CASAROLI, AGOSTINO

Cardinal; Vatican Secretary of State; b. Nov. 24, 1914, Castel San Giovanni, in the province of Piacenza (Italy); d. June 9, 1998, Rome.

Agostino Casaroli was born into a pious, middle-class family and attended the minor seminary of Bedonia. He studied theology in the exclusive Alberoni College of Piacenza and canon law in Rome at the Lateran University (1936–40). Ordained a priest in 1937, he began his lifelong career in the Vatican diplomatic service as an archivist in the Secretariat of State.

In February of 1961 Pope John XXIII appointed Casaroli under-secretary at the Vatican Foreign Office and the Department for Extraordinary Church Affairs. Casaroli initiated a new style in dealing with the Communist bloc that came to be known as the Vatican Ostpolitik. The new approach situated Vatican diplomacy in the context of a policy of active neutrality between existing international blocs of nations. Although Ostpolitik was roundly criticized in some circles, it was manifestly in line with the approach of Pope John XXIII toward world problems. With patience and ingenuity he worked to insure the continued existence of the Church in hostile Communist-run countries. By accepting compromises on nonessentials, Casaroli secured conditions of passably normal life for Catholic communities, even though it was largely limited to worship and the administration of sacraments.

Casaroli's first inroads behind the Iron Curtain came about in 1963. By order of Pope John XXIII, he went to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, where the Cold War had created very complex situations for the Catholic Church. Vienna's Cardinal Franz König had done much to prepare the ground. In 1964 Casaroli signed a "secret" agreement with Hungary. In 1965 in Prague, he convinced the government to allow Joseph Beran, just named a cardinal by Paul VI, to go to Rome to receive the red biretta. For the archbishop it meant going into exile, but it also allowed the appointment of a worthy successor, a confessor of the faith and later cardinal, Frantisek Tomasek, who lived to see the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia. More dramatic was Casaroli's part in gaining the release of Hungarian Cardinal Josef Mindszenty in 1971, who fifteen years before had taken refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest. Mindszenty's deliverance ended in exile in Vienna.

In Belgrade in June of 1966, Casaroli signed the first of a series of agreements that gave some degree of legality to the Catholic Church in several countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The following year he was able to visit all Catholic dioceses in Poland for an onsite analysis of the situation. In 1970 he went back in Belgrade to sign the establishment of normal diplomatic relations with a Communist country where the Catholics were a minority. By then he had been made an archbishop with the titular church of Carthage and appointed to head the Vatican Congregation for Extraordinary Church Affairs. About that time he addressed his activity toward Moscow, the center of world Communism. He went there for a week at the end of February of 1971 to express the adhesion of the Holy See to the pact of non-proliferation of nuclear arms. Casaroli was given a chance to meet, for the first time in half a century, officials responsible for religious affairs in the Soviet Union. Two years later he was for the second time able to visit Czechoslovakia, where he was also allowed to ordain new Catholic bishops. The following year (March to April of 1974), Casaroli was in Cuba, meeting most of the bishops and some clergy, as well as President Fidel Castro.

By 1975 Casaroli's contacts with Eastern European leaders had become routine. On June 5 he was in East Germany, and on June 26 the Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov was received in the Vatican, while from July 30 to August 1 Casaroli met most of them in Helsinki on the occasion of signing the final document on security and cooperation in Europe, when he also presided over the first and final sessions of the conference. It was an event seen by observers, including Casaroli himself, as the beginning of political and military detente in Europe, leading finally to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and of Communism fifteen years later. By 1978 Cardinal Casaroli was acknowledged as a world leader in political affairs. In June he addressed the Assembly General of the United Nations in New York, reading a message from Paul VI to the world organization.

Casaroli served as Secretary of State during the short reign of John Paul I. In April of 1979 Pope John Paul II confirmed him in the position, named him a cardinal on June 30 of that year, and assigned him the duties of prefect for the Council for Public (i.e., foreign) Affairs of the Church, and president of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State. He continued to travel widely: to Lebanon and Hungary (1980); to Poland, just afer the attempted assassination of John Paul II (1981); and to Washington for meetings with President Ronald Reagan and other high administration officials (December of 1981). On the Italian scene, he negotiated important changes and additions to the Lateran Pact, the concordat between the Holy See and Italy (February of 1984), and the following year he assisted at the signing of a treaty of peace and friendship between Argentina and Chile after a year-long territorial conflict. He saw the fruits of his Ostpolitik when Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a policy of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union (1985). In 1988 Casaroli took part in the celebrations for the Millennium of the conversion of the ancient Kievian Rus to Christianity (988–1988) and was received at the Kremlin. The following year the Secretary General of the Soviet Communist party, Mikhail Gorbachev, was in the Vatican for the "audience of the century" (Dec. 1, 1989).

Casaroli asked to be freed from his official responsibilities when he turned seventy-five, the age limit for service in the Roman Curia; in due course his request was accepted (Dec. 1, 1990). Retirement allowed him more time for his cherished projects in the field of pastoral and humanitarian work, particularly among the youth in the Casal del Marmo (formerly Porta Portese), a school-prison for teenage detainees. He had been engaged there all his priestly life, preaching to them, hearing their confessions, preparing them for the sacraments, and following some even after they had left prison. At one point he also agreed to act as editor-in-chief of their magazine La Tradotta. At Casal del Marmo he was known simply as "Don Agostino." In retirement he wrote an autobiography published posthumously under the title, Il martirio della pazienza (Martyrdom of Patience ). In it the cardinal evaluated with objectivity his own role in the important events in which he played a part.

At the time of his death John Paul II issued a statement praising Cardinal Casaroli for "courageous steps to improve the situation of the Church in Eastern Europe." Cararoli was buried in the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles in the center of Rome.

Bibliography: a. casaroli, Il martirio della pazienza (Torino 2000); Nella Chiesa per il mondo. Discorsi (Rusconi 1988); "La Santa Sede e l'Europa," La Civiltà Cattolica (Feb. 19, 1971); "Il discorso pronunciato nell'Università di Parma," in L'Ossservatore Romano (March 18, 1990); "La Santa Sede si è sempre impegnata per un obiettivo: affermare in concreto i diritti di Dio ed i diritti degli uomini," in L'Osservatore Romano (June 4–5, 1990); "Paolo VI e il dialogo," Il Regno 19 (1984); Nella Chiesa per il mondo. Omelie e discorsi (preface by j. guitton) (Milano 1987); Der Heilige Stuhl und die Völkergemeinschaft. Reden und Aufsätze (Berlin 1981); Glaube und Verantwortung. Ansprachen und Predigten (Berlin 1989); Weghereiter zur Zeitenwende. Letzte Beitrage (Berlin 1999). a. santini, Agostino Casaroli, hombre de dialogo (Madrid 1993); l. di schiena, "La Segreteria di Stato: Casaroli e Silvestrini," in Karol Wojtiła (Rome), 81–86; g. weigel, "After the Empire of Lies," chapt. in Witness to Hope (New York 1999), 582–627; g. alberigo, "Verso la Ostpolitik," in Papa Giovanni (1881–1963) (Bologna 2000) 151–57; c. kramer von reisswitz, "Rome's Kissinger, " Inside the Vatican 7 (1998): 48–49; v. fagiolo, "Reciproca collaborazione. L'evoluzione dei rapporti tra Chiesa e Stato italiano dopo la revisione del Concordato firmata da Bettino Craxi e Agostino Casaroli nel 1984, " 30 Giorni 1 (2000): 40–47; "La morte del Cardinale Agostino Casaroli," in L'Osservatore Romano (June 10, 1998) (Editorial commemoration).

[g. eldarov]