HERO: JEAN JADOT 1910-2009
PAPAL ENVOY

Although I did not know Archbishop Jean Jadot, a former apostolic delegate to the United States, I was saddened by the announcement of his death last week at age 99. This Belgian Archbishop, who had served as a parish priest in Brussels and also as a chaplain to troops in the Belgian Congo, was sent by Pope Paul VI as papal envoy to the United States. He served in that capacity for seven years.

Douglas Martin, an obituary writer for the New York Times, said that the pope wanted him “not to be the pope’s eyes and ears but his heart.” Martin also wrote said the pope wanted him as envoy “to show the pope’s concern for the poor, the forgotten, the ignored.”

Martin also states that Jadot welcomed minorities, increased participation of the laity in the decisions of the church, gave greater roles to women, and relaxed some rules such as the automatic excommunication of divorced people. He regarded the church as a “community of faith and not as a hierarchical organization.”

During his seven years as envoy, the pope accepted Jadot’s recommendations for the appointment of 100 bishops. A Washington Post article in 1983 said of them: “Whatever their background, the new breed of bishops was less concerned with the ring kissing and watered silk vestments that went with the office, and more with getting to know their people. They moved out of episcopal mansions and into a couple of rooms in a rectory or seminary.”

When Paul VI died, John Paul II began to replace Jadot’s appointments with more conservative bishops. And some in the Vatican heaped a lot of blame for the sexual abuse scandals on the episcopal appointments made by Jadot saying that these appointments were ill advised.

To me this is utter nonsense. Last fall, Anita and I went to hear a talk at River’s Edge by Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, author of “Confronting Power And Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.” Robinson said that John Paul II had on his desk two sexual abuse documents on which he never took action. This sent a signal to the bishops of the world that it was perfectly all right to do nothing about sexual abuse claims.

Robinson called that kind of thinking “creeping infallibility.” In other words, whatever the pope says or does is reason enough to ignore one’s conscience, even in the serious matter of sexual abuse. This led to one of the greatest scandals in church history and untold suffering of thousands of youngsters and their parents.

In my opinion, Jadot is one of the unsung heroes of the Second Vatican Council.

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