DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies.
We in the media regularly cover the decisions of powerful leaders in government and business and how they affect our lives. My guest today, veteran investigative reporter Philip Shenon, has spent much of the last 10 years examining the impact of seven powerful men who've exercised a different kind of authority. They're the last seven popes of the Catholic Church, whose intense power struggles and doctrinal debates affect more than a billion Catholics in countless ways - whether they can use birth control or get an abortion or divorce and remain in good standing in the faith, whether priests must forever remain unmarried and celibate - a rule with little biblical authority that fuels a drastic shortage of priests and leaves millions unable to regularly attend Mass or receive sacraments - whether same-sex couples can be accepted in the church, and whether sexual predators will be stopped and held accountable.
Shenon's book is the story of a bold attempt to reform the church in the early 1960s and decades of backsliding that followed under pontiffs more comfortable with conservative traditions and power concentrated in the Vatican. Philip Shenon spent more than 20 years at The New York Times covering the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the State Department and Congress. His two previous books focused on the 9/11 investigation and unanswered questions about the Kennedy assassination.
His new book is "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church." Philip Shenon, welcome back to FRESH AIR.
PHILIP SHENON: Dave, thanks for having me.
DAVIES: You know, I want to begin by talking just briefly about Pope Pius XII. He's the first pope in your book. He was there during World War II, and it's kind of striking and ironic that during World War II, the Pope in the Vatican at that time had a great familiarity with and affection for Germany. He'd been a Vatican diplomat in Germany. He is known for not having spoken out against Nazi crimes despite substantial evidence that he was aware of them. But there's even more. You tell a story in the book, which was new to me, of this Pope Pius before he was pope, when he was an archbishop in Munich, meeting personally with a then-rising Adolf Hitler. What happened here?
SHENON: I think it's fair to say that Pacelli loved Germany more than he loved his homeland, Italy.
DAVIES: Pacelli being the name of the cardinal before he became pope, yeah.
SHENON: Right. And he is the Vatican's diplomatic representative to Bavaria and later to Germany for a dozen years after World War I. And he, in Germany, becomes much more alarmed about the potential rise of Marxists than fascists. And the story told by his former housekeeper is that he meets with Hitler in the diplomatic residence in Munich and hands him an envelope stuffed with cash that he wants Hitler to use to campaign against Marxists in Germany. And the housekeeper and certainly others around Pius, over the decades, believe that his love of Germany affected much of his decision-making and led to this decision throughout World War II to remain silent about the Holocaust.
DAVIES: This housekeeper, Sister Pascalina Lehnert, it turns out, was a very close adviser of Pius and wrote these interesting diaries. And it said that she actually advised him to speak out against the Nazis and during World War II when all this was happening, right?
SHENON: Well, it's fascinating to discover her because there's reason to believe that this nun, Sister Pascalina Lehnert, this sort of tough-willed Bavarian nun, may have been one of the most influential women in the history of the Catholic Church. She was very close to Pius for decades. She was his housekeeper, but she also seems to have been a close adviser. And she tells the story - there's some dispute about what she says about Pius, but she tells a Boston newspaperman that throughout the war, she pressed Pius to speak out against Nazi Germany, to protest the Holocaust, and Pius would not give in to her pressure.
There's also reason to believe that she had a hand in saving thousands of lives in Rome, the lives of Roman Jews, because when Nazi Germany marched into Rome in 1943, she pressured Pius to shelter thousands of Jews in Vatican City. And her role in the Vatican has largely gone untold because - there's been an effort to make sure it's not told - that there was a fear that the disclosure of her influence on Pius would be scandalous. Certainly, the thought that a woman had this much influence on a pope would have been seen as scandalous at the time.
DAVIES: Before we leave Pope Pius, I just - I want to mention the will. When he died, there was a very short will which was discovered. And, well, it was kind of surprising. What did it say?
SHENON: Over the centuries, popes had left wills. They left documents that sort of established how their earthly belongings would be divided up and to thank their aides and advisers, and to sort of highlight the accomplishments of their papacy. When Pius dies, there's a frantic search for his will, which is eventually found at the bottom of a locked desk drawer in the papal apartment.
And his deputies are stunned by it because it's so short, and it's simply a bleak plea for mercy. It's eight sentences long. He says nothing about his earthly belongings. He says nothing about his gratitude towards his aides and advisers, no mention of the accomplishments of his papacy. It's a plea for mercy from God. And he talks about the need for forgiveness from those who he has sinned against or scandalized.
There's a fierce debate after his death about why he would feel the need to make this bleak plea for mercy. There's certainly a theory offered that he knew that when the truth about his actions or inactions during World War II in terms of not speaking out against the Holocaust became known, it would forever tarnish his legacy, that he needed God's mercy for his failings during World War II.
DAVIES: So in 1958, after Pope Pius dies, the cardinals in the Vatican gather to select the new pope. We're all familiar with this ritual. They settle on an Italian bishop, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who takes the name Pope John XXIII. He's short, quite overweight, not the most imposing figure visually, but you say without saying so directly, he made it clear quickly that things were going to be different from the grim sobriety of the previous pope. What did he do?
SHENON: Well, he's really the hero of this book. But he is this roly-poly Italian man, balding, treasures his peasant roots, who is - suddenly finds himself thrust into the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. And he makes clear from the very start that, as you say, the grim sobriety of Pius' reign is over. He loves telling jokes. He loves mocking the idea of an infallible pope. He is really a blank slate when he's elected in terms of doctrinal matters. But he quickly makes clear that he's ready to overhaul the Catholic Church. He's ready to invite the world's bishops to come to Rome to remake it as they see fit without his interference. And this leads to the Second Vatican Council, where the world's bishops are invited to Rome and told they can remake the church as they wish without his interference.
DAVIES: Right, let's talk about some of the issues of potential reform that came up at the Vatican II Council, some issues that the church was confronting. One of them was the longstanding practice of requiring priests to remain unmarried and celibate. Now, there's a fascinating history here, right? This was not always the case, right?
SHENON: You know, going into this project, I think I had in the back of my mind the idea that, you know, the doctrine of priestly celibacy, that the priest couldn't marry and have families and all the rest of it, that this was sort of eternal and had been decreed in the Gospels. Well, that's not true at all. It's not in the Gospels. In fact, most of Jesus' apostles and, you know, the larger band of disciples, they were married. The Apostle Peter - the first bishop of Rome - had a wife and a mother-in-law, and in three of the four Gospels, Jesus
SHENON: gospels, Jesus heals his mother-in-law. What happens is after the first 1,000 years after the crucifixion, 1,000 years in which priests got married and had kids and knew, you know, the comfort and the chaos of a family, a strong-willed pope in the 11th century by the name of Gregory decreed that from that moment on, priests and bishops could no longer marry. They had to be, in fact, fully celibate, and that included men who were then already married.
Gregory's motivation, historians will tell you, had something to do with the scandals of a group of shockingly promiscuous bishops in Rome. But there's also reason to believe it had something to do with money, that if priests were allowed to marry and have children, when they died, their estates - you know, their homes or anything else of value - would be turned over to their survivors. Well, if you decreed that priests can't marry, they can't have kids, the money goes to the church. And over the history of the church, many priests, many bishops had come from families of great wealth or royalty, in fact. And if you decree that they can have no family to leave their wealth to, that wealth comes to the church. So Gregory's decision promised, you know, a vast new source of income for the church.
DAVIES: So there's this requirement that priests can't marry and can't have sex. This has created a problem for the church, hasn't it, a real shortage of priests?
SHENON: Certainly, in the last 150 years, there's been a true crisis created by this shortage of priests. Many priests, especially beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, decided they couldn't live this life of celibacy. And they left to marry and have families. And there are stories told about huge stretches of South America, for example, where there simply were no priests, that Catholics who wanted to make a confession or who needed to organize a funeral or a christening, there was no priests to help them. And there was pressure at the Second Vatican Council to eliminate the doctrine of priestly celibacy, to allow priests to begin to marry, to encourage more men to enter the priesthood.
DAVIES: There was another issue involving sexuality, and that is birth control. I mean, it was against Catholic doctrine. There was thought that perhaps it's time to change that. You write about a Belgian bishop, Leo Joseph Suenens, who talked about his experiences hearing the confessions of women and, you know, what this restriction meant for them and their lives.
SHENON: Well, for generations, for centuries, you know, Catholics understandably wanted to control the size of their families. But the church opposed birth control and put that into writing in the 1930s. The pope at the time decreed that birth control was a sin and therefore was banned for all Catholics. And that was issued in response to what was the sudden availability of reliable birth control in the form of latex condoms.
And priests at the time, and in the decades that followed, commonly heard from women and from married couples that this was a terrible burden on them. They needed to be able to control the size of their families. They needed to be able to feed the kids they already had. And theologians will tell you there's actually not much justification for the ban. The New Testament says almost nothing about birth control. And by the time the Second Vatican Council was underway, there were many priests who intended to make sure that the ban on birth control was lifted. It remains in effect today, remarkably enough.
DAVIES: There was one really significant change, which was it was decreed that they didn't have to - priests did not have to conduct Mass solely in Latin, which meant that, you know, people around the world could understand more of what was being said. That was really the one enduring change, wasn't it?
SHENON: There were several. I mean, the Vatican 2, it really was a revolutionary gathering, even though I think to this day, most devout Catholics, including lots of devout Catholics I know, can't really tell you what happened at Vatican 2, in part because it was conducted in Latin. There's still a lot of confusion about exactly what happened and when. But since the fourth century, the church had decreed that all worship services be conducted in Latin even though over the centuries, Latin became sort of a dead language to the world. Certainly, by the 20th century, most Catholics didn't speak it, even most bishops didn't really understand it.
And there had been an effort over the centuries, and certainly in the 20th century, by many theologians to try to convince popes to allow the Mass to be said in the vernacular, in local languages, and popes had resisted that aggressively. Second Vatican Council, this question came before the world's bishops. And it was clear that most of them were eager to see an end to the Latin Mass, at least an end to the exclusive use of Latin.
And something that I learned in the course of this that I hadn't really understood before is that, you know, Jesus did not speak to his disciples in Latin. He spoke to them in Aramaic, which was similar to Hebrew. And then for 300 years after the crucifixion, the language of the church was Greek. And it's only in the fourth century, when the church - when church power moves to Rome that Latin is introduced. So you can argue that Latin really hasn't been the appropriate language for hundreds of years. And this move to the vernacular becomes very popular. And today, all Catholics can see and hear the changes of Vatican 2 for themselves by hearing the Mass performed in languages they understand.
DAVIES: I guess another thing that Pope John XXIII did make some progress on is changing church doctrine on how the Catholic Church regarded other faiths, particular Protestant faiths, but also particularly the Jewish faith. It was pretty harsh before that, right?
SHENON: The church until the early 1960s, as I say, was a closed fortress. It wouldn't really have dialogue with other faiths. It was seen as sinful, blasphemous, to have communication with other faiths. As a result of Vatican 2, the church sort of embraced the modern world again and embraced dialogue with other faiths, and especially with Judaism. In the 2000 years since the crucifixion, the Vatican sort of - its formal doctrine was that all Jews, those ancient Jews who were responsible for Christ's crucifixion, Jews of the 20th century and Jews yet to be born were all held responsible for Jesus' death. And it took John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council to end that, to exonerate Jews and to open dialogue with them really for the first time in 2000 years.
DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Philip Shenon. He's a veteran investigative reporter. His new book is "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran investigative reporter Philip Shenon. His latest book is an examination of the leadership of the last seven Catholic popes. It's called "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church."
So, Philip Shenon, we talked about how Pope John XXIII with the Second Vatican Council initiated a lot of reforms in the Catholic Church. Some were enacted. Four popes who followed, by and large, didn't advance those efforts and, in many cases, kind of reversed them. The pope who immediately followed John XXIII was Pope Paul VI, the guy who was kind of reluctant to take it on and seemed to have come under the influence of some of the more conservatives in the Vatican. One of the things that John XXIII had done was he had developed a commission to investigate the subject of birth control. And this was a pretty serious effort, wasn't it?
SHENON: In 1962, Pope John sets up a secret commission that will determine whether or not the church should lift the ban on birth control. He is open to the idea of lifting the ban. He died shortly after the opening of the council, but the commission continues to meet. And on this commission are some of the most respected theologians in the church, lots of very prominent laypeople, lots of important bishops, influential bishops. And in 1966, it recommends to the pope that the ban be lifted.
DAVIES: Right. And this is fascinating because Pope Paul VI, he issues this encyclical called Of Human Life, which fully rejects the findings of this commission about liberalizing rules on birth control and rejects it completely. What was the reaction in the church, among Catholics? How was it received?
SHENON: So here we have a group of the most important theologians, some of the most influential churchmen, lots of prominent laymen from around the world who debated for four years this question and overwhelmingly conclude that birth control is not a violation of the church's teachings, that Catholics around the world should be allowed to engage in family planning. And the pope simply refuses to accept it. And that decision just horrified lots of very prominent churchmen. It horrified all of the members of that commission. And really, for the rest of his papacy, he was under siege for what people considered a disastrous mistake. And you got to say, the last several years of his papacy were painful for him because he just felt that he had lost the support of much of the church.
DAVIES: Right. Polling showed that Catholics everywhere disapproved of this. And clergy in the Netherlands basically revolted, right?
SHENON: Well, not only did people protest. Opinion polls showed that Catholics around the world were just ignoring the papal decree, that they use birth control. They thought - they wanted to control the size of their families. You know, in those days, in the 1960s, there was a great concern about, you know, worldwide poverty and overpopulation and the population bomb. It's clear from opinion polling at the time that millions of American Catholics continued to use birth control.
DAVIES: You know, this backsliding and essentially rejection of the reforms of Vatican II lasted over the next four popes that followed John XXIII - you know, all who were different from each other in one way or another. But they pretty much used their power to impede or roll back these reforms. I wonder, have you reflected on what motivated so many of these popes to resist change and embrace practices out of step with the lives so many Catholics were leading?
SHENON: You know, there's that famous aphorism about how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That was said in reaction to the First Vatican Council. It was said in reaction to the power of the pope, that when these men were offered absolute power, they were determined to hold onto it. And, you know, so many of the reforms that Vatican II was supposed to inspire, so many of the reforms that the world's Catholics had sought, the move to openness and tolerance, meant popes had to give up power. And what we've learned is that popes are very resistant to giving up power. They want to - they appreciate the fact that they are essentially absolute monarchs. And as a result, many of the reforms that a lot of Catholics considered just sort of common sense have never been enacted.
DAVIES: We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Philip Shenon. He is a veteran investigative reporter. His new book is "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church." He'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies. And this is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest is veteran investigative reporter Philip Shenon. His latest book is a critical examination of the leadership of the seven Catholic popes in living memory. It begins with Pope Pius XII - remembered for not speaking out against the crimes of Nazi Germany - then moves to Pope John XXIII, whose ambitious effort to reform the church in the Second Vatican Council set the framework for power struggles and doctrinal debates that would last for decades. Shenon's book is "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church."
I wanted to return to a moment with Pope Paul VI, who was the one after John XXIII. It was in the '60s and '70s he was the pope, and he had affirmed the church's ban on birth control, despite the recommendation of a commission that had been established and - which favored relaxing the rules. And this happened in the late '60s when there were a lot of sweeping cultural changes, including the sexual revolution, which certainly troubled church conservatives.
And in 1975, Pope Paul was so angry about the criticism he received about the birth control issue and the rejection of his views that he directed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - that's a unit within the Vatican - to release a long declaration on sexual morality, which had hardened condemnations of extramarital sex, masturbation even, homosexuality. That really prompted some revelations in the press about Paul's personal life. What happened?
SHENON: After the 1968 decree on birth control, where he keeps the ban in place, he really feels under siege for the rest of his papacy. He feels sort of openly mocked and defied. He sort of becomes fixated on the idea of this wanton sinfulness going on all around the world, much of it tied to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. He asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - which is the doctrinal agency of the Vatican - to prepare a document that will sort of establish once and for all the church's views on sexual morality.
The document is produced in 1975 and is a condemnation of masturbation and promiscuity, and much of it is focused on homosexuality and what the Vatican sees as the sinfulness of homosexuality. Actually, I think it declares that homosexuals are intrinsically disordered. I think that was the wording. And I don't think Paul foresaw the sort of chain of events that would follow, but very quickly, he became engulfed in a scandal in Italy in which people were talking openly about rumors that he himself was gay.
An Italian news magazine published an article by a prominent gay French writer, in which the writer said he was well aware of the fact that the pope was gay, that he had a boyfriend in Milan. And this became a huge sensation in Italy and, I think, mortified Paul VI. He was apparently just catatonic with fear that he was going to be involved in this humiliating scandal over his own sexuality.
DAVIES: You know, and you note that this raised the question among some whether the church's failure to address sexual abuse among the clergy was influenced at least in part by the fact that high-ranking church officials themselves had their own closely guarded sexual secrets.
SHENON: You know, the priesthood, in many ways, is - it's a brotherhood in which, you know, priests and bishops look upon these other men as essentially their family. They have no wife and kids. They have no partner and kids. These other men are their family, and they need to protect their family members. And, you know, I think the research that's available to us shows an awful lot of priests do violate their celibacy vows. A lot of bishops and cardinals violate their celibacy vows, and they are eager to cover up for one another. And I think there was a concern that Paul and other popes - you know, concerned that their own sexual histories might be questioned - went out of their ways to try to protect other churchmen from revelations about their own sexual activity.
DAVIES: You note that there's been some studies by former clergy on this issue who have, you know, some professional training in mental health. I mean, there was Father Kennedy, who was a Loyola psychologist, and then later a former priest and monk, Richard Sipe, who became a psychotherapist and treated clergyman. Both of them kind of mused upon what the celibacy vow that is imposed on clergy, the psychological effect that it had that might have, you know, played a role in the abuse scandal. What did they conclude?
SHENON: The American church hierarchy really ignored questions about sexual misconduct or sexual crimes by priests for generations. But in the 1970s, the American bishops conference in the U.S. produced a study that found that American priests, a large percentage of them were emotionally stunted, that they had sort of the emotional development of a teenager, and, you know, there was concern that this was linked to the doctrine of priestly celibacy, that priests became so obsessed with suppressing their sexuality that they weren't developing into fully formed emotionally healthy human beings.
DAVIES: You know, the scandal of sexual abuse in the church has been widely reported. And I think it's fair to say from a reading of your book that none of the popes that you write about confronted this terrible problem honestly and forcefully. All of them, in varying degrees, protected predators. In your research, did you come across any documents on this that really surprised you?
SHENON: I think the single most eye-popping document I came across in all my years of research was a letter written in 1999 by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, arguably the most powerful churchman in America to Pope John Paul II. And to back up a bit, Cardinal O'Connor had just been informed that he was about to die. He just had brain surgery. He had only weeks to live. And one of his final acts on this Earth was to write this letter in late 1999 that was a dire warning to the pope that he must not promote Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who was then based in Newark, New Jersey. He must not be promoted to any higher office in the church because of widespread, well-known evidence that he was a sexual predator.
And O'Connor offers quite explicit information about McCarrick, including the fact that he liked to invite young men to his home for dinner and then insists that they sleep with him in his bed. Even though this letter is presented to the pope by a respected senior churchman in the United States, Pope John Paul ignores this warning from Cardinal O'Connor and ignores warnings from lots of other senior Vatican officials who also know about McCarrick and still promotes him to membership in the College of Cardinals and makes him archbishop of Washington, D.C., and McCarrick then goes on for decades to continue to be involved in sexual misconduct with young men and boys.
DAVIES: You know, his case also brings up something which kind of shocked me when I read it in your book, was that it's perfectly acceptable for bishops in the Vatican to accept large cash gifts. And in fact, there was one, Father McCarrick himself, when he was under suspicion of sexual abuse, gave a $250,000 check to - I believe it was the newly elected pope then, Benedict XVI. Is this right?
SHENON: This has been going on for centuries, that bishops and cardinals in Rome can accept large cash gifts. And there's always been concern that essentially, this is a form of bribery that you could buy the favor of a bishop or cardinal by giving him a big gift or by giving him a trip or by giving him the renovation of his apartment, as often happened. And McCarrick was well-known in Rome as a man with access to a lot of cash. He was one of the best fundraisers in the church. He gave a lot of big gifts to bishops and cardinals. And certainly, it appears that he's giving these gifts in part to buy their cooperation and to allow himself to advance within the church, to prevent any sort of investigation of his sexual misconduct.
He has a personal charity fund that raises millions of dollars. And the single largest check ever written from his personal charity account was a check for a quarter million dollars to Pope Benedict shortly after Pope Benedict was elected in 2005. And this comes at a particularly important moment for McCarrick because he's now facing mandatory retirement age of 75. He wants to remain in his post. And so the concern is that he made this big secret gift to the pope in hopes of staying in place in Washington. And in fact, that's what happened. He was then allowed to remain in his post for another couple of years. I should point out that Benedict and his aides deny that was any sort of quid pro quo. But McCarrick remained in place in Washington, a decision made by the pope shortly after McCarrick presents the pope with a quarter million dollar.
DAVIES: Want to take one more break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Philip Shenon, a veteran investigative reporter. His new book is "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church." We'll continue our conversation after this break. This is FRESH AIR.
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DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with veteran investigative reporter Philip Shenon. His latest book is an examination of the last seven Catholic popes, those in living memory. It is titled "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church."
Well, I want to talk about Pope Francis, the current pope who, as you and I record this, is suffering from pneumonia. Hope he does well and recovers. He was elected in 2013, and he took the name of Francis of Assisi, the 13th century cleric who wore rags and focused on the needs of the poor. It's interesting that when he took office, the initial impression kind of reminds you of John XXIII, the guy who initiated the second Vatican council, in that Francis sort of rejected some of the finer trappings of the office. You want to tell us about that?
SHENON: The comparison was made pretty early on that Francis was much like John XXIII in that he was talking about sort of an end to the closed fortress authoritarian church. He wanted to move the church toward, you know, declarations of mercy and tolerance. He wanted to put the church out of the business of heresy hunting. And he also, I think, delighted millions of Catholics by sort of rejecting all the sort of pompous trappings of the papacy. He refused and continues to refuse to live in the papal palace. He lives in a small guesthouse. He refused, you know, the big Mercedes sedan that popes had traditionally used. By giving up the trappings of power, he's got a moral legitimacy that has a lot of appeal to millions of Catholics.
DAVIES: So, you know, what about some of the rules that had been in place for so long that had been controversial, like the refusal to provide Communion to Catholics who had been divorced, giving, you know, sacraments to gay couples, that kind of thing? What's actually changed?
SHENON: Little has changed in terms of formal doctrine. And I think one great concern about Pope Francis is since he hasn't made these sort of substantial changes in church teachings, a future pope could just reverse them as easily as Francis put them into place. But Francis has gone out of his way to reach out to gay Catholics, to divorced Catholics. He's made it much easier for divorced couples to get annulments that allow them to remarry. He's also allowed them to receive Communion, which had been denied to divorced Catholics for centuries. He made it possible a couple of years ago for priests to offer blessings at gay weddings, even though that decision created an awful lot of scandal among, you know, conservative Catholics around the world.
DAVIES: And what about the attitude towards birth control and abortion? Any change there?
SHENON: In the course of his career in the church, Francis has often talked of abortion as being a sin. But he's also talked of the need to offer the women seeking abortions a sense of mercy and forgiveness. In terms of birth control, I must say, given what I now know of this history, I find it remarkable he didn't lift the ban on birth control because it would be easy to do. It would be embraced by most of the most influential theologians in the church. But for whatever reason, it remains in place to this day.
DAVIES: You know, one of the ways that a pope has impact, apart from what he says about doctrine and practice is who he appoints. I mean, there's a lot of authority. They appoint cardinals. And I'm wondering - it seems you think that there might be some liberalizing impact of his appointments within the Vatican.
DAVIES: appointments within the Vatican, right?
SHENON: After Pope Benedict died a couple of years ago, Francis moved quickly to move out a lot of churchmen who were seen to be associated with Benedict, you know, archconservatives. And, you know, Francis selects everybody. He is the absolute monarch. He can choose all of the personnel around him. Over the course of his papacy, he has remade the College of Cardinals, which is the body that will choose his successor. You know, 80% of the cardinals who will vote in the next conclave to choose the next pope are men who were put there by Francis. So I think there's a feeling that even if Francis hasn't been the dramatic reformer people had hoped he would be, he's put in place in the College of Cardinals a group of men who will choose a successor who may be - who may have had the same agenda as Francis and may feel empowered to do much more to achieve it.
DAVIES: Does Francis have a better record in terms of dealing with the sexual abuse crisis within the church than his predecessors?
SHENON: I think he faces a lot of justifiable criticism for having not done nearly enough about the child sexual abuse crisis. He had a checkered record on that in Argentina. I think we have several instances now when it's clear he was very slow to act against churchmen known to be sexual predators, including men who would be described as his friends. And I think there's been a general sense of disappointment that he hasn't done much more on that front.
DAVIES: You know, the pope and the Vatican have been portrayed in various films and movies over the years. Recently, we had the movie "Conclave," starring Ralph Fiennes. How do you find the portrayals of popes and the Vatican in TV and movies that we've seen?
SHENON: You can tell that the screenwriter had a lot of fun because there are several cardinals who seem to be based on real cardinals, and elements of their battling in the film reflect real battling that has gone on within the Vatican bureaucracy in recent years. And, of course, you know, a centerpiece of the film is the question of sexual abuse and sexual misconduct. And, you know, we know those are battles that are fought - those are debates that are held within the Vatican all the time.
DAVIES: You know, in the movie "Conclave," there were these details about how the cardinals are truly kept isolated and unable to communicate. You know, windows are covered. Cellphones, they're not available. Is that true?
SHENON: That's all true. I say they got the pageantry, they got the logistics right. When the cardinals gather for a conclave, their cellphones are taken away from them. There's electronic jamming equipment so they can't communicate with the outside world. The shutters are sealed. They really are supposed to have no communication with the outside world. It appears they often are able to establish some sort of communication, but they are supposedly forbidden from doing it.
DAVIES: There are there caucuses among like-minded cardinals on the side?
SHENON: Absolutely. It's a bit like any Congress or parliament you've ever heard of. You know, there's lobbying. There's pressure. There are factions that square off against one another. You know, it's a political place. The pope is an absolute monarch, but he is elected through a democratic process of debating among the world's cardinals.
DAVIES: You know, in this book, you point out a lot of hypocrisy and corruption in the church, and some may regard the book, or maybe this interview, as anti-Catholic. After all of these years of research, how do you regard the value, or harm, of this institution?
SHENON: Whatever your religious background, you have to admire much of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The message of mercy and tolerance is a noble one. You don't have to be a Christian to see the wisdom of what Jesus Christ offered to the world, you know, 2,000 years ago. That there is this institution that claims to act in his name, I think, would surprise the savior and would surprise his disciples and apostles. And I think they would be enormously disappointed by how often the Roman Catholic Church fails to live up to the message of the Gospel and how often it has allowed itself to be corrupted by very, you know, human weaknesses.
DAVIES: And yet it endures. I mean, more than a billion people are still there - right? - presumably getting some comfort and value from it.
SHENON: Absolutely. And, you know, I say, 1.3 billion people will wake up tomorrow to identify themselves as Catholics, and they will continue to have their lives influenced in all sorts of ways by the message that the Vatican offers. There are still, though, many millions of Catholics, and especially Catholic women, who really have no say in their church, who are desperate to see the church continue to open up and be a more tolerant and merciful place in line with the message of the Gospels.
DAVIES: Well, Philip Shenon, thank you so much for speaking with us.
SHENON: Thanks, Dave.
DAVIES: Philip Shenon is a veteran investigative reporter who spent 20 years with The New York Times. His new book is "Jesus Wept: Seven Popes And The Battle For The Soul Of The Catholic Church." Coming up, John Powers reviews a new autobiographical novel by Brigitte Giraud which looks back at the accident that killed her husband. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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