A Merciful Moralist

Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi is a conservative moral theologian, longtime seminary professor and leading Roman Catholic spokesman on bioethics. Not surprisingly, he firmly upholds the Vatican line against artificial birth control.

Yet, since becoming archbishop of Genoa in 1995, he has quietly tolerated a local Catholic mission that hands out condoms to prostitutes walking the city’s ancient dockside streets so they don’t catch and spread the virus that causes AIDS.

The contradiction is awkward for the 66-year-old prelate, according to people close to him. But it reveals the prudence of a man now touted as Italy’s leading hope to reclaim the papacy after Polish-born Pope John Paul II is gone.

Tettamanzi is an unyielding moralist in the pulpit and on paper, his followers say, but a merciful pastor in the field. In his writings, he opposes the use of condoms, even to check the spread of AIDS. But he also believes strongly that Catholics should mobilize to help the needy.

Such are the choices facing a scholar who left his ivory tower of theological certitudes to become, late in life, the chief evangelizer and confessor for this rough-edged port city. He has opted so far to be more the activist than the moralist.

It’s not that he has softened his theology; he just seems less interested in imposing it on his flock. Instead, he is struggling to get ordinary Catholics more active in the church, which is short of priests here, and in serving the community.

An energetic, roly-poly man barely more than 5 feet tall, he seems constantly in motion, exhorting taller, younger Catholics to be good Samaritans.

“The Lord is present in all those who care for the infirm,” he said in a recent homily during his annual Mass for the Sick. “Not just doctors and nurses, but anyone with a bit of compassion who can give them a moment of time, energy and affection.”

Tettamanzi’s critics dismiss him as a careerist without original ideas--a theologian who has risen to the rank of cardinal by constantly parroting the pope or rebuking the pope’s critics, and who was plopped into Genoa’s archbishopric as a proving ground for higher office.

But nearly everyone who meets him agrees he has passed that test. The Genoese say he is adapting well for an out-of-towner, thanks to his charm, capacity for schmoozing in their dialect and openness to debate all comers.

His papal prospects depend on a widely anticipated scenario in which the cardinals electing John Paul’s successor would want a more cautious, flexible and conciliatory leader for their divided flock--perhaps someone like the beloved Pope John XXIII, who served four decades ago and with whom Tettamanzi is often compared. Italians love to propagate the idea that such tolerance and finesse are part of the national character.

No one here sounds at all surprised or offended by the cardinal’s willingness to look the other way while Father Andrea Gallo’s social workers park a van near Genoa’s port every other Tuesday and unload hundreds of condoms.

Gallo, a forceful, cigar-chomping priest 13 years the cardinal’s senior, works to get prostitutes, most of them immigrants from Eastern Europe and North Africa, into homes of Catholic families who help them find other employment. His mission of mercy, which predates Tettamanzi’s arrival here, offers condoms free of charge for those still walking the street.

The priest says the cardinal has told him privately that the two of them must “search together for the truth” about the morality of those condoms. Meanwhile, the priest adds, “he respects my work and supports it with his silence.”

Not exactly, says Father Luca Bucci, head of Tettamanzi’s pastoral health ministry.

“Father Gallo does not always work in harmony with ecclesiastical authority,” Bucci says. “The cardinal is very understanding and does not take action against this person, but . . . it is hoped that this person will grow to see the light.”

Tettamanzi has been morally conservative and socially progressive for as long as anyone can remember.

Born in 1934 to a lower-middle-class family in the farming village of Renate, just north of Milan, he followed many of his male classmates from primary school to the seminary.

He became a priest in 1957 and spent the next 32 years teaching future priests or running seminaries in Milan and Rome. He was bishop of Ancona and secretary general of the Italian Bishops Conference before his assignment to Genoa. His mother, Dorina, has lived long enough to see him become a cardinal in 1998, and is now 90.

Gifted at Explaining Church Teachings

Tettamanzi has written 44 books and essays, none of them autobiographical. He guards details of his personal life--he declined to be interviewed for this article--because, his friends say, he does not want to deflect attention from his teachings.

His doctoral dissertation, inspired by liberal French theologians, advocated an expanded role for lay Catholics in the church, a reformist idea later embraced by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. Another of his professors was the German moral theologian Josef Fuchs, then relatively conservative.

But Fuchs shifted into what is known as the personalist school of moral theology--those who argue that an individual’s conscience has a role in determining what is right or wrong. Tettamanzi remained identified with the magisterial school, which preaches unchanging moral truth. The two camps have sparred over issues that include the birth control ban, which Pope Paul VI upheld in 1968.

Tettamanzi “was always more interested in explaining the teachings of the church than subjecting those teachings to critical reasoning and provoking debate,” said Father Sergio Bastianel, dean of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

The young instructor was such a gifted explainer, capable of conveying complex ideas in plain but elegant language, that he found himself in demand by bishops, who invited him all over Italy to help retrain their priests. The glimpse of everyday life gained by helping those priests hear confessions, colleagues say, tempered his views.

“His genius is the ability to give you a sense of certainty about the doctrine of the church while remaining open on questions that should remain open,” says Monsignor Diego Coletti, who studied under Tettamanzi and is now bishop of Livorno. “He is not closed-minded.”

Tettamanzi isn’t so liberal toward some fellow theologians. He feuded openly with Fuchs over his former professor’s dissent from Vatican teachings. When 63 Italian colleagues signed a 1989 critique of John Paul’s intolerance of opposing views, Tettamanzi attacked them in print for “scandalizing the faithful.”

A month later he was elevated to bishop.

A quieter promotion followed: He was summoned to Rome to ghostwrite part of John Paul’s 1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor”--”The Splendor of Truth”--a landmark assault on moral relativism.

Last year Tettamanzi completed his own landmark work, “New Christian Bioethics,” a 653-page catalog of Catholic teaching on such issues as abortion, euthanasia, birth control, organ transplants, embryo research and cloning. Microsoft teamed with Piemme, the Italian publisher, to put it on the Internet.

The book is meant to evolve as theology tries to keep pace with science. Readers are invited to pose moral questions to the book’s Web site, (https://www.bioeticacristiana.it), so the author’s answers can be incorporated into future editions.

One of the 300 letters received so far is signed by “A Confused Christian” who, burdened by five children, says he and his wife have given up on ineffective, church-prescribed “natural” methods of birth control.

Tettamanzi’s answer underscores his dual approach to sexual morality: Cling to a controversial teaching--the taboo on contraceptives--but go easy on the transgressor.

After congratulating the man for all those children, the cardinal suggests that the couple may keep using artificial birth control only if they understand that it’s morally wrong and move gradually to phase it out. He also offers this advice: Give “natural” methods another try, this time with a personal instructor, and pray a lot.