Archbishop Jadot At 93 ...

Still Proud Of Bishops He Gave U.S.

By PAUL LIKOUDIS

From The Wanderer, September 26, 2002

Archbishop Jean Jadot, Pope Paul VI's apostolic delegate to the United States from 1973-1980, has no regrets about the spate of bad bishops he inflicted on the Catholics of this country.

And, if veteran Vatican reporter Robert Blair Kaiser, who recently interviewed Jadot at his home in Belgium, can be believed, Jadot is still proud of some of his most notorious picks, such as Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Va., Archbishop Jean Jadot, Pope Paul VI's apostolic delegate to the United States from 1973-1980, has no regrets about the spate of bad bishops he infficted on the Catholics of this country. And, if veteran Vatican reporter Robert Blair Kaiser, who recently interviewed Jadot at his home in Belgium, can be believed, Jadot is still proud of some of his most notorious picks, such as Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Va., Archbishop Rembert Weakiand of Milwaukee, and Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles - to name but a few, many of whom are known more for their advocacy of homosexual rights, their protection of pederast priests, and their conunitment to modernism than to their commitment to the Church's doctrines.

Other men who became bishops during Jadot's tenure in the United States include Rochester Bishop Matthew Clark; Albany's Howard Hubbard; former Santa Fe Archbishop Roberto Sanchez, who resigned in a sex scandal; former San Jose Bishop Pierre DuMaine; former Honolulu Bishop Joseph Ferrario; San Antonio Archbishop Patrick Flores; former Newark Archbishop Peter Gerety; Joliet, Ill., Bishop Joseph Imesch; Louisille Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly, O.P., a former staffer at the apostolic nuncio under Jadot; Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston (whom Jadot selected as bishop for Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo.), Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk; Saginaw, Mich., Bishop Kenneth Untener - to name a few more - all of whom, supposedly, mirrored his own progressive image as a "man of the people."

Each of these prelates has been a strong advocate of the pro-homosexual agenda in the U.S. Church, ordaining homosexuals, imposing pro-homosexual education on Catholic schools, aiding and abetting special rights legislation in the civil realm for homosexuals, and giving free rein to homosexuals and lesbians in religious orders which operated schools, universities, parishes, seminaries, and retreat houses in their dioceses and archdioceses.

Kaiser, who covered the Second Vatican Council for Time magazine and recently wrote a book, Clerical Error: A True Story, asserting, he was cuckolded by the late Malachi Martin, recently met Jadot in Belgium, and published the interview for The London Tablet, September 7, under the headline, "Where's the Red Hat?"

Kaiser wonders why, when both Jadot's predecessor and successor as papal delegates to the U.S. received the red hat of a cardinal, Jadot never received one in recognition of his work here.

"When Jean Jadot left his native Belgium to become a papal diplomat in 1968, he took his instructions from Pope Paul VI, who saw an evolving role for his nuncios after Vatican 11 - not to be the Pope's eyes and ears, but his heart," Kaiser opened. "Nuncios should travel, Paul VI said, not so much as the representatives of Rome to secular governments, or even as legates between Rome and the world's bishops. They should 'how the Pope's concern for the poor, the forgotten, the ignored.'

"Paul VI, of course, was still on a conciliar high," continued Kaiser. "He had seen the Church through three stormy sessions of the council launched by his predecessor, John XXIII, to a glorious end with the Promulgation of the council's crowning charter document, Gaudium et Spes, which was designed to set the Church on a new course - caring less about itself as an institution, caring more about working for justice and peace. Jadot sought to run that course - first in the Far East, then in Africa, then, from 1973 to 1980, in the United States, where he identified episcopal candidates among the American priests who were in line with the ideas of Paul VI.

"Soon after the Pope's death, however, he was yanked from his post, brought back to the Vatican, told not to concern himself any longer with anything American, and put in charge of an ill-defined bureau, the Pontifical Council for Non-Christians. Jean Jadot's predecessor received a red hat; so did Jadot's successor. Jadot never did. In fact, he is the only Vatican diplomat assigned to the United States who was never made a cardinal.

"What harm had he done?

"In the United States today, that all depends on one's point of view. An American priest who is second in command of his ancient religious order in Rome says Jadot was 'the best man we ever had.' The reason: 'For seven years, Jadot helped pick our very best bishops.' He instanced Ted McCarrick, now the cardinal archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Roger Mahony, the cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles, two of a very small group inside the College of Cardinals who could be called Progressives. (Jadot also plucked a priest out of the Diocese of Jackson, Miss., and had him made bishop of Springfield, Mo. He is now the embattled cardinal archbishop of Boston, Mass., Bernard Law. But that's another story.)

"If, however, you were to ask a conservative like Cardinal Edward Egan, archbishop of New York, he would say Jadot hurt the Church in the United States by picking the ‘very worst' bishops. This is because John Paul II had changed the criteria. It was part of his plan to bring a runaway, postconciliar Church back to its senses."

Most of Kaiser's interview with Jadot focused on such issues as how bishops are selected when a vacancy arises, and whether or not the current system - of selecting three names and forwarding them to Rome - works, or whether or not there should be popular election of bishops. Jadot thinks the current system works, though not as well as it might.

Kaiser then focused on the old prelate, reviewing his career in the Church, and the obvious satisfaction he feels from a long life's work.

"The Jadot I found in Brussels," Kaiser wrote, "did not strike me as a man who was nursing any grievances. He knew he had done a fine job - for Paul VI and for the Church. He refused to speculate about why he did or did not become a cardinal, and had good words, moreover, for some in the Roman Curia. He said he liked Cardinal Gianbattista Re. 'I trust him very much. He's in the category of honest people.'

"I asked him how many cardinals he put in that category.

"Jadot hesitated, then laughed. 'I don't know all the cardinals,' he said.

"When I asked Jadot what qualities he would like to see in the next Pope, he said: 'I would like, to see a Pope who is ready to listen."

Kaiser also provides some insights into Jadot's family, which remains one of the wealthiest in Europe. His father, Lambert, was an engineer who "built the electrical system and streetcar network in Tientsin, China, the harbor city for Peking, and later managed the building of a railroad through the Congo."

The family became enormously wealthy by developing "the largest [gold - editor] mining center in the country, one that produced more than half of the Congo's income, . . . Jadotville," but Jadot, after studies at Louvain and the Institut Cathohque in Paris, became an anti-colonialist, and advocated "a progressive handover of administration and government to the African community. He helped the local Church adapt, to history by freeing itself of colonial influences over its catechesis and its liturgy....

"From 1952 to 1960," Kaiser continued, "Jadot was chief chaplain to the colonial forces in the Belgian Congo, and found himself engaged for the most part in trying to conciliate the Belgian colonialists and the Congolese.... During the 1960s, Jadot was a cheerleader in Belgium for a number of his friends from Louvain University who helped run Vatican II. One was Dom Lambert Beauduin, the Benedictine from Chevetogne who, in 1945, planted the idea in the mind of a papal diplomat in Paris named Angelo Roncalli that the Church needed a council.

"In 1960, Jadot was appointed national director of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith as a public relations man and fund-raiser for the missions. The job put him in close contact with a number of cardinals in Rome. One of them, Sergio Pignedoli [d. 1980], recruited him into the papal diplomatic corps. In 1968, he was made a titular bishop and sent as a papal legate to Bangkok.

"On December 3, 1968, attending a conference of Catholic and Buddhist monks, Jadot had an hour's fascinating conversation with Thomas Merton, the Trappist poet and author who had become a peace activist. Two hours later, Rembert Weakland, the abbot primate of the Benedictines (who was also attending the conference), rushed to Jadot's room to tell him Merton had just been electrocuted in his bath. Together, Jadot and Weakland negotiated the release of Merton's body with the Thai government and arranged for its transfer to the United States.

"When Jadot got the word on the Internet in May of Weakland's resignation in yet another sex scandal, he e-mailed him. 'I am your friend. I will always be your friend. Sed libera nos a mato'."

Besides Weakland, another of the "good bishops" Jadot identified for Pope Paul VI, wrote Kaiser, was a young labor priest from Fresno, Calif., Roger Mahony, now cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles.

Jadot was struck by Mahony's advocacy for migrant grape pickers and his close involvement with Cesar Chavez. According to Kaiser, "Mahony was a man of the people, who had grown up shoveling manure on his father's chicken ranch in the San Fernando Valley. It was 'no surprise' to Jadot when Mahony was finally appointed archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985.

"Walter Sullivan, soon to retire as bishop of Richmond, Va. Kaiser continued, "was another of Jadot's choices. He turned out to be a pastor who included everyone, even gay Catholics on the margin of the Church.... He naturally became the target of a whispering campaign for more than 20 years by some of those who think they can be more Catholic by being less-catholic. The whispers went all the way to the Roman Curia, which sent an investigator to Richmond more than a dozen years ago to look into Sullivan's heresies. Sullivan was exonerated."

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