who had his meals served by his own cook, and the bishop of Vienna, who had a special regime. The conclave elected Venetia’s Patriarch, cardinal Jose Sarto, under the name of Pius X and who, in one of his first action like pope, suppressed the right to veto.

            Paul VI, in his constitution Romano pontifice eligendo (1975), reinforces the conclave isolation. The cardinal electors and the eventual conclavists “stay day and night to the end of the election, with no relationship with outside people of things”

            Conclave’s closure is hermetic.  The place is electronically searched looking for possible hidden microphones. The conditions are extreme. On August 1978, cardinal Suenens says: “My room was like an oven. There was only one window, but sealed. The following day, with my own hands I got to pull out the nails from the wood. What a divine gift the oxygen and the fresh air! We really were in risk to get sick”

            Paul VI constitution sets a code of rules.  It is forbidden to anybody, even a cardinal, to talk, while the pope is alive and without having been consulted, about the election of his successor, “to promise votes or to take decisions about this matter in private meetings” (art. 80). This prohibition is classified among the rules that prohibit “the detestable crime of the simony in roman pontiff’s election” (art. 79) and the presentation of vetoes, even under the form of a simple wish of the civil authority, before and during the conclave (art. 81).

            The prohibition of political interferences extends “to all possible interferences, oppositions, desires, with which the secular authorities of any field and rank, or to any human group or private persons, willing to interfere in the pontiff’s election”. Article 82 is emphatic: “The cardinals electors abstain of any form of negotiation, agreements, promises and other compromises of any nature, which can oblige them to give their vote to one or several”. The transgressors fall in excommunication.

            Paul VI constitution also says: “We intend to prohibit that, during the period of vacant See, ideas interchange about election can take place”

            With his constitution Universi dominici gregis (1996), John Paul II basically confirms Paul II´s electoral system, introducing some novelties. It explicitly admits, like a case of “vacant see” the “pontiff’s valid renounce” and not only his death.

            John Paul II´s constitution reinforces the isolation of the cardinals electors, as if they were placed under policy vigilance during the electoral period: “In a special way care should be taken so that nobody nears the cardinals electors during the movement from Saint Marta House to the Vatican apostolic palace” (art. 43) [31]

            In spite of the severe measures (some of them clearly ridicules, useless and anachronistic), conclave’s isolation is relative, because not only should be taken into account what happens inside it, but what happens before. If as campaign we understand “the collection of acts and efforts that are applied to get a certain end”, the electoral campaign (more or less hidden) previously carried out (already from 1969) in favour of Wojtyla candidature is suggesting it (advises, trips, congresses, conferences, contacts, visits, meals, cocktails, statements, press releases, articles, propaganda).

The bishop Deskur, campaign director

            On October the 4^th 1978, after John Paul I´s burial, cardinal Wojtyla had a dinner at Deskur´s home. Polish Bishop Andres Maria Deskur, president of the Pontifical Counsel for social communications and a Wojtyla´s friend from the times that both studied theology in Craiova, was his electoral campaign director and, therefore, the ideal person to update him about the situation [32]

            On October the 12^th, Cardinal Wyszynski (worried by the rumours centred in Wojtyla´s candidature) required the presence of his compatriots Deskur and Rubin in the roman residence where he was living: “We went there, says Deskur, and he asked us who would be the next pope. Bishop Rubin as well as I gave him the same answer: Wojtyla”. How do you know it?, asked Wyszynski, unable to get over it. “Eminence, said Deskur, I have been living in Rome for thirty years”.

            Deskur was pretty sure that Wojtyla´s electoral base was growing. Philadelphia cardinal (Krol, of polish origin) had begun to campaign in his favour. Cardinal Villot, state secretary, was on his favour, too. Five months before, on May the 18^th, Wojtyla had celebrated his 58 birthday in Deskur´s Vatican apartment. Let’s watch the scene.

            As guest of honour is Cardinal Villot, State secretary ; Bishop Rubin and Luigi Poggi, especial nuncio for Eastern Europe, are also present. In a precise moment, the conversation goes towards the future of the Church and the State secretary says that Wojtyla is the only man who could get the two thirds majority necessary for election: “I remember that the poor Poggi looked to Rubin, says Deskur. He asked himself if the Cardinal State secretary was going insane. To talk about the next pope in the very home of the pontiff, when this apparently enjoyed of a reasonable health condition, really meant a complete surprise for us”. Later on, Cardinal Villot sent a note to Deskur: “I reiterate what I said during the lunch. It was not a lapse” [33]

            Some days before the initiation of the conclave, the polish cardinal and his adviser took a walk through the Vatican gardens: “I saw in a very clear way, says Deskur, that in some part of his mind, his soul and his heart, Wojtyla knew that he would be pope” [34]

            On October the 13^th, the cardinals met in the Vatican to decide over the cells they would take up during the conclave. A few minutes later, the news arrived that Deskur had become paralyzed by an attack: “Deskur, whose nervous [35] tension had overcome the limit of his auto imposed roll as Wojtyla´s campaign director, suffered a violent ictus from which he would never recover plainly”. A “massive heart attack” was mentioned, a “total paralysis” (he scarcely could talk) [36] , “a thrombosis in the carotid”, in comma status and already beyond recovery, according to the doctors” [37] . It was a hard strike for Wojtyla, farther more in conclave’s eve. He quickly moved to the policlinic Gemelli to visit his friend. He did the same in his first trip like pope, on October the 17^th. “He taught me how to be pope”, said Wojtyla when going into the sick man room [38]

            On January the 14^th 1979, pope Wojtyla maintains a long conversation with Zurich, where Bishop Deskur is still under recuperation. He is better off. Nevertheless, his capacity to reinitiate his job like Church´s social communications head is in doubt. “Don´t worry, tells him the pope. You have here a much more important job waiting for you: to be my personal advisor” [39] Named Archbishop in 1980, in 1984 Deskur stays like Social Communications Commission emeritus president and in 1985 he receives the cardinal purple “in the wheelchair to which his apoplexy had reduced him” [40]