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Home , Ecclesiam suam, Pope Paul VI

CHAPTER SIX

A DECADE OF CRISIS

1. Dialogue as Leitmotiv

Like that of John XXIII, the pontificate of Paul VI was completely domi- nated by the council. But Paul’s was somehow fundamentally different, not in the least because his pontificate had the delicate and complex task of implementing the council. The entire first decade of implementation of the conciliar decisions fell under the authority of the thoughtful figure who was Paul VI. In church history it is dangerous to make early and strong judgments. There are however some important elements, important signs, central to the post-conciliar period. Following upon the pages on the two “conciliar ” of Vatican II, this section of our presentation on the postconciliar pontificate of Paul VI shows church history and historical theology sliding into each other. We first of all delineate some significant historical and political elements; and then focus on the theological developments in the late and the .

1.1. Church and Society In , still during Vatican II, Pope Paul VI promulgated the first of his eight . It was at once his most programmatic , entitled .1 The key word in this encyclical would be the key word throughout his pontificate: dialogue. The pope, in his first encycli- cal, stressed dialogue both in the direction of intra-religious dialogue, and dialogue with the outside world. Here we will concentrate on the second aspect, because dialogue with the outside world typified the development of the Roman Church in this period as a whole. The openness to the outside world that the council had adopted took a variety of forms in the post-conciliar period. It was strikingly apparent in Pope Paul’s becom- ing the first traveling Pope, a tradition that his successors would continue, but until then was basically unseen.

1 Paul VI, ‘Ecclesiam suam (, 1964),’ AAS 56 (1964), 609–59. 164 chapter six

The list of Pope Paul VI’s pastoral visits outside details the travels of the first pope to leave Italy since 1809. He was the first to visit the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Asia during his pontificate. He visited six continents, and was the most travelled pope in history up to that time, earning the nickname “the Pilgrim Pope.” With his travels he opened new avenues for the papacy, which were continued by his successors, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. He traveled to Jordan and the in 1964 where he met with the Ecumenical Athenagoras2 in , which led to rescinding the of the 1054 Great Schism on , 1965—the next to last day of Vatican II.3 Paul VI traveled as well to the Eucharistic Congresses in Bombay, India and Bogotá, Colombia. During the first papal visit to the United States in , he met with President Lyndon B. Johnson and addressed the United Nations in New York. Fifty years after the first apparition at Fátima, in , he visited the shrine in Fátima, in 1967. He undertook a pastoral visit to Africa in 1969. In 1970 he travelled to several Asian and Pacific nations: Iran, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the Philippines, Samoa (stopover in ), Samoa, Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Ceylon. The pope’s last international trip took him to nine countries. He met several heads of state including Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, President of the Philippines, the O le Ao o le Malo of Samoa Malietoa Tanumafili II, Governor-General Paul Hasluck of Australia, and President Suharto of Indonesia. On November 27, 1970 the pope was the target of an assassination attempt at Manila International Airport in the Philippines. A striking point in this whole dialogue and travel program was that of the ecclesiastical . In particular, with regards to the smoothening of relations between Rome and the regimes behind the Iron Curtain that had already begun under John XXIII, Paul VI continued the political line set out by his predecessor, as the older course that had been charted by Pope Pius XI

2 Valeria Martano, Athenagoras il patriarca, 1886–1972: Un cristiano fra crisi della coabi- tazione e utopia ecumenica [TRSR: N.S. 17] (, 1996). 3 Tomos Agapès: Vatican—Phanar, 1958–1970 (Rome & Istanbul, 1970), n° 127. Also see the collection of documents edited by Edward J. Stormon, Towards the healing of schism: The Sees of Rome and Constantinople: Public Statements and Correspondence between the and the Ecumenical , 1958–1984 [Ecumenical Documents 3] (New York, 1987). On the importance and the aftermath of this decision for Catholic-Orthodox rela- tionships, see Karim Schelkens, ‘Envisager la concélébration entre catholiques et ortho- doxes?’ Istina 57 (2012), 253–77.