Charity is easy in the Eternal City; so is speculating, fervor for pope

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 11, 1996 by Patricia Lefevere

ROME--Peter, my Australian neighbor, laughs as he stretches himself out of my bedroom window to check the view. "Half a Vatican is better than no Vatican," he notes, taking in that demi-portion of St. Peter's dome that my corner window allots.

Tired pilgrim souls from Sydney, he and his wife, Loraine have just arrived. But their luggage is still in London or on its way there. Loraine leaves with my spare nightdress, a blouse and underwear. Peter helps himself to my extra blanket.

It's easy to be charitable in Rome. The sisters of St. Dorothy, at whose convent we are staying, embrace the task of hospitality as if it were a vow, even though their ministry is teaching.

With no English, they ask me--I have barely enough Italian to reheat pizza--if I will request that the Sydney pair change rooms since it has been reserved for a retired bishop and his vicar who are arriving later. "Right o," oblige the Australians, exchanging a partial view of Victor Emmanuel's monument for a beige wall with potted geraniums.

If charity abides in the Eternal City, so does the hierarchy. So much so that the hierarchy is planning a world congress on charity, and Pope John Paul II has decided to declare 1999 the Year of Charity. On Oct. 19 experts will meet here in to consider how to mark the year.

The last year of this millennium "is intended to be a time when "people should focus on good things and on hope. It's a time to emphasize the positive" in the church, said Msgr. Karel Kasteel, undersecretary of Cor Unum, the Pontifical Council for Human and Christian Development. "There's not a parish or diocese in the church that isn't doing a lot of good," the Dutch priest said.

A year of charity is also a good way into the next millennium--the longed-for capstone of this pontiff. It may also be the year in which synods are held for the churches of America, Asia, Oceania and Europe as the pope believes that such meetings--like the previous African Synod--will better prepare the whole church to celebrate the Jubilee Year 2000.

The synod office here--headed by Belgian Cardinal Jan P. Schotte and a staff of 10-has requested that responses to the pope's chosen topic for the Synod of Bishops for America be in to the Vatican by next April 1.

The synod's working theme is "Encounter with the Living Jesus Christ the Way to Conversion, Communion and Solidarity in America."

Reactions are being sought from the prelates of North and Latin America and the Caribbean, from the Roman curia and the Union of Superior Generals.

Priests, religious, laity, seminarians, theologians and representatives of Catholic movements, organizations and parishes have also been invited to respond.

John Paul has proposed three major goals for the synod: He desires to foster a new evangelization up and down the Americas as an expression of episcopal communion; he longs for enhanced solidarity among the continent's various churches in different fields of pastoral endeavor and he wants to focus on the problems of justice, peace and the global economic relations among states, which display enormous imbalances toward one another.

Can such an order be executed before the century's end and is it the right theme and agenda for a continent of churches, which is really two continents-one the richest and most secular in the world, the other containing the largest number of Catholics of any region?

Technologically Rome can pull it off, noted one Vatican insider, who lamented how difficult the 1994 African Synod was, as much of its preparation occurred in the pre-Internet Dark Ages. With fax, modem and E-mail, Rome now can quickly receive, edit, print and exchange information, the insider noted.

Can a synod happen by century's end? It may be difficult, Kasteel thought, given the need for consultation across all levels. "Let the people prepare themselves," he advised. "These things shouldn't be rushed. The better prepared, the better the result."

Still, what many here feel is being rushed is the demise of John Paul himself. "You journalists would like to see him dead. That's why you're all here," insisted one exhausted Vatican press hand. Not true, I silently protested. But then I don't have to deal with the mob of reporters expected here to cover the pope's appendectomy, scheduled for Oct. 9.

After all, how serious can his health problems be if his doctors have known of his intestinal flare ups since last Christmas, but have waited for a time convenient to John Paul to operate? How many other 76-year-olds have withstood five surgeries in 15 years--three of them since 1992--while voyaging the length and breath of Christendom and writing enough encyclicals, apostolic letters and theological reflections to wallpaper the four-room hospital suite he is expected to occupy for a week in Rome's Policlinico Gemelli?

In recent months, the pope has taken to dictating his pronouncements and thoughts into a recorder for transcription into the laptop of his Polish assistant. The change from writing in longhand has been necessitated by his worsening nerve disorder, which causes his hands to shake.