Washington Post 2. X. 1978
VATICAN CITY (UPI)-In the evening, alone among the splendors he never sought, Pope John Paul I often turned to the telephone as solace for his isolation.
The picture that emerges from John Paul’s brief reign is that of a man frequently lonely and frustrated by the workings of the Curia, the Vatican’s unwieldy bureaucracy.
This leads to the question of whether the conclave to choose his successor will not be looking for someone with some experience of handling the Curia.
Church sources said John Paul frequently was on the telephone in search of the simple human contacts he missed from his days as the cardinal-patriarch of Venice.
On one occasion, he called a surprised seminarian who had written to him in Venice, long before he became pope, to thank him for the letter and apologize for not replying sooner.
He called the mothers superior of at least two religious orders, priests and bishops, often remaining on the line to chat a while.
The church sources said the Pope’s most regular telephone confidant was Cardinal Pericle Felici, a Latinist; wit, jurist and conservative.
They said the pope called the cardinal 10 or 12 times during his reign.
«Felici gave the pope friendly advice and made him laugh,» one priest said.
Only a couple of hours before he died, the pope called Cardinal Giovanni Colombo of Milan to ask about a literary reference, the source added.
The church sources said that, the pope dialed his own calls and answered his own letters. The Rev. Pedro Arrupe, superior of the Jesuits, wrote the pope and got a handwritten answer back within four days, according to one of his assistants.
One Vatican official said this informality was resented by many in the Curia, who wanted the pope to work through bureaucratic channels’ as did his predecessor, Paul VI.
Curia interference also was seen in the censorship of some of John Paul’s speeches and the use of the regal «we» in official texts. The pope always used the first person «I.»
John Paul inherited the bureaucracy intact and immediately confirmed all heads of department in office. He was regularly briefed by Vatican Secretary of State Jean Villot, but otherwise he knew little about the Curia beyond what he read in the Vatican yearbook.
According to one senior official, the pope felt frustrated by the complexity of the bureaucracy and the problems he had to face.
