Alleged 'deep throat' of Catholic Church dies at 77

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

A cardinal rumored by some to be the “Deep Throat” of the Catholic Church – the source of one of the most famous, if also widely contested, leaks of the last quarter-century – died on Wednesday in Rome at the age of 77.

Cardinal Mario Francesco Pompedda, an expert in canon law who served as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura from 1997 to 2004, has often been flagged in Roman circles as the source of a document entitled “Diary of the Conclave,” published in the Italian journal Limes in September 2005, which purported to offer round-by-round voting totals from the April 2005 election which propelled Benedict XVI to the papacy.

Italian journalist Lucio Brunelli, author of the Limes report, said at the time that the diary had been provided to him by a cardinal after the conclave, despite the cardinals' vow of secrecy – and despite the penalty of excommunication for violating it.

Not everyone, it should be noted, believes that the alleged diary is authentic. It offered no new nuggets of insider detail, other than alleged vote totals, which had not already surfaced in other accounts. Certainly not everyone bought the theory that Pompedda was the source, especially since he was the principal editor of Pope John Paul II’s 1995 apostolic constitution, Universi dominici gregis, outlining the very rules of the conclave that Pompedda was rumored to have violated.

The diary’s account gave then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger 47 votes on the first ballot, 65 on the second, 72 on the third, and 84 on the fourth, six more than the two-thirds needed to elect him to the papacy. The account also indicated that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, was a strong second-place finisher.

Privately, Pompedda denied the rumors that he was the source, and Brunelli has not had any comment on Pompedda’s death.

Yet among many observers in Rome it quickly became conventional wisdom that Pompedda was the source – perhaps for no other reason than that the Sardinian jurist was a notoriously independent thinker in an environment that tends to breed homogeneity, perhaps because Pompedda was unafraid to speak his mind despite the near-epidemic of caution that usually infects church officials at his level.

A reputation as Catholicism’s “Deep Throat” is not how Pompedda himself envisioned his legacy. Instead, he had hoped that one of his principal gifts to the church would be revised set of rules for annulments, which would have made the declaration that a marriage had never existed faster and easier to obtain. A draft of these rules seemed on the brink of publication in 2003, and Pompedda actually outlined the new system in several public comments, treating it as a fait accompli.

In fact, however, Pompedda resigned from the Signatura in 2004 without the document having been published. When it finally appeared in February 2005 under the title Dignitas Connubii, it was largely a reaffirmation of existing discipline rather than the reform Pompedda had desired.

Privately, Roman canonists said that Pompedda’s indiscretion in talking about the document before its publication had given opposition a chance to organize – in effect, they said, the Sardinian cardinal had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Yet Pompedda was never one to shy away from public discussion.

In retirement, he offered views on a wide cross-section of questions, often making headlines. He affirmed the need to fill the vacuum in canon law created by the absence of any procedures for dealing with the case of an incapacitated pope, he called for greater consultation of the laity in the nomination of bishops, and he supported some sort of civil legislation for “de facto couples” despite official pronouncements to the contrary. In the summer of 2005, when the Italian bishops called upon voters to abstain from a liberalizing referendum on in vitro fertilization as a means of invalidating the measure, Pompedda said he felt that the duty of “democratic participation in public life” obligated Italians to vote. (In the end, the measure failed due to insufficient turnout).

Pompedda was a frequent participant in events organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, though I recall a long talk I had with him in Lyon, France, in 2005, when he expressed doubt as to whether such ecumenical and inter-faith initiatives adequately addressed the “truth question,” meaning the ultimate validity of the claims put forward by the church’s dialogue partners. Ahead of his time, Pompedda told me that he was sure, sooner or later, that this would become an especially tough question in the dialogue with Islam.

Pompedda was one of those churchmen whose deep faith and loyalty never smothered the independence of his judgment. He believed that he owed the popes he served his best efforts to arrive at honest conclusions, ones which didn’t depend upon ideology or the tribal allegiances that can sometimes dominate Italian ecclesiastical life. He also was convinced that Catholicism has nothing to fear from robust debate, and he was among only a handful of figures at senior levels who could be equally at home at a canon law seminar organized by Opus Dei or an ecumenical liturgy put together by Sant’Egidio.

Pompedda was, in short, a unique, colorful figure, who left his mark on the church of his time.