Cardinal Angelo Sodano
Powerful former Vatican Secretary of State who found himself accused of shielding abusers
CARDINAL ANGELO SODANO, the former Vatican Secretary of State who has died aged 94, may have been little known in the English-speaking world, but he was for decades one of the most important prelates in the Catholic Church.
His influence and power, though discreet, were pervasive, and all the stronger for being nearly invisible. Every scandal in the Church, and there have been many, either led back to Sodano or had a Sodano component, yet he was never brought to book. Like the fictional Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca, “before him all Rome trembled”. Unlike Scarpia, Sodano lived to tell the tale.
Sodano had great admiration for Julius II, the most powerful of Renaissance popes, and the last to lead a papal army into battle. He preached at a Mass to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Pope Julius’ coronation in Savona in 2003, praising the Pope for defending the Church against the kingdoms of the world.
It was not fanciful to imagine that Sodano saw himself in a similar role.
Angelo Raffaele Sodano was born at Isola d’asti in Piedmont on November 23 1927. His family were prosperous middle-class landowners, and his father sat in the Chamber of Deputies as a Christian Democrat from 1948 to 1963, at a time when the Christian Democrat party was more or less all-powerful in the Italian state.
Angelo was one of six children in a devoutly Catholic family, and after leaving school enrolled in his local seminary, becoming a priest in 1950. He later taught theology in Asti and then went to Rome to gain a doctorate in theology and also in Canon Law. Thus qualified, he joined the papal diplomatic service in 1959.
He was posted to successive nunciatures in Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile in junior positions, in 1968 returning to Rome, where he worked in what was then called the Council for Public Affairs of the Church, which dealt with the Church’s foreign affairs.
During this period, he was part of diplomatic missions to Romania, Hungary and East Germany. In 1978 he was consecrated as Archbishop and sent back to Chile, this time as nuncio. He held the post for ten years, at a time when Chile was ruled by Augusto Pinochet and the Church had to steer a difficult course between the dictatorship and its opponents.
It was in Chile that Sodano first met Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican priest who had founded an order, along robustly traditional lines, called the Legionaries of Christ. Maciel gained Sodano’s confidence and, thanks to his influence, overcame the opposition of the Chilean bishops who had been trying to keep the Legionaries out of the country.
In 1987 Pope John Paul II visited Chile, and the next year he recalled Sodano to Rome, making him Secretary for Relations with States, in effect the Vatican’s foreign minister. Two years later John Paul II gave Sodano the top job in the Vatican, Secretary of State, creating him a Cardinal soon afterwards.
Sodano was now the most important person in the Church after the Pope. He was constantly feted by the Legionaries of Christ and their founder Maciel, and was a keen supporter of Maciel’s project to found a pontifical university in Rome for the Legionaries.
A frequent visitor to Legionary headquarters, Sodano was also on the receiving end of Maciel’s (a fabled fundraiser’s) generosity. While it is customary to give a visiting prelate a stipend, $10,000 for a talk to the Legionaries on one occasion and $5,000 on another were exceptional sums.
Maciel, a seasoned buyer of favours, went further; one of the consultants on his grandiose university building scheme was Andrea Sodano, the Cardinal’s nephew. Some Legionaries overseeing the project complained to Maciel that Andrea Sodano’s work was late and poorly done; they were reluctant to pay his invoices. Maciel yelled: “Pay him! You pay him!”
In 1998 a group of men complained that they had been molested by Maciel. Such allegations had surfaced decades before and been suppressed.
This time, horrified by the stories of Maciel’s financial corruption, multiple illegitimate families, drug abuse, and sexual abuse of seminarians and his own children, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger undertook to investigate and finally bring Macial to book; but it was not until Ratzinger became Pope in 2005 that Maciel, then in his eighties, was sentenced to a life of prayer and penance.
Justice was delayed, it was felt, because of Sodano’s protection. Just before the sentence was pronounced, Sodano said: “There is no canonical procedure in course nor is one foreseen for the future with regard to Father Maciel.” This was technically true, as Maciel had been sentenced without trial, but it allowed Maciel’s supporters to claim that he was innocent.
Despite the fact that Sodano had been Maciel’s point man in the Vatican, his career did not suffer. He had been elected Vice Dean of the College of Cardinals on November 30 2002. The Dean was Cardinal Ratzinger, which meant that Sodano had to fulfil the role of Dean in the Papal election after Ratzinger was elected Pope.
Despite the fact that all offices in the Vatican lapse on the death of a Pope, Ratzinger, as Benedict XVI, reconfirmed Cardinal Sodano as Secretary of State and also approved his election as Dean of the College of Cardinals.
It was not until 15 September 2006 that Benedict accepted his resignation as Secretary of State, on grounds of age, Sodano then being well past the usual retirement age of 75. But Sodano remained the Dean of the Sacred College.
As the scandal of child abuse once more threatened to engulf the Church and even besmirch the reputation of the papacy, Sodano did not mince words in a sermon preached at Easter in 2010 before Pope Benedict: “The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers.”
Victims of clerical sex abuse interpreted the “petty gossip” remark as a highly inappropriate reference to their complaints and were duly outraged. Sodano, with his view of a fortress Church surrounded by enemies, seemed unaware that the abuse scandal had been made much worse by his patronage of Maciel.
The “petty gossip” remark and the storm that followed led many to call for Sodano’s resignation as Dean and retirement from public life.
William Oddie, writing in the Catholic Herald, remarked: “Cardinal Sodano appears to have an exceptionally sinister record of shielding abusers, particularly eminent ones, which goes back many years.”
In an unguarded conversation with journalists, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna revealed Sodano’s hand in another scandal. In 1995 Herman Groer, then Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, had been forced to resign after allegations that he had abused boys and young men.
Groer retired to a monastery, but three years later, when fresh allegations emerged, he disappeared from public life completely, dying in 2003. It was thought that Groer had abused 2,000 men and boys, but he had never had to answer for his crimes: according to Schoenborn, the then Cardinal Ratzinger had moved to have Groer investigated, but Sodano had stopped this.
Pope Benedict called both cardinals together for a rebuke, pointing out that only the Pope could discipline cardinals. But the story about Groer was never denied. Shortly afterwards, tired out by unending scandals, Benedict XVI resigned the papacy. Sodano, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, oversaw the ceremonies leading up to the conclave, in which, however, as he was over 80, he was unable to vote.
Sodano was not side-lined in the reign of Pope Francis, and though very old he continued as Dean and also participated in the two synods on family life convened by the Pope in 2014 and 2015, as a special papal appointee. This was not good news for those who wanted reform.
John Allen, a leading Vatican-watcher, said, in 2018: “There’s little question that the cumulative weight of Sodano’s career suggests an official who’s been unwilling, or unable, to take on board the real nature of the clerical abuse crisis, and he hardly inspires confidence in terms of a robust commitment to reform.”
Indeed, when in 2018 Pope Francis finally sacked Bishop Barros of Osorno, Chile, a man who was implicated in that country’s child abuse scandal, after three years of fighting to keep him in place, Barros’s survival under fire was attributed to Sodano’s protection.
Sodano himself only relinquished the position of Dean at the advanced aged of 92. Following his death, from pneumonia and Covid, Pope Francis referred to him as “an amiable pastor” and an “esteemed man of the Church”.
Angelo Sodano, born November 23 1927, died May 27 2022