Cardinal Hume dies at age 76

Christian Century, July 14, 1999

Basil Hume, who died of cancer in hospital on June 17 at the age of 76, never wanted to lead the Catholic Church in England and Wales--and he certainly had no designs on the papacy, though he was often talked about as "papabile." A diffident Benedictine priest who would have been happy to spend his life at his beloved Ampleforth Abbey in north Yorkshire, he was the surprise choice in 1976 to take over from the pugnacious John Heenan as cardinal archbishop of Westminster.

Despite his initial misgivings and a charming awkwardness at the announcement of his elevation, Hume went on to win a national and international reputation among bishops, politicians and believers of all denominations as a wise, compassionate and pragmatic man of God.

His appointment to Westminster was a moment of genius by the Vatican. As abbot of Ampleforth he had made a mark in church circles as a thinker, but he was virtually unknown in the outside world. Yet his humility, his charisma, his patent absence of any personal ambition and, most of all, his air of one who walked in God's shadow quickly won him a place in English hearts.

In a country where Catholics were excluded from public life until 1834 and where in the 1950s and 1960s cities like Liverpool still suffered a sectarian divide as bitter as Belfast's, Hume personified the final healing of the wounds of King Henry VIII's Reformation. Some came to regard him, rather than successive controversial Anglican archbishops of Canterbury, as the spiritual leader of the nation.

In Britain, Hume spearheaded the successful campaign against a series of miscarriages of justice that had seen innocent Irish men and women jailed for terrorist crimes. On homelessness, schools and the status of refugees, he used his influence discreetly but effectively to persuade a series of government ministers to take the edge off what he regarded as unduly harsh policies. It was only when politicians failed to respond to his behind-the-scenes cajoling that he took the fight to public platforms.

On the international stage, the cardinal was among the first to visit Ethiopia during the 1985 famine and lobbied European governments and the European Community to increase aid. In 1993 it was his personal intervention that persuaded the Thai government to release a young British woman convicted of drug smuggling. And in the worldwide Roman Catholic Church he developed a formidable reputation, principally through his role throughout the 1980s as chairman of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences.

Hume's relationship with Pope John Paul II was cordial but never relaxed. Many Vatican officials were suspicious of Hume because they were never quite sure where he stood. He often avoided preaching on questions of sexual morality, saying that it was an area where he had little experience and therefore limited understanding. He imposed constraints in Britain on the activities of Opus Dei, one of John Paul II's favorite church organizations. Though the cardinal spoke out against abortion, he successfully resisted attempts in Britain to make it the keystone of Catholic orthodoxy.

However, Hume was given ample support by Rome in what was perhaps his greatest achievement, the sensitive handling of a potentially explosive issue in the number of Anglican defectors to Rome in the wake of the decision by the Church of England's General Synod to ordain women priests in 1993. While some Catholic commentators heralded the procession of cabinet ministers, national newspaper editors and even junior royals coming over to Rome as the dawn of the reconversion of England, Hume dismissed such talk as misplaced triumphalism. His low-key, pastoral approach enabled him to accept several hundred former Anglican clergymen, some of them along with their parishes, into the Roman Catholic Church without precipitating the breakdown of ecumenical relations with the Church of England.--ENI