To the question, “How many people actually work in the Vatican?”, Pope John XXIII supposedly replied, “About half.” It has become part of Catholic folklore that the Curia is staffed by careerists distinguished by their incompetence and laziness, and that a sclerotic, self-serving caste deliberately frustrates the Church’s progress.
All bureaucracies reflect the society from which they are drawn. The English priests I have known who were sent there (you can’t, in fact, apply for a career in the Curia), were men of considerable talent, competence and industry. The doyen of them was Mgr Bryan Chestle, who died last week. He retired from the Papal Household in 2011 after more than 40 years of service. Few English Catholics would know his name, but he was a conduit between England, the Anglophone world and the Vatican during the reign of four popes. Had you been invited for a papal private audience, Bryan would have met you, briefed you and shown you in.
To us seminarians, Bryan’s role seemed exciting in that he got to meet royalty, heads of state and famous visitors. Like most people in such roles, he was unfazed by celebrity and a shrewd judge of people’s merits rather than their standing. He was very discreet about his impressions. The only person about whom I remember him complaining was Mrs Gorbachev, who had clearly done something to offend.
Occasionally he would afford us a fascinating glimpse into the life of the Papal household, talking, for example, about the presents the faithful send the pontiff. He had on his desk at home a Huggy Bear sent to Paul VI (a species of teddy bear whose velcro paws allowed it to attach itself to someone or something). The pope also received gifts of ties, occasionally saucepans, and the odd completely bizarre item, like a furry toy spider on a spring, or a compact disc from India of Elvis Presley songs in Latin.
Such details punctuated a life dominated by a vast amount of paperwork and translation involving correspondence and papal documents. Much of it was, I suspect, painstaking, uninspiring but vital.
Bryan’s life was characterised by discretion and duty and a deep loyalty to the person of the pope. He felt a strong rapport with John Paul II, who liked to speak Russian with him.
His unvarying routine, dictated in part by curial practice, was to celebrate early Mass for the Bridgettine nuns in the Piazza Farnese, who would then give him breakfast. He would walk the 15 minutes or so to the Vatican, returning home to the English College at 2pm for a long lunch break, followed by a second trip to the office until about 7pm (except on Wednesdays, when he had the afternoon off, which he liked to spend gardening).
Bryan was a gentle, endearing person. A mild hypochondriac, he had a lively interest in the preternatural and claimed his room was haunted. He professed to loathe the climate and various aspects of Roman life, cultural and ecclesiastical. In truth, I think that this was the defence mechanism of someone who was simple, homely and sometimes lonely, and for whom there had been considerable sacrifice involved in accepting where the Lord had placed in him in his vineyard. Bryan didn’t “half work” at the Vatican; his was a lifetime of self-effacing dedication. I pray he receives the rewards of his labours.
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