Who will be the next Pope in Rome?

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap visited our small farm in Cavite Saturday noon, then we accompanied him on our van to visit nearby Amadeo, also near Tagaytay where we were met by Mayor Albert "OJ" G. Ambagan Jr., and other municipal officials and local coffee growers.

Amadeo calls itself the "Coffee Town of the Philippines," and is striving to rebuild our coffee industry, but we’re still far short of Vietnam which boasts such a booming coffee bean production – producing such a delicious brew (my wife and I can testify from having lived there – that we find ourselves importing 30,000 metric tons of coffee from Vietnam per year.

Secretary Yap, who used to head the National Food Administration (NFA) finds this an awful and embarrassing situation, when, many decades ago, Batangas and, in a lesser manner Cavite, used to wax rich on exporting coffee. Until a blight, of course, in pre-war days devastated Batangas province’s great plantations many of them in the Lipa area.

Importing coffee from Vietnam costs us P1.5 billion annually, Yap points out. He sees no reason why we cannot become self-sufficient in coffee, or at least match the Vietnamese by producing coffee varieties they haven’t mastered.

"For instance," Arthur told this writer, "if the Vietnamese cannot be beaten in robusta bean production why should we try to compete with them in that type? We can concentrate on arabica instead." Coffee-drinking is on the rise. We must learn to cope with the growing demand. Secretary Yap offered us a lift back to Ortigas center on his government-owned Agusta helicopter, one of those old choppers bought during the Marcos-time from the same firm which sold the Philippine Air Force its defective S-211 jet trainers that have been crashing disastrously taking the lives of some of our best young pilots. The helicopter, while definitely the worse for wear (and tear) still flew quite well and brought us back in thirty minutes, in contrast to the two-hour drive by land vehicle we might have had to make.

It’s ridiculous in this light that some of our hidebound government bureaucrats, for instance those nitpickers in the Commission on Audit (COA) have been unjustly harassing former Agriculture Secretary Luis "Cito" Lorenzo Jr. on his helicopter and aircraft maintenance expenses while in the DA. Do they think it anomalous for Cabinet members to utilize helicopters and aircraft in their work? Going by air cuts down on travel time, improves efficiency, and makes our executive branch officials more "mobile," thus enabling them to oversee more projects in the same day. Sanamagan, the era of the calesa, the carabao sled, and, Sus, the decrepit 55-year old jeepney ought to be long over. Now, by gosh, we’re even bringing back the tricycle and pedicab! All under the lame excuse of hanap buhay – kuno.

It’s time we moved forward to join the modern world. The only individuals who’re "fast" in this benighted country are the crooks, swindlers, embezzlers, and hackers. And the terrorists and assassins. In their case, the hand is quicker than the eye.

* * *

Philippine National Police Director General and Police Chief Arturo C. Lomibao is flying down to Pagadian tomorrow to pursue reports of rampant illegal drugs smuggling in the Zamboanga peninsula area. Why not look at Ozamiz, too, the HQ of the Kuratong Baleleng?

In the meantime, Task Force Parliament organized by Lomibao with Deputy Director General Reynaldo V. Velasco in charge, has fielded 10,000 police personnel to directly provide security to the 1,500 or more delegates to the ongoing 112th Assembly of the Interparliamentary Union which concludes on April 8, next Friday. I don’t know if all the 145 countries in the IPU list are represented, but we all hope their visit here will be both fruitful and personally rewarding for each of them. The usual critics will grouse that our government ought not to be splurging on "hospitality" in these deficit-ridden times, but those friends of ours from overseas are here on our government’s invitation, and it’s not only our duty but our pleasure to do our best to make them feel welcome among our people.

Even Jesus, after all, told His disciples, "the poor you will always have with you…" True, our people and our country are mired in poverty – too many babies, too little progress. But we always overcome. And we’ll do so now.

The tragedies I’ve seen, the misery I’ve encountered, not just here but on other lands – if I could only recount what my eyes have seen in my lengthy career as a journalist. Despite my customary verbosity, words fail me in this. Yet, for all our vicissitudes, disappointments and frustrations, there’s still the unfailing Filipino smile.

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And so a saintly Pontiff, Pope John Paul II, has finally gone to heaven. There has been a torrent of non-stop praise for him and his vigorous, controversial Papacy, on the airwaves and in the print media. It will be long before debate reemerges over his more stubborn and conservative views, because he was a great, dynamic, prayerful and wonderful man.

What will follow now is the election of a new Pope. The "Conclave" of Cardinals, some 117 of them, will meet 15 to 20 days after the Holy Father’s demise. (Cardinals who are 80 years old and over are no longer allowed to "vote").

I’ve read a number of books on the election of Popes, and other volumes not so complimentary of the Papacy, but I believe the best explanatory volume is that of Michael Walsh, a prominent Catholic author and historian, a former Jesuit. Walsh is the archivist for the Heythrop College of London University and writes a column for the international Catholic publication, The Tablet.

In his book, The Conclave subtitled, A Sometimes Secret and Occasionally Bloody History of Papal Elections, (Sheed & Ward, London, Chicago, New York, Toronto, Oxford, 2003), Walsh has a final chapter captioned, How to Spot a Pope.

Unlike in previous Papal elections, when Cardinals summoned to Rome to elect a new Pontiff hardly knew each other, Walsh observes, this time the members of the College of Cardinals, thanks to John Paull II having frequently called general meetings of the men who wore Red Hats during his reign, are more or less well acquainted with one another.

"There are over fifty countries that boast at least one cardinal," the author records. "The largest number from a single country is still Italy, but the United States is running it close. The continent with the largest number is still Europe, but again, the Americans both North and South look to be catching up."

The Philippines has three Cardinals.

Will the Conclave choose a new Pope quickly? Will it be a non-Italian again, following our late Polish Pope, formerly Karol Wojtyla of Krakow? Or will the Italians, who exclusively held it for 450 years, "recapture" the Papacy? We must recall that before Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Krakow (also spelled Cracow) was elected on the eighth ballot on October 16, 1978, it seemed that an Italian, Cardinal Benelli, might be anointed. Other early contenders were Cardinal Siri, and two non-Italians, the archbishops of Karachi in Pakistan and Fortaleza in Brazil.

Who can tell whom the Holy Spirit – or the spirit of Vatican "politics" selects?

It will sound sacrilegious to make the latter observation. Yet, those who have studied the history of the Papacy, from the time of St. Peter, cannot deny the facts of life.

Walsh himself leads off with the following quotation from Jeffrey Richards’ book, "The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages." The historian Richards, it must be noted, referred to the "shenanigans of papal history between the end of the fifth century and the middle of the eighth. Later history is no less suspicious and at times disillusioning.

Wrote Richards: "Nowhere is the blend of political, religious and social elements more apparent than in the papal elections. In their intensity and passion, they matched, and in some cases even surpassed, the turbulence surrounding imperial elections. Many papal elections involved violence, chicanery and corruption on a grand scale. Blood ran in the streets of Rome, gold changed hands in the corridors of power, rival factions pumped out propaganda and ambitious men caballed around the deathbeds of the popes. The high passions and low intrigues that this involved have a familiar, almost contemporary ring. The fire and spice of those times comes through to us in the surviving documents of the period. This is the raw red meat of papal history, this is not the desiccated, pre-packed portions often served up in the guise of papal history."

The Vatican’s defenders at times attempt to dismiss such tomes as tracts penned by disciples of the anti-Christ or whatever Demon, but history is inexorable.

"Pope," as writers remind us, simply means "father" – derived from the Greek "papas" and in Greece "papas" is still invoked to address parish priests. In choosing a Pope, a Papal decree of 1059 restricted voting rights to "cardinal bishops."

It was Gregory X who called a general council of the Church in Lyons, France, on May 7, 1274, and the resulting decree was published on November 1, 1274, a long document, entitled Urbi periculum ("Where there is danger"). The "danger" lay in having a long vacancy in the Papacy. This decree provided for the Cardinals to be virtually locked up until they "produced" a Pope, virtually restricting them to only one dish at lunch and supper, then "only bread, wine and water" if five days had elapsed without their electing a new Pontiff.

Gregory’s successor, however, did not last long. After Pope Gregory died at Arezzo on January 10, 1276, the "Conclave" elected, after 11 days, on first ballot, the French cardinal Pierre of Tarentaise. He took the name Innocent V, but he was Pope only for just half a year. He died after only six months on June 22, 1276. This time, the Conclave met in Rome and elected Ottobono Fieschi – under pressure by the ruler, Charles of Anjou, a senator of the city – and the new Pope took the title of Hadrian V. His pontificate, though, lasted just over a month, only a week or so longer than it had taken to elect him!

What complicated matters was that Hadrian V had died in the summer palace of Viterbo, only some miles away where he had gone to escape the oppressive heat of Roman summer – so, under the rules, the Conclave would now be held in Viterbo.

The Cardinals chose Cardinal Peter of Spain (he came, in fact, from Lisbon, Portugal). Peter chose the title, John XXI although, Walsh pointed out, "there had never been a John XX." The new Holy Father, a medical researcher, was determined to continue his research, and built a study behind his papal palace in Viterbo. Like the Marcos-time Film Center, designed by Imelda, it had been built in a hurry. The roof fell in on Pope John XXI’s head, and he died a few days after the accident. He had been Pope only nine months.

Becoming Pope is, indeed, not a guarantee of long life.

The most bizarre example of this we experienced in modern times. After Pope Paul VI died in the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo in August 1978, the Conclave elected the Patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani, 65. He chose the title of John Paul. He had been elected on the fourth ballot, in the shortest Conclave on record.

It was also a short papacy. As Walsh puts it: "Thirty-three days later he was dead of a heart attack. The Vatican handled the news so badly (they thought it improper that the pope’s corpse should have been discovered by a nun and tried to disguise this fact) that conspiracy theories became commonplace . . ."

Was Pope John Paul murdered, or did he succumb to a heart attack? The suspicion lingers, but Walsh dismisses this idea.

I can’t tell you who will be the next Pope – nobody can. But, at least, you now have some idea of how he will be chosen.