To use sports metaphors, Cardinals Siri and Benelli in October 1978 were the Nicklaus and Palmer, or the Ali and Frazier, or the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird of the Catholic Church’s cardinals in the late 1970s. If you prefer a political metaphor, they may have been Nixon and Kennedy. However you describe it, they had become the true intellectual heavyweights and competitors within the College of Cardinals, and they defined the opposing personal, philosophical, and theological poles of the debates that swirled within the Church at that moment.
And the debates were real in theological terms with Cardinal Siri, the archconservative, feeling many of the reforms originating with John XXIII’s Vatican Councils were unwelcome an
d harmful to the church. Cardinal Benelli, by comparison, called by one author an “aggressive moderate,” felt the reforms should continue and be further institutionalized. Pope Paul VI had felt the same way in the early years of his papacy, and Benelli had been one of his most loyal lieutenants within the Curia, and to no small degree, when sent to be Archbishop of Florence, had been placed on a pathway that replicated Pope Paul’s.
The constituencies around Siri and Benelli reflected unusual alliances. Although Siri was more a pastoral presence, his strong theological views gave him considerably greater common ground with the cardinals of the curia than would have been common, and was certainly not the case with Cardinal Luciani as described in Chapter 1. Benelli, by contrast, had considerable experience in the curia serving his mentor Pope Paul. But, Benelli’s strong personality and occasional use of authoritarian tactics had not made him popular with the other curial cardinals. Thus the normal divisions between pastoral verses curial cardinals were rather muddied in how the alliances formed for the October conclave.
Interestingly, although Siri was considerably older than Benelli in 1978, he lived a much longer life passing away in 1989 at the age of eighty-three. Had he been elected pope in 1978, he would have reigned for nearly a decade. Benelli, by contrast, died of a heart condition in 1982 at the age of sixty-one, so had he been selected his reign would have been a relatively short four years. Moreover, the rumored deal being worked between Siri and Benelli, for the latter to throw his support to the former in exchange for returning to Rome as the Vatican Secretary of State and heir apparent would have been a clear victory for Siri, as the deal would have never been fulfilled. In Chapter 3, when introducing Benelli, his heart condition is hinted at as he climbs the steps to the top of the Santa Maria Basilica in Florence.
As indicated in the section of Chapter 3 introducing Siri, there were consistent rumor that he had been elected pope in the conclaves of 1958 and 1963, but somehow his election caused a recount resulting in his “un-election.” There is no reason to believe Siri was ever elected as Pope Gregory XVII, but given the frequency with which the rumor seemed to circulate, I decided to include it.
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