Szoka shines as pope's go-to guy at the Vatican
Apr 07, 2005
Michigan native made his mark as top money man. Cardinal Szoka now serves as governor and chief executive of the smallest independent state.
(The Detroit News, July 27, 2000) VATICAN CITY -- It's not often that a cardinal would warrant being called a fixer, but then Michigan's Edmund C. Szoka is not just any cardinal.
When it comes to managing papal money and Vatican bureaucracy, arguably not the culmination of lifelong pastoral training, the 72-year-old Grand Rapids native and former archbishop of Detroit is Pope John Paul II's go-to guy.
"He didn't put it that way," the cardinal says from his spacious second-floor office in the Governatorato, essentially the city hall of Vatican City State. "I assume he had me come here because he thought I could improve the situation."
Szoka has. In the decade since leaving Detroit for the ancient splendor of Rome and Vatican City, Szoka has presided over the turnaround of two papal institutions that at times proved to be temporal millstones to the pope's heavenly work.
The finances of the Holy See, effectively the office of the pope himself, and Vatican City are stronger today than anytime in years. Vatican City, the independent state governed by Szoka since late 1997, now has central accounting systems to manage its $200-million budget and fiber optic cable connecting the heart of the Roman Catholic Church with its sprawling global empire.
"Vatican City State does not have a deficit," Szoka says, careful not to claim too much credit for the widely acknowledged turnaround. "We are self-supporting. We're solvent. This is one of the pope's big problems, but it's not a preoccupation."
It hasn't ever been thus. Financial scandals, including the Vatican bank's involvement in the 1982 collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano, plagued the early years of John Paul II's papacy. He responded with a series of reforms that accelerated in 1990 when Szoka was named president of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See.
"In six years he turned it around from a position of being in debt to having a slight surplus," says Lindy Boggs, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. "He has had to make some tough decisions, but he's very well respected."
Sounds familiar.
At the time of his appointment in 1990, two years after being elected cardinal, critics claimed that Szoka had been called to Rome as penance for the rancor associated with his decision to close or consolidate 30 local parish churches in Detroit. Szoka denied it. His successor, Cardinal Adam Maida denied it, and so did the church.
Szoka admits the bittersweet circumstances of his farewell, punctuated by a front-page story in The Detroit News critical of a plan to supply the cardinal with home furnishings and a renovated apartment in Detroit, still linger. More powerful, though, are the affectionate wishes he still receives from anonymous former parishioners happy to see him on his annual August trips back to Michigan.
"When you're gone, you're gone," he says. "What's surprising to me is that I've been gone 10 years and wherever I go, people know me. I hope I did a good job as archbishop."
Cardinal Szoka, left, with the pope in 1988, caused controversy when he closed local parishes in Detroit.
If he hadn't, would the pope have given Szoka arguably the most important financial job in the world's largest church? And then another one? A decade later, the questions almost answer themselves.
In retrospect, Szoka's move to consolidate parishes in Detroit was an ecclesiastical business response to financial strains caused by demographic shifts. Ten years later, Detroit still has some 80 parishes and no meaningful growth in the ranks of parishioners, according to the Archdiocese of Detroit.
"Cardinal Szoka's position at Vatican City State is a great tribute to his faithful, diligent service to the Holy Father and the Holy See," Maida says. "It's a great honor for the Catholic Church of Michigan to have one of its priests in such close, daily contact with the Holy Father."
As president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, Szoka sees the pope often. Protocol requires him to see the pope off whenever he leaves the Vatican and greet him when he returns. It's not uncommon for Szoka to see the pope an average of four times per week, sometimes over a private dinner punctuated by conversation in the Polish language.
Szoka's Polish roots -- and those of others close to the pope -- have been credited for his rise to powerful positions in the Vatican and Holy See. Maybe so, but Szoka's legacy of success might have something to do with it, too.
The cardinal's knack for managing money and bureaucracy, cornerstones of robust churches, was honed during his nine years as Detroit archbishop and, earlier in his career, financial challenges in the Archdiocese of Marquette.
There, the graduate of Detroit's Sacred Heart Seminary found himself "responsible for the finances. It helped me learn a lot of fundamental and basic things."
Michigan crucible
The enduring lessons included accountability, financial discipline, the benefits of centralized control and standardized business practices -- hallmarks of cost-conscious management, whatever the enterprise.
As the first bishop of the diocese of Gaylord, Szoka had parishes and schools, but no offices, no staff, not even a place to live. "It was not easy getting started," Szoka recalls. But the experience helped prepare him for the challenges he would later face in Detroit and Rome.
When Szoka was installed as Archbishop of Detroit on May 17, 1981, the city was reeling from a deepening recession and a continuing exodus of residents to the suburbs. In his nine years there, Detroit's population declined 16 percent -- or by 200,000 residents -- to just above 1 million.
With more churches than his meager resources could support, and scant evidence the trend would reverse, Szoka decided to close, merge or consolidate 30 churches across the city, despite an outcry that reached Rome.
Through it all, Szoka remained a bulwark against attacks on fundamental church doctrine. Like the pope he served, Szoka opposed ordination of women, allowing priests to marry and any softening of the church's strict anti-abortion position.
His conservative views, assailed by liberal Catholics struggling to square their faith with a changing world, culminated in a public struggle with Sister Agnes Mary Mansour. The Mercy nun directed the state Department of Social Services, which dispensed Medicaid abortion funding.
Szoka called the battle, which ended in Mansour leaving her religious order, one of "the most difficult periods" of his nine-year tenure in Detroit.
Finance man
To understand Szoka's career in Rome is to understand, first, what he was -- and what he wasn't.
In his first assignment, from 1990-97, the cardinal was not the chief financial officer of the Vatican, as often described. He was head of economic affairs for the Holy See, meaning Szoka was, in effect, the pope's top finance man.
"We were sort of the general accounting office and the director of the budgets," Szoka says. "My jurisdiction extended to offices that are not part of Vatican City State and that assist the pope in his ministry."
Nor did Szoka's assignment cover the once-troubled Vatican bank or the finances of archdioceses worldwide. His job was to ensure the integrity of the pope's estimated $200-million annual budget, including oversight over the budget of 49 different church entities.
In 1993, two years after taking the job, the financial statements of the Holy See showed a surplus for the first time since 1970.
On Szoka's watch, the Holy See saw an end to 23 years of budget deficits.
As head of Vatican City State, a post he assumed in October 1997, Szoka serves as governor and chief executive of the world's smallest independent state. Only 108 acres in the heart of Rome, Vatican City State claims only a few hundred permanent residents -- virtually all of them somehow associated with the Vatican.
The Vatican maintains its own police force, fire department, post office, gas station, grocery store and pharmacy.
Because Vatican City is independent, it often chooses to sell such goods as gasoline tax-free. For Italians paying more than $4 for a gallon of gas, finding a connection to the Vatican gas pumps is sublime.
Szoka oversees the famous collection of Vatican museums and art works and is responsible for maintenance of such famous buildings as the 500-year-old St. Peter's Basilica. The back of the church, designed by Michelangelo, sits directly opposite Szoka's office window, separated by stands of Italian cedar trees, stone walkways and groomed lawns.
It's all Szoka's responsibility. Last year, Vatican City State booked profits of $2.7 million on total revenue of 357 billion Italian lira, about $180 million at current exchange rates. With an underground parking garage and construction at the Vatican museums complete, Szoka expects this year's profits to rebound to 1998 levels -- about $7.2 million at current exchange rates.
That should please his boss. Four to six times a year, Szoka is given a private audience to brief the pope -- in Italian -- on the state of Vatican City. He sends along a financial statement every year, but otherwise tries not to burden the peripatetic pope with arcane bureaucratic details.
"He's very easy to work for," Szoka says, warming to a question pondered by millions: what's the pope like?
Priests forever
"He is very active," Szoka continues. "He takes a lot of initiative. He's a very deep thinker. He takes a world view that I don't think anyone else has. I have to say I have a genuine love for him. He's the holiest person I've ever met in my life. He's also an intellectual."
It's obvious this is a question Szoka has been asked, and mulled, many times. He says the pope who defied Soviet communism, made nearly 200 foreign trips and still visits simple parishes around Rome essentially is two things: an intellectual and a pastor who ministers to his people.
Always.
"Priests don't die and they don't retire," Szoka says. "They are priests forever."
That doesn't mean Szoka isn't considering retirement. He has to. Under church rules, cardinals must resign from official duties on their 75th birthday, and after their 80th birthday they may not vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.
Until then, Szoka plans to begin his day every morning around 6:30, do his job and try to get to the Vatican gardens for his hour of walking and jogging. And come every August, he plans a trip back to his native Michigan.
"I think we could do more," he says of his work running the Vatican. "But that's the human condition. In this world, we never get to total perfection."
Born: Grand Rapids
Age: 72
Job: President of the Pontifical Commission of Vatican City State, making him part of Pope John Paul II's inner circle
Education: St. Joseph Seminary, Grand Rapids; Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit; University of Rome
Experience: President of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, Rome, 1990-97; Archbishop of Detroit Archdiocese, 1981-90; Bishop of Diocese of Gaylord, 1971-81; Secretary-Treasurer, Michigan Catholic Conference, 1972-77.
Szoka shines as pope's go-to guy at the Vatican