The Pope and a Communist Dictator

"Should we be surprised today that Liberation Theology and its leading figures, along with controversial ideas associated with Pachamama, have become influential within the Vatican?"

From One Peter Five

By Robert Lazu Kmita, PhD

Why can’t Nicolae Ceaușescu invite the Pope to Bucharest?

A Romanian joke from the time of the Communist dictatorship went like this:

Question: Why can’t Nicolae Ceaușescu invite the Pope to Bucharest?

Answer: Because the people greeting the guest upon his arrival would have to shout: “Ceaușescu, Papa!”

For those who do not know Romanian, the joke makes no sense. For Romanians, however, it carried bitter implications. The Romanian word “papa”—almost identical to “papă” (pope)—is a synonym for food used by parents when speaking to their children. When a mother asks her child, “Vrei papa?” (“Do you want pope?”), she is actually asking affectionately, “Do you want food?” Because of the similarity between the two words, if people had shouted “Ceaușescu, Papa!” upon the arrival of Pope Paul VI, the slogan could also have been interpreted as “Ceaușescu, (we want) food!”

The tragic reality of Romania in those days was that it was a country where not only freedom had become a memory, but even the most basic goods—above all food—were scarce. The empty shelves of Communist stores stood as a silent testimony to the results of a planned economy and the near-total abolition of private property. This explains the dark humor—the one thing Romanians never lacked—behind jokes such as the one mentioned above.

Actually this joke is connected to the meeting between Pope Paul VI and the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. Held on May 26, 1973, the discussion between the two heads of state had specific objectives. Grandiose and arrogant, like any dictator, Ceaușescu sought to strengthen his image as a great Communist leader, one capable of standing up to the Soviet Union when Russian tanks were expected to cross Romanian territory on their way to suppress the Prague Spring in 1968. Pope Paul VI was interested in the fate of the Greek Catholic Church (of the Byzantine rite), which had been abolished by the Communists in cooperation with the national Orthodox Church in 1948.

During their conversation, the Holy Father raised this delicate issue, following the Vatican’s controversial Ostpolitik. Ceaușescu’s response came as a cold shower for one of those popes who believed it was possible to negotiate with Mephistopheles:

Regarding the issue to which you referred specifically, however, I would like to declare that we consider it completely resolved. Romania’s history has been very turbulent, and it would be difficult for me to discuss it now. The struggle for national unity played an important role for centuries. The union of the two churches within the Orthodox Church we regard as a historical necessity, a necessity of national unity. And I must tell you frankly that in Romania no one discusses this issue anymore, nor wishes to discuss it.

The dictator, a slave to one of the most harmful ideologies of the modern world—nationalism—viewed churches merely as extensions of his political program. This is entirely possible in Eastern Christianity, where Orthodox churches are organized strictly along national lines and ethnic identities. Defined in strictly nationalist terms, all these Byzantine-rite Christian communities have been continually drawn into the turbulence of conflicts between the nations they represent.

Like all his predecessors, Communist or otherwise, Ceaușescu faithfully followed the guiding principles of an ultra-nationalist agenda that glorified the greatness of the Romanian people and their uninterrupted continuity from the time of the Dacians and Romans. The same perspective was behind his answer to Pope Paul VI: yes, we recognize fourteen denominations, but only on condition of strict subordination to nationalist principles. Since the Greek Catholics had allegedly betrayed this ideal by deliberately placing themselves under another head of state—the Pope—rather than under the authority of their own nation, they had no right to exist. The “national unity” invoked by Ceaușescu excluded any alternative.

A subtler but crucial point must also be emphasized: the underlying Marxist-Leninist idea that accompanied Ceaușescu’s nationalism was the strict subordination of religion to ideology. No characteristic is more representative of the Communist spirit. According to the directives of the one-party state, religion was to be destroyed when it refused to cooperate. If religious leaders obediently followed party directives, however, religion would be manipulated, controlled, and used to perpetuate the ideals of the Bolshevik pseudo-religion.

Personally, I believe that when the Blessed Virgin Mary referred at Fatima to the errors of Communist Russia, this is exactly what she meant: the manipulation of the Christian religion by an atheistic pseudo-religion. Those who experienced Communism from within understood this perfectly. Yet no one expressed it better than the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. In The Captive Mind, he describes those Catholics who sought to reconcile Christian faith with Marxist-Leninist ideology. Called “patriot Christians” by the Communist party, they retained only the outward appearance of faith while emptying its words of their meaning. Having themselves become specters, their words were merely counterfeit copies of eternal truths.

The Party was pleased with such servants. Yet the Party also looked jealously upon the universality of the Catholic Church, which it wished to replace. At this point Miłosz explains—or perhaps prophesies—what would be the Party’s greatest achievement:

Without doubt, the greatest success of the Imperium would come if it could install a Party-line pope in the Vatican. A mass in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome performed by such a pope, with the assistance of dignitaries from those subjugated countries which are predominately Catholic, would be one of the most important steps toward the consolidation of the world empire.

As faithful Catholics, we may be shaken by such words. Yet even more troubling is the fact that despite direct supernatural requests—at Fátima and later at the convent of Tuy, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Sister Lucia in 1929—five successive popes refused to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Should we be surprised today that Liberation Theology and its leading figures, along with controversial ideas associated with Pachamama, have become influential within the Vatican?