When the Pope Asks Forgiveness

Between 1980 and 1996, John Paul II ‘recognized the Church’s historic faults or asked forgiveness’ at least 94 times, says Vatican commentator Luigi Accattoli in his book Quando il papa chiede perdono (When the Pope Asks Forgiveness). According to Accattoli, “in the Catholic Church, only the pope can rightly make a mea culpa.” And this he has done, referring to the most controversial pages of Catholic history—the Crusades, wars, support of dictatorships, division in the churches, anti-Semitism, the Inquisitions, the Mafia, and racism. In a memorandum sent in 1994 to the cardinals (which is considered by some to be the most important document of the pontificate), John Paul II proposed “a general and millennial confession of sins.”

Catholic historian Nicolino Sarale stated that in John Paul II’s “project of ‘mea culpas,’ there is a strategy, and that is ecumenism.”

However, more than ecumenism is involved. Today, the far from exemplary history of Christendom is widely known. “The Catholic can’t just shrug off all this history,” says theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. “The very Church he belongs to has done or allowed to be done things that we certainly can’t approve of nowadays.” Hence, the pope has appointed a commission to “throw light on the church’s dark pages so that . . . forgiveness may be asked.” Another reason, then, for the church’s willingness to engage in self-criticism appears to be a desire to regain its moral standing.

Not all agree that the churches should publicly ask forgiveness. For example, a number of Roman Catholics feel uneasy when their pope asks forgiveness for slavery or rehabilitates “heretics” like Hus and Calvin. According to Vatican sources, the document sent to the cardinals proposing an “examination of conscience” over the history of the past millennium of Catholicism was criticized by cardinals attending a consistory held in June 1994. When the pope nonetheless wanted to include the substance of that proposal in an encyclical, the Italian cardinal Giacomo Biffi released a pastoral note in which he affirmed: “The Church has no sin.” Nevertheless, he allowed: “Asking forgiveness for ecclesiastical errors of past centuries . . . may serve to render us less disagreeable.”

“The confession of sin is one of the most controversial subjects within the Catholic Church,” says Vatican commentator Luigi Accattoli. “If the pope acknowledges the errors of the missionaries, there are missionaries who in good faith resent it.” Further, a Roman Catholic journalist wrote: “If the pope really has such a fearsome idea of Church history, it is hard to understand how he can now present this selfsame Church as the paladin of ‘human rights,’ the ‘mother and teacher’ that can alone guide humanity toward a truly bright third millennium.”

When speaking of the pope’s repeated mea culpas, Cardinal Biffi ironically asked: “For historical sins, wouldn’t it be better for us all to wait for the universal judgment?” Well, the judgment of all mankind is imminent. Jehovah God knows well all the dark pages of the history of religion. Soon enough, he will call the guilty ones to account. (Revelation 18:4-8)