“A Polish psychiatrist who was beside John Paul II in agony” – Corriere.it

chrish’s la femme! It is fate that French journalists always intersect in the lives of the popes. This has been happening since the time of Leo XIII, the first in history to be granted an interview. Issued on August 4, 1892 le Figaro
Signed by Sverine, pseudonym for Caroline Rmy: On July 31, a Sunday, she was chatting with him for 70 minutes. As it happens, it works in figaro Also Bendicte Lutaud, recently in bookstores with women of the popes
(Guerini and Associates), a 280-page essay that reconstructs the story of five female figures who have had important roles in the Vatican over the past ninety years. Like Pascalina Lehnert, the German nun has been called the Pope, the secretary, the housekeeper and the nurse of Pius XII: in one of the twenty photographs secretly taken by the archival of Pope Riccardo Galeazzi Lizzi, then sold to Paris MatchYou can see her, the German nun who was Eugenio Basile’s assistant since 1917 and accompanied him until his death, sitting next to the sick man’s bed in agony, while she pushed the cannula of an oxygen cylinder into his mouth. The daughter of Christian Louthud, a former agnostic literature professor at the Sorbonne, the 33-year-old journalist was educated in Catholicism by her mother, Elizabeth, a speech therapist. He distanced himself from the Church while earning a master’s degree in journalism at Sciences Po. He approached me in 2014. There was a void of meaning in my life. I tried to fill it with yoga, but I awkwardly escaped from the lessons when they imposed a religious chant that blended Buddha, Indian deities, and Jesus. He has a son born last year. He was baptized by Timothy who honors God, as was converted by St. Paul, the martyr of Ephesus.

Strange, his survey of the women of the popes begins from a tomb.

S, from the Teutonic cemetery in the Vatican. There is a modest stele, with an inscription in red letters: “Leben ist Liebe”, love of life. In short, name, Hermine Speier, dates of birth and death, 1898 and 1989, and one more word in German: “Archologin”.

Archaeologist.

She was a woman, she was a foreigner, she was Jewish, not Catholic. However, he was the first employee to be appointed to the Vatican. The honor of her burial there, although she died in Montreux, Switzerland, has rare precedents. When Rosa, Maria and Anna Sarto, the three unmarried sisters living with Pius X, wished to end up in the Teutonic cemetery to be closer to the caves of the Vatican where he was to be buried, he answered in dialect: “Tuz, xe mejo che e with your sea”. In fact, they are buried in Rize next to their mother. Nilo Vian, the son of a close associate of the Pope of Venice, tells this in the book Salute to an old priest.

What distinguishes the story of Speer?

He worked at the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. When Adolf Hitler came to power, his fate was determined. His boss, Ludwig Curtius, asked for help from his friend Bartolomeo Nogara, director of the Vatican Museums. Who spoke about her with Pius XI, who protected her from that moment on. So did the Caliph, Pius XII.

The archaeologist knew how to pay.

and how. He organized the photographic archives of the Apostolic Library. In the cellars was found the head of one of the twelve horses that adorned the arches of the Parthenon in Athens, lost for centuries.

How did Sister Pascalina Lehnert get the title of Pope?

Eugenio Bachele, the ambassador to Munich, met her in 1917, when she was 23 years old. She was arrogant and handsome. I was affected. The following year he recruited her as his housekeeper. She immediately showed that she knew how to do this, defending the future pope against two Spartacus Bolsheviks who had stormed the pope, and were in their hands. In 1920 Bachele lost his mother, with whom he was closely related. He was detained in Germany, and was unable to attend the funeral. I got depressed. Nurse Pascalina was the one who took him out.

A mother more than a sister.

Promoted as ambassador to Berlin, he brought it with S. In military style, she lined up with an assistant, butler, waiter, cook, chauffeur, and two sisters dedicated to household chores. Even the senior issued an ultimatum: “Mr. Monsignor, it’s either you or us!”. Bachele chose her. He appointed Secretary of State of the Vatican, and brought her with him to Italy.

She became the first and only woman in the underground church.

1939, from which Bachelli came out as Pius XII. she hasfrom everything
It was not worth it: he had to give the medicine to the Cardinal Secretary of State.

Caroline Pegozzi, Vatican at Paris Match, posited in a recent article that there is something between the two.

I do not believe that. Just as I don’t believe in the story of the “intimate relationship” between the Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, and Letitia Calmin. They are chatty. We are talking about a respected Belgian theologian, a consecrated virgin. His life was not hidden from anyone.

So why did Aupetit quit?

Politics has something to do with it, not the skirt. He made many enemies in multiple files, much to the chagrin of left and right with his rough ways, certainly no more ruthless than those Pope Francis sometimes makes clear. Many were jealous of Calmin’s influence on the bishop as his loyal advisor.

Remember the relationship between Karol Wojtya and Polish psychiatrist Wanda Płtawska.

Of the five women she’s investigated, she’s now in her centenary, and she’s the most interesting. A story of friendship that has lasted more than 50 years, is their story. He was in John Paul II’s room at the Gemelli Infirmary after the 1981 attack. He was by his side in the Vatican to check every medicine and prescribe natural remedies during the 143 days of his convalescence, leading to the scandal of angry Cardinals as a stranger was walking in slippers into the Apostolic Palace. Sure enough, he was at his bedside when the Pope died, but his name is omitted from the manifesto of the Holy See. Nothing new: the same fate befell Sister Pascalina Linert and Sister Vincenza Taffarel, nanny and nurse John Paul I. In the works on the death of Pope Luciani, only Secretary Don Diego Lorenzi and other male figures are mentioned.

Wojtyła was the confessor of Petuska.

He was the first to understand the tragedy of this woman of the Polish resistance, who was 19-years-old deported to Ravensbrück. For five years, Nazi doctors used her as a guinea pig in pseudo-scientific experiments, eventually causing permanent damage to her leg. Her choice to devote herself to psychiatry and the defense of life stemmed from the horrors witnessed in the concentration camp, which have tormented her ever since: children just born at the hands of prisoners thrown alive in crematoriums. On November 22, 1962, Płtawska was ready to undergo intestinal surgery to remove the cancer. From evening until morning the tumor miraculously disappeared. His friend Carol wrote to Padre Pio, pleading with him to save that young mother of four.

The last three popes, although foreign, focused on Italian women.

The most powerful was the mother Tekla famiglite, an Irpinia who was the abbot of the Sisters of Brigiddin for 37 years. The best ally of John Paul II in the diplomatic field. He stole Fidel Castro’s permission to open a monastery in Havana and enabled the historic visit of the Polish pope to Cuba in 1988. Instead, Benedict XVI entrusted the task of founding and directing Women of the Universal Church, monthly supplement fromRoman Observer, Lucita Scaravia.

said the feminist of the Vatican.

Francesco also appreciates her so much, that she wrote the introduction to one of her books and called her on her cell phone.

It looks like something between them broke.

Prima Scaravia published the article from the last counter, where she recounted her lunar experience when a woman was summoned to the Synod around the family and isolated in the back of the room. Even the Argentine Pope defended it. But then the Vatican rose up on its terrible, well-documented, accusations of abuse by the clergy against the religious, who were often forced to have abortions, and on the nuns who were converted into unpaid servants to cardinals and bishops.

Does the Holy Father have the Vatican?

No, the leadership of the Roman Curia.

Now he criticizes Scaravia with Bergoglio.

I met her. Very disappointed, I would say indignant. But continue to love the Pope and the Church. Our stories are so alike that a 68-year-old former feminist, communist, atheist, and Buddhist apprentice came back to the faith by accidentally entering Santa Maria in Trastevere during a feast for the return of the restored Madonna icon and listening to the chant chant.akatistos Byzantine. I am in Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, in Paris, on Ash Wednesday, listening to Paul’s sentence to the Corinthians: “Now is the time, now is the day of salvation.” I understood that they were not just the words of a book: God was speaking to me.

Does it reach the female priesthood?

I do not think so. Two thousand years of perverted theology made the church misogynistic.

How do you explain the legend of Pope Joan, which flourished in the ninth century?

Specifically with great pain to see a woman ascending the throne of Peter pretending to be a man and giving birth in public during a procession from the Vatican to the Lateran. Hence the peculiar ritual of the deacon responsible for confirming the presence of the testicles in the newly elected pope through a pierced chair: “Duos habet et bene pendentes”. The priests took their places on the pedestal. Instead they remain sinners, like everyone else. They see the woman as Eve of temptation, not Mary Magdalene, the first witness to Christ’s resurrection.