Scottish Catholic Observer

By Fr John Bollan

The other week a taxi driver asked me what I made of The Young Pope, the new drama co-produced by Italian and American channels and now being shown in the UK. In an unlikely piece of casting, Jude Law plays an enigmatic Pope Pius XIII who rules the Church according to his own unique management style. My honest answer to the driver was that I hadn’t seen it—I only seem to catch up with things long after they’ve first aired on TV—but I was curious to see it. He said that, as a lapsed Catholic, it was ‘quite interesting’ but it was really his wife (not a Catholic) who was most taken by the programme. In fact, off the back of this programme, she was even considering becoming a Catholic herself!

I suspect this enthusiasm may have more to do with the telegenic Jude Law than the Divine Law, but who knows? From what I’ve seen of the trailer for the show, I’d say it looks like it belongs to the genre of surreal fantasy with perhaps the merest dash of realism thrown into the mix. The photography certainly looks sumptuous and the sets very convincing (no doubt computer generated as I don’t reckon the Vatican would allow access to the majestic halls for anything remotely racy).

As far as treatment of spiritual matters is concerned, if you found Ballykissangel about as edgy as you wanted your Church storylines to go, I would probably give The Young Pope a miss. While it may not be Father Ted, I don’t think it’s The Shoes of the Fisherman either.

Lately I’ve been spending time not with The Young Pope but ‘the old Pope,’ in the form of Benedict XVI’s recently published Last Testament. I suppose my own interest in this and other interviews with our Pope Emeritus springs from a similar place of curiosity which attracts viewers of Mr Law in all his papal finery. There is a mystery surrounding the office of the Pope and, no matter how much the Vatican has got ‘on message’ with a slicker approach to the media, something of that mystique endures. Pope Francis is much more of an open book in his fondness for giving interviews and regaling his audiences with off-the-cuff anecdotes, but his predecessor is much more reticent in opening up and feels uncomfortable in the limelight.

That’s why these published interviews with Pope Benedict are so fascinating. Now that he is, as he freely admits, on the final stretch of his life, he is happy to look back and offer his side of the story on the joys and sorrows of his time as a priest, bishop, cardinal and pope. From the trivial—you find out what the Holy Father thought of the carpets in the Apostolic Palace—to the more profound, it is as though you can hear him speak directly to you. Although the physical frailty of Benedict is only too apparent in the final section of the book, even his reported speech sparkles with that lucidity which makes him one of the greatest thinkers to have sat on the chair of Peter.

There is little in this memoir of the cut-and-thrust of ecclesiastical politics (which makes for good television drama) but there are occasional hints at the little weaknesses of human nature which often frustrate our efforts to do what is right and best.

What is most typical of Pope Benedict, however, is that the shortcomings which are spoken of most frequently are his own. As I read his responses to the questions put to him by the German journalist Peter Seewald, I couldn’t suppress that sense of awe, tinged with pity, that we expect one man to carry this tremendous burden. It certainly puts the challenges of being a parish priest into perspective.

This week is my week ‘on call’ for the Inverclyde Royal Hospital. In theory, a priest is always on duty, but when your week on the hospital rota comes around then you basically have to put everything on hold for the duration. That usually means no day off, not straying too far from the parish and having the hospital mobile phone as your constant companion. The problem is that it’s never very predictable. You can go for an entire week and have three call-outs at perfectly reasonable hours and the next time you’re on you can be called out three times in the space of one night.

I’ve said before that I’m not the best of sleepers, so having the phone usually means that I have even less ‘shuteye’ than normal. Coupled with that, I find that being on call tends to aggravate my hypochondria: I usually come out in sympathy with whatever people are ‘in with’—and that’s no fun, given that most people you are called to visit are very poorly indeed. So, between the bags under my eyes and the flare up of stress-related eczema, let’s just say that Jude Law’s current standing as ‘Most Handsome Soutane Wearer of 2016’ is not under threat. Well, not from me at least.

Even though it’s a struggle at times, this bit of my ministry is actually one of the most important and valuable. You may have had to drag yourself out of bed in the middle of a chilly, drizzly night, but what—or rather who —you bring to these brothers and sisters of ours is far more important than any temporary inconvenience or interrupted sleep pattern. Even when the patient is comatose or the family is estranged from the Church, there is always a spark of life and hope which responds to Christ’s medicine. It’s amazing how often an apparently unconscious person stirs to make the sign of the cross or a relative who seemed to exude anger or hostility only a few moments ago now joins in the Our Father or Hail Mary. It is a privilege of priesthood, rather than a chore, to be granted access to these scenes where the real drama of faith is played out.

In one sense, I’m grateful that my spell on call coincides with the last week of Ordinary Time. I’m much more attuned to the great themes of the first half of the Advent Season, with their focus on ‘staying awake’ and ‘being watchful.’ Like a call from the hospital switchboard, the Son of Man is coming at an hour we do not expect. That is true for all of us, without exception—popes, actors, and parish priests too.