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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 2, 1984
HURRIYET said. However,� crucial two-minute sequence had�
clipped from the film recording Mr. Agca's answer to the pope s
question
11
Who was the one that wanted� destroyed? Who sent you
to St. Peter's Square?" In an earlier sequence, the pope re
marked "I believe what you have told me so far, but how did you do
it? I want to know for myself." Agca's answer was lost because
his lips were behind the pope's ear during the whispered
conversation.
Shades of Watergate. That "lost two minutes" reminds one of the "missing
eighteen minutes" of one of President Nixon's tapes.
On another front regarding the Vatican, it has now been made official:
Under terms of a new concordat with the Italian government, Roman Catholi
cism is� lon % er to be the state religion of Italy and Rome's status��
�red c : ty" � � dropped. The changes do not alter the status of
Vatican City as an independent state run by the pope, but the new pact,
terminating the 55-year-old concordat signed between the Vatican and the
dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, is a significant milestone nonetheless.
Correspondent Henry Tanner, writing in the February 20 INTERNATIONAL HERALD
TRIBUNE, summarized the new development in this manner:
The steady decline in recent years of the influence of the
Catholic Church on life and politics in Italy was formalized
Saturday when Prime Minister Bettino Craxi and Cardinal Agostino
Casaroli, the Vatican's secretary of state, signed a new state
church concordat in a solemn ceremony. Catholicism is no longer
Italy's "state religion," as the concordat signed 55 years ago
said.
Rome no longer has "the sacred character of eternal city," which
under the previous concordat made it "the duty of the Italian
government" to keep anything out of the city's life that could be
"in conflict with this character."
Covered by this were some
films and books regarded as morally offensive to Catholicism or
the papacy.
Religious instruction in state schools becomes optional instead
of being "the foundation and crowning of public education," as
under the other concordat.... Annulments of marriages by the
Vatican are made subject to review by an Italian court if
requested by one of the parties. But the state continues to give
automatic recognition to church marriages....
Mr. Craxi pointed to the church's diminishin f influence when he
said the new concordatreflected "the new re ations between the
church and the political community."... Within six months the
full text will...go to Parliament for ratification. Approval is
virtually certain since Mr. Craxi had no trouble getting the
draft of the text he signed Saturday through Parliament.
The greatest single setback for the church in recent years came
in 1981, when Italian voters decisively opposed repeal of a law
permitting abortion.... In 1974, voters refused to repeal a
three-year-old law on divorce.... "We are a secular country,"
wrote the daily newspaper LA REPUBBLICA after the [abortion] vote
in 1981. Mr. Craxi, not yet prime minister, said:
"The pope
thinks we are Poland, but we are not."...