Carlo Maria Martini
Carlo Maria Martini was an Italian Jesuit and cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Milan from 1980 to 2002 and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983. A towering intellectual figure of the Roman Catholic Church, Martini was the liberal contender for the Papacy in the 2005 conclave, following the death of Pope John Paul II. According to highly placed Vatican sources, Martini received more votes in the first round than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the conservative candidate: 40 to 38. Ratzinger ended up with more votes in subsequent rounds and was elected Pope Benedict XVI.
Martini entered the Society of Jesus in 1944 and was ordained a priest in 1952. His appointment as Archbishop of Milan in 1980 was an unusual circumstance, as Jesuits are not traditionally named bishops. He was on the liberal wing of the church hierarchy. Suffering from a rare form of Parkinson's disease, he retired as archbishop in 2002 and moved to the Pontifical Institute in Jerusalem. He died at the Jesuit Aloisianum College in Gallarate near Milan.
Hours after his death, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera printed his final interview, in which he described the church as "200 years out of date." "Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up. The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops. The pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation."
Early life and education
Carlo Maria Martini was born 15 February 1927 in Orbassano in the Province of Turin, Piedmont, to Leonardo, an engineer, and Olga Martini. He was baptised on the following 22 February. He was educated at Istituto Sociale, a school run by Jesuits in Turin. He entered the Society of Jesus on 25 September 1944 and was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Maurilio Fossati on 13 July 1952. Martini completed his studies in philosophy at the Jesuits' House of Studies in Gallarate, in the province of Milan, and theology at the faculty of theology in Chieri.In 1958, Martini was awarded his doctorate in fundamental theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, with a thesis exploring the problems of the Resurrection accounts. After some years of teaching at the faculty of Chieri, he returned to Rome and earned another doctorate in Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, graduating summa cum laude, with a thesis on a group of codices of the Gospel of Luke.
Academic career
After completing his studies, Martini quickly pursued a successful academic career. In 1962, he was given the Chair of Textual Criticism at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, a specialist institute of the Gregorian, and became its rector in 1969. In 1978, under Pope Paul VI, he was elected the Pontifical Gregorian University's rector magnificus, serving in this post from 1969 to 1978, after which he was nominated chancellor of the Pontifical Gregorian University. Throughout these years, he edited a number of scholarly works. Martini became active in the scientific field by publishing various books and articles. Furthermore, he received the honour of being the only Catholic member of the ecumenical committee that prepared the new Greek edition of the New Testament, the Novum Testamentum Graece.Episcopate and cardinalate
On 29 December 1979, Pope John Paul II appointed Martini as Archbishop of Milan, receiving his episcopal consecration from the Pope himself the following 6 January, with Archbishop Eduardo Martínez Somalo and Bishop Ferdinando Maggioni serving as co-consecrators. Thus his first diocesan appointment was to one of the largest and most prominent sees. In the consistory of 2 February 1983, he was assigned the title of Cardinal-Priest of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. The motto he chose for his coat of arms is translated as "For the love of truth, dare to choose adverse situations".Martini served as Relator of the 6th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 1983, and as President of the European Bishops' Conference between 1987 and 1993.
In 1987, he began the socalled "cathedra of non-believers" which was conceived together with the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari. It was a series of public dialogues hel in Milan with some gnostic or atheist scientists and intellectuals on the matters of bioethics, the social doctrine of the Church and the reasons to believe in God.
In 1996, Martini was presented with an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences. In Spain in October 2000, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences. Martini was admitted as a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in November 2000.
Martini was one of a group of like-minded prelates who met annually from 1995 to 2006 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, to discuss reforms with respect to the appointment of bishops, collegiality, bishops' conferences, the primacy of the papacy, and sexual morality; they differed among themselves, but shared the view that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was not the sort of candidate they hoped to see elected at the next conclave.
In 2002, Martini reached the Catholic Church's mandatory retirement age of 75 and was succeeded in Milan by Dionigi Tettamanzi. At the time of the 2005 conclave, he was 78 years old and hence eligible to vote for the new Pope. For years many "progressive" Catholics harboured hopes that he might eventually ascend to the papacy, but when John Paul II died, most commentators believed that his election was unlikely, given his liberal reputation and apparent frailty. Nevertheless, according to La Stampa, he obtained more votes than Joseph Ratzinger during the first round of the election. Conversely, an anonymous cardinal's diary stated that he never mustered more than a dozen or so votes, in contrast to another Jesuit cardinal, Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, and quickly withdrew his candidacy. Upon reaching the age of 80 on 15 February 2007, Martini lost his right to vote in future conclaves.
In June 2012, when Pope Benedict XVI was contemplating retirement and was being urged not to retire by some of his closest confidants, Martini, suffering himself from Parkinson's, urged him to follow through on his decision to resign.
After his retirement, Martini moved to the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem to continue his work as a biblical scholar. He returned to Milan in 2008 where he spent his final years in a Jesuit house.
Death and funeral
Martini died in Gallarate on 31 August 2012. According to an online Zenit news statement about his death, Pope Benedict XVI, in his formal message of condolence sent by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, praised Martini's strength during his struggle with Parkinson's, his long service as Archbishop of Milan and his work as a scholar of the Bible. The Mayor of Milan, Giuliano Pisapia, led the tributes by saying, "Carlo Maria Martini illuminated the way for the entire city, not just for part of it. For this reason, today more than ever, Milan mourns its Archbishop."More than 150,000 people passed before Martini's casket in the metropolitan cathedral of Milan before the Requiem Mass, following the Ambrosian rite, on 3 September. At the beginning of the ceremony, the representative of Pope Benedict, Angelo Cardinal Comastri, vicar general of the Vatican City, read a message. Cardinal Scola presided over the concelebrated Mass and delivered the homily. At the end of the Mass, Cardinal Tettamanzi read his remembrance. Concelebrating with Cardinal Scola were Cardinals Comastri, Tettamanzi, Bagnasco, Piovanelli, Romeo, and Ravasi. Also present were the sister of Martini, Maris, his niece Giulia, and his nephew Giovanni. In attendance were Father Adolfo Nicolás SJ, superior general of the Society of Jesus, and representatives of other Christian denominations and the Jewish and Muslim communities. The Italian government was represented by Prime Minister Mario Monti and his wife.
In a private ceremony Martini was buried in a tomb on the left side of the cathedral facing the main altar.
Views
Often considered to be one of the more liberal cardinals, Martini achieved widespread notice for his writings. On occasion Martini's views proved to be controversial, thus bringing him comparatively large amounts of media coverage. In the final interview he gave, shortly before his death, he urged major reforms to the Catholic Church, calling it "200 years out of date" and arguing that, "Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty, and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous".Martini was known to be "progressive" on matters concerning human relationships, the possible ordination of women to the diaconate, and some bioethical questions, notably contraceptive use in certain more complex situations.
''Dominus Iesus''
In 2000, he criticized Dominus Iesus, a declaration by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that the Catholic Church is the sole true Church of Christ, and described the document as "theologically rather dense, peppered with quotations, and not easy to grasp".Contraception
In April 2006, in response to a very specific question from physician and politician Ignazio Marino, director of the transplant centre of the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Martini opined: "The use of condoms can, in certain situations, be a lesser evil". He stressed the particular case of married couples where one has HIV or AIDS. But he quickly noted that the principle of the lesser evil in such cases is one thing, and quite another the subject who has to convey those things publicly, thus it is not up to the Church authorities to support condom use publicly, because of "the risk of promoting an irresponsible attitude". The Church is more likely to support other morally sustainable means, such as abstinence. On another occasion, the Cardinal stated that "I believe the Church's teaching has not been expressed so well....I am confident we will find some formula to state things better, so that the problem is better understood and more adapted to reality."In the 2008 book-interview entitle Nighttime conversations in Jerusalem, cardinal Martini stated that "many people have withdrawn from the Church, and the Church from people", due to the 1968 encyciclical Humanae vitae which prohibited the artificial contraception. According to the cardinal, pope John Paul II followed the path of rigorous application and for some periods evaluated to sign a pontifical declaration under the privilege of papal infallibility, concluding that "probably the pope will not revoke the encyclical, but he might write one that would be its continuation. I am firmly convinced that the Church can point out a better way than it did with Humanae Vitae. Being able to admit one's mistakes and the limitations of one's previous viewpoints is a sign of greatness of soul and of confidence. The Church would regain credibility and competence."