VINCENZO PAGLIA is a busy man.<\/p>\n
Along with juggling two big Vatican\u00a0jobs, he is the postulator for the cause of the canonisation of Oscar Romero (as well, incidentally, as the cause for the beatification of the Cuban priest, F\u00e9lix Varela). As we sit in his office, I realise that the sound of church bells is not coming from the nearby Basilica of St John Lateran; it is the ringtone of his smartphone. There is a constant bustle of people putting their heads round the door, hoping to catch him. The
\ndiminutive, Tigger-like archbishop revels in the mild chaos of juggling these balls; he\u2019s energetic and friendly, but, underneath, there is steely determination.
\nArchbishop Paglia, who turns 73 next Saturday, was born in Frosinone, a town 50 miles south east of Rome. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rome and, as a student, was a co-founder of the community of Sant\u2019Egidio 50 years ago. One of the most dynamic of the new movements in the Church, Sant\u2019Egidio serves some of the most forgotten groups on the edges of society, and has played a key peacebuilding role in several conflict areas. It strives to apply the Gospel to everyday situations in a way that is almost a perfect\u00a0embodiment of the message of Pope Francis.<\/p>\n
It was Benedict XVI who appointed Paglia to his first major Vatican post, in 2012, as president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, which was merged into the new laity, family and life dicastery under the reforms of Pope Francis. In August 2016 Francis beefed up Paglia\u2019s position, appointing him both president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and chancellor of the new John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. Its remit is to help implement Francis\u2019 family life document, Amoris Laetitia, and to remind the world that being \u201cpro-life\u201d means more than merely re-stating the Church\u2019s opposition to abortion and contraception.<\/p>\n
When we meet at the institute, which is housed in the Lateran University, Romero is top of the agenda. Paglia is buoyed by the news that the martyred former Archbishop of San Salvador is finally going to be declared a saint. As I sit down, he plucks at the pectoral cross he is wearing; it was once Romero\u2019s, he tells me. The confirmation of the canonisation is a vindication for Paglia, who for years has led the cause in spite of opposition in some powerful quarters in the Vatican. Doubts were raised about whether the archbishop was killed out \u201cof hatred for the faith\u201d, the necessary requirement for someone to be declared a martyr; it was suggested he was targeted only because of his outspoken protests against the authoritarian regime in El Salvador.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opposition was purely political, and about ecclesiastical politics,\u201d Paglia explains. \u201cThere were the bishops of the country; there were the cardinals of the Roman Curia \u2013 many personalities against Romero\u2019s stance in the defence of his people. The opposers believed that Romero was an exponent of a left-wing\u00a0church, of a [type of] liberation theology \u2013 something totally false. However, I can understand them in so far as the fact that Romero had also been used by a certain political leftwing as a sort of flag.\u201d<\/p>\n
BUT, PAGLIA EXPLAINS, \u201cGod writes straight with crooked lines\u201d and the \u201cincredible\u201d and \u201cillogical\u201d opposition melted away with the first Latin American pope, who unblocked the cause soon after his election. He also points
\nout that during his 1983 visit to El Salvador John Paul II made a point of visiting Romero\u2019s tomb, stressing that \u201cRomero is ours\u201d.<\/p>\n
Paglia argues that Romero is a \u201cmartyr for the Second Vatican Council\u201d, who paid the ultimate price for living out the Gospel in service to the poorest in society. The community of Sant\u2019Egidio has regarded Romero as a saint for several years. His missal is included in their memorial to the martyrs of the 20th\u00a0and 21st centuries in the church of San Bartolomeo on Rome\u2019s Tiber Island.
\n\u201cI always kept my conviction that Romero was killed out of a hatred of a Church that the Second Vatican Council envisioned,\u201d he explains. \u201cA Church that gives itself completely to help all men and women, starting with the poor. This is what he was a witness to.\u201d And, in keeping with the inclusive and\u00a0ecumenical spirit that infused the council, he adds that Romero will be a saint for all Christians and for a globalised world; a figure who expresses what it means to have faith today.<\/p>\n
The archbishop expects the Pope to canonise Romero, along with Pope Paul VI, in October, during the synod of bishops.\u00a0He regards both figures \u2013 Romero as prophet and Paul VI as reformer \u2013 as guiding lights\u00a0for the contemporary Church.<\/p>\n
He reminds me that Romero met Paul VI in Rome soon\u00a0after the murder in 1977 of his friend, the\u00a0Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, who is now also on the way to sainthood. The murder had been the decisive moment for Romero, turning him from acautious and hesitant leader into a courageous and radical critic of the brutal Salvadorean government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the meeting they had, Romero showed Paul VI pictures of the priest\u2019s killing,\u201d Paglia explains. \u201cPaul VI saw them, he blessed them, and told Romero, \u2018You are the archbishop, you are responsible for your people. Guide them until the end.\u2019 And, I know through witnesses and close collaborators of Romero,\u00a0that these words gave him an incomparable strength and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
PAUL VI is remembered for shepherding the Second Vatican Council through to completion, for overdue reforms to the Curia, and for his commitment to collegial governance of the Church through the synod of bishops.<\/p>\n
As his words to Romero show, he urged local bishops to be leaders of their flocks; Basil Hume recalled how vital Pope Paul\u2019s personal words of encouragement had been when he was feeling anxious about taking up the reins\u00a0as Archbishop of Westminster.<\/p>\n
But Paul VI\u2019s legacy also includes Humanae Vitae<\/em>, which reaffirmed the Church\u2019s ban on artificial contraception; his canonisation will take place almost exactly 50 years since it was released. Paglia believes it is now time for the\u00a0document to be \u201cre-read\u201d in the context of contemporary issues such as surrogacy, genetic modification and the ability of scientists to create new life in laboratories.<\/p>\n Paul VI\u2019s encyclical insisted on the dual role of sex as both bringing a couple closer together \u2013 its \u201cunitive\u201d aspect \u2013 and making it open to new life, the procreative. \u201c[He] intuited, in a clear way, that to divide sexuality from generating [new life] would lead to a serious problem. Because in this division,\u00a0conjugal love would become closed in on itself.\u00a0It risked losing its responsibly of generating [life],\u201d Paglia explains.<\/p>\n Yet Paglia wants to move the debate about Humanae Vitae <\/em>away from a narrow discussion about whether or not the use of contraception might be morally permissable for married couples planning a family. \u201cWe have to widen the horizon,\u201d he says. \u201cI believe that Paul VI identified a way. Of course, he spoke about contraception, but I believe that today this has become secondary.\u00a0There are larger horizons that we have to strive towards.\u201d<\/p>\n SENIOR CARDINALS and both Benedict XVI and Francis have said there are circumstances in which the use of contraceptives is morally licit \u2013 namely, when they are used to prevent the spread of disease. Paglia is concerned to\u00a0find a new \u201calliance\u201d or \u201cunion\u201d between men and women \u201cif we want to avoid surrogacy, the creation of life in laboratories, or to genetically modify life\u201d. A new understanding of the union between man and woman, he argues, will help bring a deeper understanding of human relations, tackle inequality and bring a \u201chumanisation\u201d of technology. This ambitious vision is what he is bringing.\u00a0For more features, news, analysis and comment, visit to the Academy of Life, which he has already revamped with the introduction of new members,\u00a0including non-Catholics. As a result he has faced criticism, particularly from those who want the academy to be narrowly focussed on abortion and contraception, and to become an antagonist in the culture wars.<\/p>\n But Paglia insists that \u201ctoday, we know that if we want to be really pro-life we have to be completely pro-life: pro entire <\/em>life.\u201d It was right, he says, that in its early years the academy\u2019s focus was on abortion. But now, he goes on, \u201cOur theme is not the search of the enemy, it\u2019s the opposite. Our aim is finding allies to then think together about new horizons that make humanity as a whole truly human.\u201d<\/p>\n Our interview took place just before Francis issued Gaudete et Exsultate<\/em>, his apostolic exhortation on holiness, in which he is passionate in his defence of the unborn while urging Catholics not to forget that the lives of migrants and the poor are \u201cequally sacred\u201d.\u00a0The point could equally well have been made by the archbishop.<\/p>\n We are almost at the end of our interview, and I haven\u2019t yet asked him about his role as chancellor of the John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family. As with the academy, Paglia is trying to broaden the vision of the institute, to move it away from just re-stating Church doctrine and to ensure that the Gospel,\u00a0as he puts it, can \u201cincarnate itself in the pastoral lives of families\u201d.<\/p>\n While the institute carries the Polish Pope\u2019s name, it is focussed on implementing Amoris Laetitia<\/em>. Critics say this breaks with tradition by opening a pathway for some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.\u00a0\u201cI think that Amoris Laetitia <\/em>has to be read in its totality,\u201d Paglia says. \u201cTo merely focus on a footnote means that you haven\u2019t understood anything.\u201d<\/p>\n PAGLIA ARGUES that it was John Paul II who took the initial step towards bringing divorced and remarried Catholics in from the cold. And when it comes to them receiving Communion it might not be a straight \u201cNo\u201d, but neither is it a \u201cYes\u201d in all circumstances.\u00a0Speaking of Catholic couples who find themselves in difficult circumstances,\u00a0he says: \u201cDo we want them to always stay in the basement or the attic? We have to work on this. But the true revolution, the real force of Amoris Laetitia<\/em>, is the call for the Church to be itself a family. To assume a new ecclesial form: an ecclesia familia dei <\/em>[a Church of the Family], not a functional and institutional Church.\u201d<\/p>\n Vincenzo Paglia is a man primarily motivated by his heart, while his head helps him navigate the chicaneries of curial bureaucracy.\u00a0It\u2019s hard not to be reminded of the way Pope Francis operates. And it is not surprising that this energetic archbishop has become one of Francis\u2019 key allies in the Roman Curia.<\/p>\n