MAGEE'S ROME DAYS: WHEN MSGR John Magee was
appointed Bishop of Cloyne in 1987, there were two schools of thought
within the Vatican as to just what the appointment meant.
A majority view saw it as a fitting reward for a loyal
papal servant, someone who had the unusual distinction of having served
as private secretary to three popes (Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul
II).
Even back then, however, there was another explanation for his appointment.
When
his retirement was announced in March last year, Vatican commentators
recalled the “Irish” secretary who had been promoted sideways in 1987 to
get him out of the Holy See.
Vatican commentator Orazio La Rocca, writing in
La Repubblica , put it this way: “Reserved, likeable but with a
closed character – and not at all brilliant, they say in the Vatican –
before he was made a bishop by John Paul II, he served for four years as
Master of Pontifical Ceremonies and this notwithstanding the fact that
he was the object, within the Vatican, of all sorts of rumours and
personal attacks . . . ”
In those days, Msgr Magee’s flat inside
the Vatican was a regular stopping-off point for Irish visitors to the
Holy See. One regular visitor recalls how “there always seemed to be a
lot of coming and going, he always seemed to have visitors”.
Among those Irish visitors were the conservative Catholics senator Des Hanafin and his wife Mona.
Through
his friendship with them, Msgr Magee played an important role in the
Catholic Church campaigns which saw the introduction in Ireland of the
1983 abortion amendment referendum and the failure of the 1986 divorce
referendum.
During an interview with Msgr Magee in the Vatican in
March 1987, I asked him what role, if any, he might have played in
keeping John Paul II informed about developments in Ireland, in
particular the two referendums.
“I didn’t have to keep the pope informed because he was kept daily informed about the situation in Ireland,” he replied.
Students at the Irish Pontifical College in Rome in the early 1980s remember when Msgr Magee gave a talk entitled
My Life with Three Popes.
He recalled how he had
originally been summoned by Paul VI because of his missionary knowledge.
Years later, in an interview with John Allen of the
National Catholic Reporter , he conceded just how important
Paul VI had been to him.
“He was the first person in whom I could truly
identify the person of Jesus Christ on earth today. He was so kind, so
gentle, so giving of himself. He influenced my life in the most
extraordinary way.”
He especially recalled the death of Paul VI
and the atmosphere in the papal household then, and how he had had a
very strong sense of the pope going home to God.
Msgr Magee was
something of a distant figure for the students, someone whose dealings
with the college were limited to occasionally organising for newly
ordained students to celebrate Mass with the pope.
While the above
description might suggest that Msgr Magee was some sort of
well-meaning, endearing but harmless old uncle, that would be a mistake.
In the hothouse atmosphere of the Holy See, there is little space for
“endearing, harmless old uncles”, while they certainly do not end up
playing a key role in the papal household.
Msgr Magee figured
prominently in one of the most notorious “white lies” propagated by the
Vatican when, in 1978, he claimed that he had been the first person to
find the body of Pope John Paul I.
In reality, it had been a nun in the papal household, Sister Vicenza, who had first discovered the body.
Having
loyally stuck by his story for some years, on the orders of then
secretary of state Cardinal Jean Villot, Msgr Magee then cheerfully
changed it, admitting that he had not been the first to find John Paul
I.