Commentary More questions in Swiss Guard
murders
Special to the National
Catholic Reporter Rome
Vatican flatly denies Swiss Guards leader was East German
spy.
So read the headlines of all of Italys newspapers 24 hours
after a German paper reported that Alois Estermann, the newly named Swiss
Guards commander who was murdered on May 4, had been a mole for the former
communist country inside the Vatican.
Actually, the headlines were inaccurate. The Holy Sees chief
spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, didnt deny a thing. He merely
stated, The hypothesis is not even being considered. He added,
This is not the first time inconsistencies are being said about an honest
man. Hardly a flat denial.
Which hypothesis was not being considered? That Estermann was a
spy? That he was an informer for East Germanys Stasi secret police from
1979-1984? That he sent back at least seven reports containing highly
confidential Vatican information?
In fact, these were all part of the details the Berliner
Kurier reported in its May 8 edition. Or was Navarro saying that the
inconsistencies lay, not in the substance of the papers claim
but in these details?
Before the Vatican spokesman even had time to issue his ambiguous
response, reporters were already dishing out generous helpings of commentary
and speculation from former East German informants, most notably the notorious
super-spy Markus Wolf. Conflicting reports from a whole host of former secret
agents raised questions as they cast doubts.
Meanwhile, Navarros dismissal of spy reports brought to mind
his denials when it was reported that the pope had Parkinsons
disease, something that today nearly everyone -- many bishops included -- takes
for granted.
Whether or not the spy charges or any other conspiracy theory is
true, the bizarre deaths of the commander, his wife and the young soldier have
fueled a new debate inside the Vatican: Is it time to rethink the need for the
Swiss Guards?
Pope John Paul, for one, has full confidence in them. According to
his secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, questions related to the
existence of the elite 500-year-old army are not up for discussion. At the
funeral of Estermann and his wife, the cardinal assured the Swiss Guards that
they have the popes complete trust. One cloud cannot obscure five
centuries of honorable history, he said.
Not everyone who wears episcopal colors inside the Vatican or in
Switzerland, however, is as convinced as the pope and the secretary of state.
Swiss bishops, who are charged with organizing the 100-man army and selecting
its leaders, reportedly have already begun looking at future changes and,
according to the secretary of the episcopal conference, Msgr. Roland Trauffer,
are willing even to help pay for the corps revamping.
Among the changes being proposed:
- Fatten up the Guards modest to low paychecks. Today if
youre one of the four soldiers who, after several years of loyal service,
rises to the rank of senior officer, you might make as much as the people who
answer the Vatican telephones, a meager $26,000 dollars per year. Newcomers in
their first two years of service can expect about half of that.
Its no
secret that an uninviting salary was an obstacle to finding a new commander for
the corps. Bishops searched for more than a year, including a six-month period
when the Guards were without a commander, before they finally named Estermann.
To some candidates who possessed the right credentials, $30,000 seemed
insufficient compensation for the burden of keeping the pope safe and the
troops in order.
- Change the aristocratic credentials required for the
commanders post. Not a few church officials quietly voiced embarrassment
that in a post-Vatican II church, the Swiss bishops main criterion for a
new commander was that the candidate be a nobleman. The prelates searched among
Swiss nobility for the aristocrat that tradition requires, but no willing
Catholic blue-blood could be found. Thus another icon of the old papal court
seems destined to go the way of the peacock feathers, papal tiara and the
sedia gestatoria on which the pope was formerly carried aloft around
Vatican City.
For now the recently retired blue-blooded commander, 57-year-old
Roland Buchs, has returned to the helm of the Guards, which he led from 1982
until last November. But he made it clear hes a temporary substitute,
eager to return to his government job in Bern, Switzerland.
An Italian daily recently reported that several Vatican officials
are convinced that changes need to be made in the corps. But in a place where
change takes place over centuries, if not millennia, the prelates were
cautious, to say the least.
Cardinal Pio Laghi, former apostolic delegate to the United States
who now heads the Congregation for Education, summed up the attitude by saying,
Every transformation comes in its own time.
It is mainly just a few progressive voices in the Roman curia who
urge drastic measures to transform the Swiss Guards into a corps more
resembling a 21st century personal protection agency than a medieval palace
guard.
However, like so many other issues facing the church today,
especially those that depend directly upon decisions of the Holy See, the
official said reforming the Swiss Guards, will be difficult in this
pontificate.
Archbishop Alessandro Maggiolini cautioned that too many changes,
like abolishing the anachronistic costumes, could diminish the appeal of the
worlds most colorful military team. Said he, In the end, its
still true that the habit makes the monk.
The writer lives and works in Rome.
National Catholic Reporter, June 5,
1998
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