Roamer's Column

It has been a week of endless fascination that had its genesis on the morning when the most communicative spiritual leader since St Paul failed to impart his Easter blessing from the most famous window in the world. During the days that followed, billions watched, even if they did not see, the dying of Pope John Paul until yesterday week when, that evening, he uttered the word "Amen" and went tranquilly to the Lord he had served so energetically, so profoundly, so totally.

Had he completed his mission he mused in his will? Few would deny that he had, but as long as there is a world the papal mission is unending. What is certain about Pope John Paul is that the world he left behind concluded that he had also left a void. Paradoxically, that emptiness is filled by him. We knew he had died but somehow many could not easily accept that, although we looked at the frail figure into which he had turned, that skier, canoeist, climber, that peripatetic traveller who had criss-crossed the world proclaiming Christ - although we looked at the frail figure he had become and wondered for how much longer he could move among us, when the announcement of his death finally reached us, his merciful release came as a shock.

As last week unfolded and the world's attention settled on the dead priest - for a priest is what essentially he was - as he lay in state in St Peter's basilica in Rome; as we watched what seemed to be the world filing past him paying its last respects, we knew that the Mass offered on his behalf last Friday would be something grand, we did not think the ceremonial would be all that impressive. After all, those of us over 30 had seen it all before, twice in 1978 alone. But it was; somebody described it perfectly as a splendid fusion of choreography and spontaneity, the former born of tradition, the latter of a congregation gathered in the embrace of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's imposing semi-circualr colonnades on St Peter's Square (and beyond them) and around the obelisk brought to Rome by the Emperor Caligula, to express its feelings about Pope John Paul the Great.

The choreography, as we well knew would be the case, left nothing to chance. The spontaneity - well, there it was from the moment the clapping began at the mention of his name in Cardinal Ratzinger's homily to the time when the crowd started to chant "Santo! Santo!" The cry was itself taken up by the more well-known "Giovanni Paolo!" In a deep sense he was being canonised by a proclamation of the faithful. This we had not been prepared for, nor for that last gesture by the bearers as they presented the coffin, urbi et orbi, before placing it in the crypt of the basilica. Thither, visiting dignitaries as various as President Bush and the man targeted by the American President as the man presiding over a country on "the axis of evil", President Khatami, Chancellor Schröder and President Karzai, President Lula of Brazil and Prince Charles and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

What did these make of it all? Where had they ever seen crowds of that size gathered not for a political manifestation, nor for a revolution but for a display of profound and deeply felt respect? As if that manifestation were not enough, how many of them had been prepared for the magnificence within - that 16th century replacement by Bramante of Constantine's fourth century basilica which had itself replaced the original burial shrine built by Pope Anacletus?

Dwarfed by that baroque interior signed, so to speak, by Bernini, awed by the Pietà, sculpted by the 24-year-old artist Michelangelo, and by so much else besides, what did they make of the place as they walked in to Pope John Paul's final resting place? And how, as a matter of interest, did the Italian authorities ingest all those people let alone look after the security of so many heads of state, without a hitch? (God knows the finger-crossing and nail-biting that must have gone on behind the scenes).

Not unnaturally, people's thoughts before and after the ceremony must have turned to what would happen tomorrow week, when the cardinals meet in conclave. In their endless self-indulgence, the media have been touting papabiles for some time now. They was wrong in 1978 (twice) and are hedging their bets this time round by turning out more names and faces the colour of the continents. When the announcement "Habemus Papam" is made, on the 18th (unlikely, but who knows?) or the next day or the day after that, the cardinals and we will continue to pray that the Spirit will no doubt guide him in the direction of continuity and innovation.

Numbers have been brought into the calculations some were making as to who Pope John Paul's successor will be. Bishop Tutu from South Africa somewhat clumsily expressed himself in favour of a Pope from Africa. Others mentioned South America as the likely location from which the new Pope would be plucked. Others still, Asia, that vast and amorphous conglomerate of lands and cultures. Many were cagey about Europe, once the cradle of Christendom. The child has grown since then and seems to be going through a mid-life crisis, spiritually. Will there be one more European before God starts playing on the black or coloured notes?

I have one in mind but prudence prevents me giving his name, so if I may be irreverent, let him be in pectore. Watch this space.

But let this piece end on a slightly sour note. It was a surprise to many that the diocese of Malta and Gozo made not the slightest attempt to organise an open-air Mass when the youth of Malta and the not so young could have gathered, as they did in so many countries, to celebrate Pope John Paul's death-life. We owed the priest who visited us twice when it had twice been honoured by the presence of this man. We owed that to the man who visited us twice.

At the noonday Mass I attended at Stella Maris parish church, the priest delivered an excellent homily on the morrow of Pope John Paul's death, skilfully weaving the Pope's life into the liturgy of the Word. I understand that there were churches where this was not the case, where the Pope's name was not even mentioned. If this be so it is a sad reflection on our sense of occasion.

The new Iraq

It was generally agreed that the election of Jalal Talabani as President of Iraq was one for the books. There was also a sense of frisson created by the knowledge that among the scores of millions of people who watched the new President of Iraq on television were Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali Hasan Majid, alias Chemical Ali. The only difference was that we were in our sitting rooms, they were in their prison cells.

Did either of them, I wondered, think back to that hot July day in 1979 when Saddam Hussein finally rid himself of every serious opponent in the land and added the Presidency of Iraq to his chairmanship of the Revolutionary Command Council, the premiership and his command of the army? What a difference, the rest of us thought, between Saddam's ascent to power and the process that finally placed a Kurdish leader as head of Iraq with a Shi'ite and a Sunni as deputy presidents, a Sunni Speaker of the Iraqi parliament and, a day or two later, a Shi'ite prime minister.

What a step forward for the new Iraq. What signals it is sending out to the Arab world and to those so-called liberals in the West who maintain, illiberally, that Muslims cannot by definition be encouraged into democracy. Here, once again, the American President is being proved right, his critics show up as whingers. One day I will summon the energy to jot down their Cassandraesque utterances about another Vietnam and a million dead?

Imagine though, for I digressed, Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali in their cells. What passed through their minds as they watched? Did Chemical Ali choke as so many thousands of Kurds did when he deployed chemical weapons against them in 1988? How did both prisoners relate what they saw with their Big Day in 1979 when the outgoing President Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr appeared on television and declared he had for some time been talking with "my Comrades in the Command, particularly cherished Comrade Saddam Hussein, about my health, which no longer allows me to shoulder the responsibilities with which the Command has honoured me"?

Bakr's health had not prevented him working out a union between Iraq and Syria which was almost ready for the signatures of the two Presidents and Bakr aware that time was not on his side. Indeed, he wrote to the Syrian President to speed things up... "there is a current here which is anxious to kill the union in the bud before it bears fruit". But he was too late.

The story is graphically told in Con Coughlin's biography on Saddam The Secret Life, as is Saddam's ruthless ascent to power. Any surviving opposition to him had first to be removed. And first to go was Mr Mashadi, the secretary-general of the Revolutionary Command Council. He was given a rough time and was later to die in the care of doctors appointed for the job by Saddam Hussein.

Did Hussein and Chemical Ali remember how Mashadi was asked to provide a list of names and that if he resisted the request his interrogators would rape his wife and daughters before killing them and he, the gen. sec. would be executed as an Israeli spy? And as they watched the inauguration ceremony they never thought in their wildest nightmares they would be following on television from a prison cell, did Saddam's own inauguration day on July 22 rush out from memory - the thousand delegates who attended, his denunciation of traitors in their midst, Mashadi's dramatic exposure of the conspirators and his own confession to overthrow Saddam and Bakr?

Saddam ended his inauguration speech by declaring: "The people whose names I am going to read out should repeat the party slogan and leave the hall". Those whose names are not read out were understandably relieved. In the time-honoured manner of men who know that they are face to face with a dictator they rise to their feet and chant "Long live Saddam"! Who brought the meeting to a close with the declaration: "We don't need Stalinist methods to deal with traitors here". Twenty-two conspirators were sentenced to death through "democratic executions".

Did any of this pass through the ex-dictator's mind? Probably not. They must have been too bewildered by events in the capital city of Iraq where a transitional government was now in place and a Constitution was being worked out by Shias, Kurds and Sunnis in time for a general election next December. Eat your heart out, Pilger.

Charity begins with truth

What follows will not make an ounce of sense unless you first visit the correspondence columns (page 15). There, Dr Pierre Mallia claims that in a piece I wrote three weeks ago I implied he was in favour of embryocide, a word that has not found favour with him. I did no such thing. What I did do was to indicate how slippery the slope of in vitro fertilisation had turned out to be and the sheer degree of embryocide that has since taken place.

In an article he contributed to this newspaper last month, "Biotechnology legislation and IVF", Dr Mallia asked readers not to forget "the sterilisation laws (of 'imbeciles' and paupers) which in the name of morality haunted the beginning of this century in most Catholic countries engendering eugenics". I expressed surprise at this - why bring in the word Catholic at all? - and asked him to identify which these "Catholic countries led by Catholic-inspired governments and with the blessing of the Catholic Church" were. He named not one.

Instead he now informs us that "in fairness to the Church, Casti Connubii put a final stop to sterilisation and eugenic voices" and refers to "French Catholics" who had been casting around "to find common ground with the Eugenicists". He quotes a French Jesuit theologian who found sterilisation repugnant but asserted that "in principle Catholic morality (sic) does not condemn all eugenic science". And that what he calls "this neo-Lamarckian style of eugenics fitted in well with the Catholic doctrine (what Catholic doctrine?) in Brazil". And anyway, even after that encyclical, Dr Mallia goes on, "the Catholic Church supported the call for adequate prenatal examinations". This is intellectually flabby. Why should not the Church support such a call?

Significantly, Dr Mallia does not deal with the main thrust of what I actually did write, that in his article discussing the IVF factor in the context of local legislation he did not refer to the IVF factor at all, or to what I called the "the status of the embryo or embryos brought to an initial stage of life in the laboratory and which remain unused, frozen for all intents and purposes for eternity, or until they are up-ended into a receptacle that is in turn confined to the fires".

Dr Mallia conveniently side-steps another concern I expressed. What happened to the report on IVF drawn up by a panel of experts ten years ago? What has been happening in this field in Malta? What precautions are taken to safeguard the existence of extra embryos? What arrangements if any have been made, as was alleged in Il-Gens as far back as last September, between Maltese doctors and those in other countries to offer services that are illegal in those countries?