The Pact of the Catacombs as a Pathway for a Poor-Servant Church

Abstract

On 16 November 1965, three weeks before the end of the Second Vatican Council, about forty conciliar bishops gathered to celebrate the Holy Eucharist in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla. The Mass was presided over by Msgr. Charles-Marie Himmer (1902–1994). At the end of the Mass, the assembled bishops walked up to the altar and appended their signatures to what is now known as “The Pact of the Catacombs.” This document later went into oblivion and suffered obscurity for half a century. Nevertheless, its significance was never lost on some of the bishops who pledged themselves, among other things, to work for the emergence of a “poor and servant Church” with a commitment to justice and charity. The bishops seemed to have followed the example of Pope Paul VI, who on 12 September 1965, in the same Catacombs of St. Domitilla, had spoken about the lessons of simplicity, poverty, charity, and justice that are historically engraved in the Church’s memory of the catacombs. This research examines “The Pact of the Catacombs”, its recent coming to light, and its significance as a pathway for a possible poor-servant church. As a qualitative research, its approach is historical, and its analysis of primary and secondary sources will be both narrative and descriptive in connecting it to other important documents of the same milieu.

1. Introduction

The Pact of the Catacombs of Domitilla (The Catacombs’ Pact of the Poor and Servant Church 1965) may be described as one of the many offshoots of the Second Vatican Council. The document was produced from many of the theological and social stirrings generated by the council that are interpreted as reading the ‘signs of the time.’ Its history is connected with that of Vatican II. This explains why this research places it within the wider spectrum of important and remarkable events of the 1960s, both within and outside the Catholic Church. This is done chiefly by interlacing it within the parameters of the socio-economic and political awakenings of the then emergent world, collectively referred to as the “Third World” and international politics in the Cold War era. This research provides an important insight into “The Pact”, which was almost completely consigned to history archives due to its near disappearance from ecclesial and public sight after the council.

It considers the document as one of the many important documents of the immediate post-Vatican II years, such as the Manifesto of the Bishops of the Third World (1967), The Medellín Documents (1968) and Justice in the World (1971). This research further depicts “The Pact” as a rich tapestry with many complexities on account of its primary object of concern—poverty. The question of poverty itself, whether freely chosen for religious purposes, or imposed by socio-economic, political, and cultural circumstances, remains a very difficult issue. It does not admit a straight black-and-white answer that makes no allowance for intricate nuances that defile oversimplification. This research is a modest contribution that aims to shed light on The Pact of the Catacombs of Domitilla, since its re-emergence to light with the fiftieth anniversary of the end of Vatican II in 2015. It celebrates the significance of the document not for what it achieved or did not achieve, but for what it represents—a barometer of some sort for the contemporary Catholic Church to check itself concerning the ostentatious display of power, wealth, and influence, which may lead it to forget the plights of the poor who happen to be the majority of its faithful.

The Christian catacombs are hallowed in the historical memory of the Roman Catholic Church. They are both ancient and symbolic in the history of nascent and tested Christianity in Rome because they conserve the remains of the heroic witnesses of the Christian faith (Pani 2015, p. 543). According to Pope Paul VI (1963–1978), during his visit to the Roman Catacombs of St. Domitilla on 12 September 1965, it was in the catacombs of Rome that “Christianity sank its roots in poverty”. It was in the catacombs that “the Church was stripped of all human power, was poor, was humble, was pious, was oppressed, was heroic”. And most admirably, it was there in the catacombs that “the primacy of the spirit had its incomparable testimony, its martyrdom” (Paul VI 1965a). As a sacred place that conserves the remains of martyrs and saints, the catacombs enchant and inspire awe, especially with their simplicity, which bears a reminder of the nothingness in attachments to power and wealth.

In the waning days of the final phase of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), like-minded bishops from the church of the poor group gathered in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla on 16 November 1965 for an informal meeting. The fruit of that friendly and informal meeting later became known as “The Pact of the Catacombs”, whose historical importance is linked to that of Vatican II (Pani 2015, p. 542). The issues of poverty and voluntary powerlessness appeared quite early at the very inception of the council. A month before its formal commencement, Pope John XXIII (1958–1963), in his radio message on 11 September 1962, indicated the new image of the church that he wanted to see emerge from the council. It was to be a church that would present itself as poor without the appearance of the pomp and prestige of worldly power and domination. As such, “In the face of underdeveloped countries, the Church presents itself as it is, and wants to be, as the Church of all, particularly the Church of the poor” (John XXIII 1962). However, it would only be possible to achieve this desired new image if the church, in the words of the same Pope John XXIII, was able “to shake off the dust of the Empire that has gathered since Constantine’s day on the throne of St. Peter” (cited in Congar [1964] 2016, p. 70).

The question of the church of the poor occupied a somewhat limited centre stage during the council. Afterward, nothing much seemed to have been heard again of the movement. It resurfaced at the 1968 conference of the Latin American bishops in Medellín (Colombia), especially in its document XIV. It then descended once again into a historical oblivion. The group of forty bishops who appended their signatures to “the Pact of the Catacombs” followed the footsteps of both John XXIII and Paul VI in their attempts to commit themselves to the ideals of the council, particularly those of simplicity, poverty, and prophetic intuition in the person of the bishop (Ethel Ezeh 2015, p. 131). Like the catacombs, poverty has always attracted the church, even though actual material poverty frightens even some of those who tend to idealise, spiritualise, or theologise it. The reason for this fright is not far-fetched because material poverty is the supreme symbol and the most evident manifestation, par excellence, of the multifaceted forms of all human suffering (Campana 2007, p. 56). It is not surprising that the natural inclination for comfort and ease, and the symbiosis with the temporal society, appear strong enough to tempt the men of the church “to adopt the attitudes of the world” and “to wear the world’s tawdry of tinsel and gilt” (Congar [1964] 2016, p. 76). In the light of today’s reality, the Pact of the Catacombs emerges as a challenge and a provocation to the church after more than half a century of incognito. Even for the bishops who first signed the pact, it was a sort of “Episcopal mea culpa, metanoia and commitment” to a simpler lifestyle after being aware of “the privileges that their office as bishops have often kept them isolated and insulated from the harsh realities of economic poverty and want” (Ethel Ezeh 2015, p. 135).

In reconsidering the peculiarity of “The Pact” as a unique historical document at a point in time and its importance as a significant achievement of the church of the poor at the end of a long process during the conciliar days, this research situates it within the climes of the 1960s. The bishops of the generation of Vatican II displayed extraordinary enthusiasm and energy in tackling the socio-economic and political issues of their time. The Catholic Church of their day was suffused with ecclesial debates on economic/political questions and social conflicts (Luciani 2018, p. 574). As for the wider world, the height of the Cold War and the emergence of newly independent nations saw the end of Western colonisations in Africa and Asia. The Pact of the Catacombs and the image of the ideal bishop depicted therein were a microcosm of the larger preoccupations of the 1960s that considered scandalous the enormous amount of dollars wasted on the arms race and geopolitics. At the same time, millions of people, especially children, died of hunger and disease in the Third World. The sensitivity of the 1960s and its quest for social justice and economic development saw it as an affront to the poor, particularly with the massive military expenditure on a global scale, and the apparent indifference of the First and Second Worlds. In this sense, mention must be made of the symbolic abandonment of the papal tiara by Paul VI on 13 November 1964 and its donation to charity in support of the poor of the world. The tiara, at the time of its donation, was estimated to be worth between USD 15,000 and USD 80,000 (New York Times 1964). He was even regarded as “Il Papa Povero” (the Poor Pope) because of his concern for the poor. And terms such as “poor”, “poor country”, and “poverty” appear about twenty-five times in his 1967 social encyclical, Populorum Progressio (Carneiro de Andrade 2015, p. 33).

The decade of the 1960s that produced “The Pact” was a kairos moment in the history of contemporary Catholicism because of heightened ecclesial consciousness about socio-economic development. The same is equally true for the world. This research adopts a historical approach focusing on “The Pact of the Catacombs of Domitilla” in four subheadings. It aims to highlight the document not as an end, but as a programmatic manifesto and a pathway for an ideal poor-servant church, which since the end of Vatican II has remained a project rather than a reality. Bishops who initially signed the document did not want any fanfare about their discreet celebration on that day in the catacombs. The discretion was meant to preserve “their act of simplicity and commitment”, which they hoped would become a ‘lesson’ for their episcopal colleagues to emulate (Pikaza and Antunes da Silva 2015, p. 17). For this research, “The Pact” is used herein to refer to “The Pact of the Catacombs of Domitilla”.

2. “The Pact” Through the Prism of the Third World

Walbert Bühlmann, in his insightful book The Coming of the Third Church, perceptively noted that the church was “gravitating towards the poorer people” in the Third World and “in a hemisphere full of poverty and sickness” (Bühlmann 1978, pp. 23–24). His idea of the “Third Church” was wrapped in the dressing of the ideology of a “Third World”, which in the 1960s and 1970s encompassed all the peoples and their respective nations in the Global South who were then slowly making their debuts on the world’s political stage (Bühlmann 1978, p. 3). As Marcin Solarz explicates, “Third World” remains one of the most important terms that was invented in the twentieth century and a significant concept that greatly impacted the history of the same century (Solarz 2012, p. 1561). The term was originally a project that attained its fullest shape between the early and mid-1960s. It rested upon three major pillars: economic development, racial equality, and political non-alignment during the Cold War (Steinhauer 2015). The French demographer Alfred Sauvy (1898–1990) first used the term in his article “Trois mondes, une planéte”, which he published in the 14 August 1952 edition of the French socialist weekly, L’Observateur (Solarz 2012, p. 1561; Palieraki 2023, p. 1). Sauvy used “Third World” as an analogy, in reference to the Tier Etat during the French Revolution of 1789. Its allusion was to the rhetorical question, “What is the Third Estate?” by Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836). In proffering an answer, Abbé Sieyès gave this response: “The Third Estate” was “everything”, yet amounted to “nothing”, but wanted to be “something” (Wolf-Phillips 1987, p. 311). The term became known in the Anglophone world in 1961 through the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) with his introduction to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), published shortly before his death. In this introduction, Sartre wrote that the “Third World” spoke through the voice of Fanon (Solarz 2012, p. 1565; Steinhauer 2015).

In the analogical context of the 1950s and within the historical circumstances of the immediate post-World War II period, the concept was positively perceived as bringing under its sphere the newly independent countries that were sprouting up on the heels of a wave of decolonisation. Regarding its geographical coverage, “Third World” was initially used to refer to Africa and Asia in the late 1950s. Latin America came to be included in the broad geographical umbrella of the “Third World” beginning in 1959 after the Cuban Revolution and for most of the 1960s. Interestingly, some countries like Ireland and Cyprus that constituted small political and social actors in the European periphery even identified with the “Third World” between the 1960s and 1970s (Palieraki 2023, p. 7). It was only from the 1980s that the term “Third World” began to gain negative connotations, and it came to be used almost exclusively to refer to countries and regions of the world with persistent economic underdevelopment (Palieraki 2023, p. 12). This was not originally the case. The leaders of the “Third World” between the 1950s and 1960s proudly used the term to articulate how they envisioned the place of their countries in the post-colonial world and the geopolitics of the Cold War (Steinhauer 2015).

It was within the optics of the “Third World” that the so-called Colombo Powers constituted by India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), together with Myanmar (Burma), organised the Bandung Conference in 1955. It somewhat marked the beginning of a coalition of “Third World” countries. One of its aims was to find a common ground to keep the Cold War from reaching their countries, as it did in the Korean peninsula. The Bandung Conference in Indonesia brought together the strands of Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, and Pan-Asianism from twenty-nine countries based on their supposedly common experience of colonialism, which it condemned “in all of its manifestations” (Steinhauer 2015; Carneiro de Andrade 2015, p. 28). It adopted a ten-point “declaration on the promotion of world peace and cooperation”. The declaration was inspired by the principles of the United Nations Charter. It equally incorporated the five principles of cooperation, as propounded by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964): (1) mutual respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other nations; (2) nonaggression; (3) noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations; (4) equality and mutual benefit; and (5) peaceful coexistence (Albert 2024). It was in that context that “Third World” was understood as a positive concept. It was presumed to possess the capability to become a “Third Force” that would allow heterogeneous territories and their political leaders to unite around the same affirming identity and common purpose (Palieraki 2023, p. 18).

Sadly, with the progression of time, the expected project of the “Third World” and its emergence as a “Third Force” never actually materialised. Disappointment became the outcome instead of the projected “Third Force”. The impact of that disillusionment, as Leslie Wolf-Phillips argued in 1979, is that the “Third World” became synonymous with economically “underdeveloped countries” as early as the beginning of the 1960s. The original meaning of the term, referring to political nonalignment, was almost obscured by the turn of the 1970s, while the economic connotation increasingly gained ascendance on the international stage (Wolf-Phillips 1987, p. 1313; Solarz 2012, p. 1563). Consequently, the “Third World” assumed the global face that concretised contemporary developmental challenges such as poverty, hunger, disease, and destitution. Those challenges largely constituted the conditions in which most of the developing countries in the Global South found themselves and which separated them from their former colonial powers. It effectively became a world of poor countries (Wolf-Phillips 1987, p. 313). The poverty of the vast majority was one of the defining features of the mid-twentieth century, which, according to Lady Barbara Ward (1914–1981), stretched across the face of the globe. In that world, leaders of the immediate post-colonial countries had to grapple with the grim problems of everyday survival: bounding birth rates, a lack of capital, desperate poverty, and patchy developments (Ward 1962, p. 142).

It was in the realisation that the “Third World” needed a big push to launch them into the global economic orbit that the United Nations, during the first Development Decade (1960–1970), requested that developed countries spend 1% of their GDPs to aid the Third World (United Nations 1961, pp. 17–18; Arnold 1971). For instance, in 1962, it was estimated that USD 120 million had been spent on defence, compared to about USD 3.5 million being spent on foreign aid in underdeveloped countries (O’Grady 1965, p. 126). Given the enormous budgetary allocation to the military, Paul VI, during his apostolic visit to India in 1964, appealed to the developed nations to spend less on ammunitions of death and destruction, and to channel those funds into assisting the developing countries: “Would that every nation, thinking “thoughts of peace and not of affliction” and war, would contribute even a part of its expenditure for arms to a great world fund for the relief of the many problems of nutrition, clothing, shelter and medical care which affect so many peoples!” (Paul VI 1964a).

Pope Paul VI repeated the same appeal a year later in his address to the United Nations in New York on 4 October 1965. He told the UN Assembly that he was speaking “for the poor, the disinherited, the unfortunate, those who long for justice, a dignified life, liberty, prosperity and progress”. For their sake, he once again pleaded, especially with the rich nations, “to devote to the benefit of developing nations at least a part of the money that could be saved through a reduction of armaments” (Paul VI 1965b). The concern for reducing dehumanising poverty in the newly de-colonised countries in the Third World marked most of the pontificate of Paul VI (Schelkens et al. 2013, p. 167). It is not difficult to comprehend the care and concern shown to the Third World by Paul VI. It was the provenance of many of the bishops who took part in Vatican II and were a part of the emerging post-missionary churches. Some of the bishops who represented those young churches were members of the church of the poor group during the Second Vatican Council and appended their signature to “The Pact”. Bishop Helder Câmara regarded Vatican II as a “Christian Bandung” in the hope that the Catholic Church might become “a spiritual leader in the fight to end this injustice of world dimensions” (Câmara 1963). It was equally in the same context that the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire (1921–1997) got “the impression that the Third World could become a source of inspiration for theological renewal, through its utopian and prophetic character as an emergent world” (cited in Assmann 1975, p. 73). That prophetic character was embedded in the reality of the socioeconomic conditions of the poor in the Third World as a social phenomenon. Their economic hardship and living conditions posed a big challenge to theology and obliged it to proffer an answer to this question: “How to be a Christin in a world of poor and impoverished peoples?” (Boff [1985] 2011, p. 20).

3. The Church of the Poor and the Questions of Underdevelopment and Poverty

Poverty remains a sociological and theological problem that human beings have wrestled with, not only from the beginning of Christianity but from the beginning of human society. Alongside world hunger, the affliction of poverty for the majority of human beings was seen as a great scandal in the 1960s because it was believed that there was the availability of technical means to eliminate the degradation of subhuman living. Such human degradation could not leave the Catholic Church indifferent (MacEoin 1966, p. 108). The earliest mention of the theme of church and poverty before the commencement of Vatican II is credited to Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens of Brussels (1904–1996). In his alternative schema, “On the Church”, he considered the question of church and poverty as a pastoral issue. Pope John XXIII directed Cardinal Suenens to come up with a schema that would give another theological perspective on the church compared to the schema prepared by the Roman Curia, adjudged as less pastoral. In his elaboration of the church’s mission ad extra, Cardinal Suenens opined that the council ought to focus attention on the church’s relation with the economic society. In consideration of widespread global poverty and hunger, particularly in the developing world, he outlined the church’s mission ad extra in the following manner: “Faced with the existence of underdeveloped countries, it is necessary that the Church presents itself as the Church for everyone and especially of the poor” (cited in Carneiro de Andrade 2015, pp. 27–28).

Based on the viewpoint of Cardinal Suenens, Paulo F. Carneiro de Andrade explicates that the radio broadcast of Pope John XXIII on 11 September 1962 “reflected the grand plan which had been set out for the council by Cardinal Suenens” (Carneiro de Andrade 2015, p. 27). The issues of poverty and underdevelopment were a great concern to Cardinal Suenens. According to Helder Câmara, the Belgian cardinal took the initiative during the first session of the council to organise an informal meeting between bishops from developed and underdeveloped countries to discuss socio-economic problems (Câmara 1963). Because the council itself took place in the context of the 1960s with its social awakening, the church of the poor emerged very early in the life of the council and remained active throughout the four sessions of the council. It had its first meeting on 26 October 1962, less than a month after the council’s first session began. The meeting took place at the Belgian College in Rome, which would later serve as the nest and the gathering venue for what eventually became known as the church of the poor. The council fathers who formed the initial small group were collectively referred to as belonging to “the Belgian College” because of their place of gathering and informal meetings (Pani 2015, p. 543).

Between ten and thirteen bishops attended that first meeting, with four priests as consultants. One of those consultants was Father Paul Gauthier, a member of the Companions of Jesus the Carpenter. Those gathered at the meeting discussed “Jesus Christ and the Church of the Poor”, taken from Gauthier’s yet-to-be-published book, Jésus, l’Église et les pauvres. It was published in 1963 and appeared in English as Christ, the Church and the Poor in 1965 (Gigacz 2024). Its call to the church to become forthright in the cause of social justice in favour of poor populations in developing countries and the evangelisation of the poor was remarkable (Kandel Lamdan 2022, p. 567). Although he played an important role in the group, Gauthier was not the founder of the church of the poor, as alluded to by Silvana K. Kandel Lamdan (Kandel Lamdan 2022, p. 567). He was invited to that first meeting like the rest of the consultants, including Yves Congar and François Houtart, whose presentations helped the assembled bishop to get a better understanding of the issue of poverty, especially from the theological and sociological perspectives (O’Grady 1965, pp. 124–25). The meeting was chaired by Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier of Lyons (France), an active supporter of the priest-worker movement. The two main interests of the group were the “Church of service” and “Church of the poor”, which they wished to see the council discuss alongside the problem of poverty and the reduction of its toll on the lives of countless poor people. It seems most likely that the group’s later identity as the “Church of the Poor” bore the imprints of its first discussion on “Jesus Christ and the Church of the Poor”. It likewise reflected its immediate primary objective—the development and consideration of the theme of poverty by the council (O’Grady 1965, p. 124; Gigacz 2024).

Bishop Câmara later referred to the small gathering as the “Group of Poverty”. He described it as the group of “Bishops of the entire world who met to study the mystery of the Poor One and to discover practical ways to help the Church find again the lost paths of Poverty” (Câmara 163). The group’s makeup was very international, and they had a common interest in the problem of poverty. It established itself as the voice of the poor, most notably those in the Third World (Planeallas Barnosell 2015, pp. 57–58). It was not long before prominent members of the group emerged, including Bishop Charles-Marie Himmer of Tournai (Belgium), Archbishop João Batista da Mota of Vitória (Brazil), Bishop Georges-Louis Mercier of Laghouat (Algeria), Bishop Georges Hakim of Galilee (later Patriarch Maximos V Hakim), Bishop Hélder Câmara, then auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro, and Bishop Alfred Jean F. Ancel, auxiliary bishop of Lyon (O’Grady 1965:124; MacEoin 1966:112). The opening remark of Cardinal Gerlier aptly set the tone and articulated forthwith what the role of the church of the poor should be as a “lobby” movement at the council (cited in Raguer 1997, p. 202; see also Kandel Lamdan 2022, p. 569; Planeallas Barnosell 2015, pp. 60–61):

“The duty of the Church in our age is to adapt itself in the most responsive way to the situation created by the suffering of so many human beings…. We must petition the authorities and insist that it be raised [in the Council’s program]. Everything else is in danger of remaining ineffective if this problem is not studied and dealt with…. The Church must be seen for what it is: the Mother of the Poor, whose first concern is to give her children bread for both body and soul, as John XXIII himself said on 11 September 1962: “The Church is and wishes to be the Church of all, and particularly the Church of the poor”.”

As already suggested, Congar and Houtart made two presentations that reflected two poles of the group’s collective interest: theological and sociological. Congar’s theological presentation was later published as a chapter, “By Way of Conclusion”, and incorporated into his 1963 book on the subject matter entitled Power and Poverty in the Church, alongside other chapters such as “A Church of Service” and “A Church of Poverty” (Congar [1964] 2016). Reflecting on “How the Church has Acquired its Appearance of Privilege”, Congar re-echoed the words of Pope John XXIII to insist that the time had come “to shake off the dust of the Empire that has gathered since Constantine’s day on the throne of St. Peter” (cited in Congar [1964] 2016, p. 70). He explained that the imperial specks of dust such as titles and insignias were “borrowed at some time from the dazzling imperial splendour”, which at the time of the council, had become “countersigns”. Having lost their “positive value”, since they belonged to a different epoch in the past, Congar surmised that those titles and insignias did not express the evangelical service of the men of the church who bore them. On the contrary, they were signs of power, prestige, and privilege that carried with them structures of bygone years (Congar [1964] 2016, p. 70). In the observation of Congar, as recalled by Desmond O’Grady, the theology of hierarchy, power, and authority had been overemphasised at the expense of evangelic presence, service, simplicity, and witness. Consequently, corresponding titles and insignias of ecclesiastical power and authority influenced their bearers. Regrettably, it was one of the outward forms by which many outsiders viewed and judged the church (O’Grady 1965, p. 125). The section on “titles”, as found in “The Pact of the Catacombs”, unmistakenly shows a lot of similarities to the thought of Congar. Bishop Câmara expressed a similar concern in his famous 1963 letter to all Catholic bishops around the world titled “Exchange of Ideas with our Brothers in the Episcopate”. Concerning ecclesiastical titles, Bishop Câmara posed two outstanding questions: “Shall we take the initiative to suppress our titles of Eminence, Beatitude, Excellency? Shall we lose the obsession to be of the nobility and drop our coats of arms and mottos?” (Câmara 1963).

If Congar created a theological exposé of poverty and disapproved of the imperial “dust” of pomp and pageantry that had accrued in members of the church hierarchy over time, François Houtart (then director of the Religious Sociology Centre in Brussels), for his part, presented the problem of poverty through a sociological lens. It was a global view of poverty that afflicted not just a particular continent even though the undeveloped countries bore the greater burden, but many people around the world. With almost prescient knowledge, Houtart predicted that demographically, the developed nations would have a smaller population by the year 2000. At the same time, the underdeveloped population would be doubled by that same year. Regarding underdevelopment in Third World countries, he traced the causes of their underdevelopment to internal factors, such as economic, social, political, technological, demographic and cultural factors. As for external factors, he underscored that the politics of the superpowers of the Cold War and their disproportionate military expenditures inhibited economic growth in the Third World. To remedy the situation, he expressed the belief that “an annual grant of between USD 10 and USD 30 million could resolve the problem of development” (O’Grady 1965, p. 126). He equally discussed the lamentable problems of the poor and hunger in the world, as well as war and peace. He argued that the continued poverty of most of the world’s population and the underdevelopment of their countries was as much of a threat to global peace as the arms race between the superpowers. In all these troubling circumstances, the church was duty-bound to offer responses by encouraging reforms to eliminate socio-economic and political injustices, to take a doctrinal position, and to bear witness through its life of simplicity and poverty (O’Grady 1965, pp. 126–27).

As with the case of Congar’s presentation, Bishop Câmara also alluded to Houtart’s other presentation that he co-authored with L. Grond and C. Thoen, titled “L’Eglise et l’aide aux pays en voie de développement” (The Church and aid to developing countries). They made the presentation at the informal meeting that Cardinal Suenens had organised. The authors offered a global vision of the dual problem of underdevelopment and poverty, which was not limited to one continent or country in the Third World (Câmara 1963). In this picture is to be inserted another important document of the 1960s that is often forgotten, The Manifesto of the Bishops of the Third World, signed on 15 August 1967 by eighteen bishops from Africa, Asia and Latin America. This was the initiative of Archbishop Helder Câmara of Olinda and Recife (Brazil). The aim was to find ways to apply the social teachings of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio in different parts of the world. The bishops recognised themselves as pastoral leaders of people who were battling against many barriers in their struggle for development. Uniting their voices to that of Paul VI, they affirmed that the Catholic Church was not wedded to any political or economic system. For this reason, the church ought to condemn any system that does not cater to the common good of the people, especially the poor (Manifiesto de los Obispos del Tercer Mundo 1967, nos. 1, 8).

4. Multiple Viewpoints on Poverty

The issue of poverty, whether during Vatican II or after, and the divergent positions on the problem cannot be treated without reference to another thorny question, that is, the material wealth of the church and its investments. It was the magnetic centre around which all the discussions revolved, whether by those who sought to make a connection between poverty and the mystery of the church or those who wanted to see poverty emphasised as a practical pastoral concern in the life of the church. In the assertion of John McCormack, the church may not be fabulously rich, but there is no denying that it gives the appearance of wealth and privilege and equally displays certain pretensions to power (McCormack 1966, p. 211). The financial status of the Vatican’s wealth and the estimates of its investments were a matter of guesswork in the 1960s. For instance, at the height of the controversy over the Vatican’s non-payment of Italian income tax in the 1960s, Italian Premier Aldo Moro (1916–1978) requested the Holy See to furnish his office with a list of the Vatican’s stockholdings. This was part of Moro’s candid effort to ward off the attacks of the socialist party under Pietro Nenni, who accused the Vatican of tax evasion. In his reply to the request of the prime minister, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Amleto Giovanni Cicognani (1883–1973), is believed to have told Moro that a sovereign government does not disclose its financial status to another state (Time Magazine 1965).

According to Ernest Lewin, the Vatican remains an expert in keeping a veil of mystery over its financial position, leading to wild and exaggerated estimates of its wealth and possessions (Lewin 1983, p. 185). Such was the case when Time Magazine, in its edition of 26 February 1965, asserted that bankers estimated the Vatican’s global wealth to be between USD 10 and USD 15 billion. The estimates of Time Magazine put the Vatican’s Italian stockholdings to be around USD 1.6 billion, about 15% of the listed shares of the Italian stock market. This was not surprising since the Vatican’s significant investments ranged from banking, insurance, chemicals, and steel to construction and real estate (Time Magazine 1965). In its edition of 27 March 1965, The Economist alleged that the Vatican’s investments in Italian stocks amounted to about USD 560 million. It assumed that the Italian stocks were about a tenth of all the Vatican’s investments throughout the world. Therefore, based on that assumption, the Economist estimated the total of all the Vatican’s investments in the world was around USD 5.6 billion (O’Grady 1968, p. 12). Although this might have been somewhat incorrect, the face value of that estimate, as explained by Gary MacEoin, made the Vatican in 1965 an “international financial power of formidable size” (MacEoin 1966, p. 115).

For analytical comparison, the Vatican’s realisable assets would equal the official gold and foreign reserves of France. The value of the same realisable assets was estimated to be worth about five times the dollar securities held by the British government, only being exceeded as investment portfolios by the largest mutual life and assurance companies in the United States of America (MacEoin 1966, p. 115). Other guesses and estimates about the Vatican’s wealth followed suit. For instance, The International Herald Tribune in 1970 put the Vatican’s investments at around USD 12.18 billion. The same paper in August 1978 estimated that the Vatican’s actual real estate holdings in Italy alone were about USD 36 billion, while the Italian newspaper, Il Mondo, in September 1978 reported that the Vatican-owned rented apartments in Rome attracted an annual revenue of USD 4 million. Another Italian paper, La Stampa, in the same year, also put the Vatican’s capital productive investments in the range of USD 7 to 12 billion (Lewin 1983, pp. 188, 194). While it is safe to assume that those figures might not have represented the actual financial status of the Vatican in those years, the figures were not repudiated or contradicted by the Holy See. In the Vatican’s operational logic, it was beneficial to maintain a shroud of mystery over its financial position rather than publish fabricated or padded figures to appease the curiosity of journalists and other speculators (O’Grady 1968, p. 12; Lewin 1983, p. 194).

Given the Vatican’s perceived global wealth and financial interests, it is not difficult to see why there were controverted views on the question of poverty both among the conciliar fathers and among the members of the church of the poor. This diversity of views on poverty, especially on the part of the group, revealed itself as the church of the poor laboured to make its impact at the council, which happened to be its main shortcoming, and equally limited its overall outreach. Nobody either at the council or outside of it denied the usefulness of financial resources to maintain and support the church’s global network of religious, social and charitable organisations, particularly in mission countries (MacEoin 1966, p. 117). Even Time Magazine acknowledged that dividends from the Vatican’s investments in the 1960s helped pay the Vatican’s humanitarian and charitable expenses, such as assisting 1.5 million children and providing food and clothing to about 7 million needy Italians (Time Magazine 1965). The objectionable issue, according to Gary MacEoin, was whether the Vatican needed such a financial empire of global proportions, and the use of the accrued income to maintain a certain lifestyle by church prelates and high Vatican officials like cardinals and nuncios who were driven in chauffeured limousines while an average Catholic lacked some necessities of life. Some people wondered if the causes of the gospel were adequately served by such wealth and displays of materialism (MacEoin 1966, p. 117). A similar observation was also made about the religious orders by no less than Paul VI. In his address to superiors general of religious orders and congregations on 23 May 1964, Paul VI enjoined religious orders in their members and collectively as religious institutes to “surpass others by their example of evangelical poverty”. Concretely, he charged them to “avoid a too exquisite style and ornamentation in their buildings and in carrying out their functions, as well as anything else that savors of luxury, always bearing in mind the social condition of the people among whom they live” (Paul VI 1964b).

Regarding divergent viewpoints on poverty, the first notable difference was between the English-speaking bishops and their French colleagues. The Anglophone position could be described as a “common sense” view since it argued that the church ought to give away what it could but must retain and preserve what it needed for its manifold works, proper functioning and administration, and social and charitable purposes. This position did not bother to inquire about the implications of poverty for the church. Instead, it was concerned about what individual Catholics could do personally to alleviate poverty. It disapproved of any effort to make a mystique out of poverty because deliberately making oneself poor, as some bishops tended to suggest, would never solve the vexing problem of poverty (O’Grady 1965, p. 148). They even regarded the church of the poor as a sort of pressure body set up to extract more financial aid for their local churches (MacEoin 1966:113). The Anglophone bishops were convinced that any mystique of poverty revealed an ignorance of complex economic problems that went beyond the mere spiritualisation of poverty and the conscious embrace of poverty to express personal closeness to the poor (O’Grady 1965, p. 148). Future events and hypes in the heydays of Liberation Theology seemed to prove the Anglophone bishops right because changing systems, structures, policies, and practices that keep people poor requires much more than mere closeness and friendship with the poor (Millennial 2021). Even someone like Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of liberation theology, acknowledges that poverty is both a “controversial question” and “an equivocal term” that risks obscuring the reality of material poverty, which is “the lack of economic goods necessary for a human life worthy of the name” (Gutiérrez [1971] 1994, pp. 162–63).

For the Francophone bishops in the days of the council, among whom were the leading members of the church of the poor, the working class was representative of all the poor who felt deprived of their place in the church. For this reason, they judged it imperative for the church to take the side of the poor. Based on their historical, sociological, and cultural experiences, the Francophone bishops wanted ecclesiastical attention to focus on the plights of the poor, which was displayed in the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Their position was a demand for an attitudinal change on the part of the church as an institution. It is in this light that the remark of Bishop Ancel about the church’s rapport with the rich and powerful countries is to be understood: “One fact that stands out is that in many countries, the church appears as a stranger, even as an enemy. They believe it is rich and powerful, linked to the wealthy and to the power structures” (cited in MacEoin 1966, p. 113). A similar perspective is discernible in the position of Bishop Mercier with his articulation of the issue of poverty as hinging upon three main aspects: (a) the development of poor countries; (b) the evangelisation of the poor and workers; and (c) giving the church once again its true poor “face” (Curnow 2012, p. 424). There were also conflicting opinions within the church of the poor group, as represented by Mercier and Ancel. The former stressed a pastoral programme with concrete gestures and living the mystery of poverty, while the latter emphasised a theological study of the problem, and opposed mere gestures that did not go deep enough to bring about a change in the attitude of the whole church to poverty (Curnow 2012, p. 427). The pastoral view, with its interest in outward actions, and the biblical and theological strand, with its strong theoretical penchant, struggled to accommodate each other within the group (Planeallas Barnosell 2015, p. 60). In the final analysis, the position of the church of the poor on poverty remained unclear and fluid, specifically as seen in its 1964 document. It contained two distinct notions: (a) “simplicity and evangelical poverty”, and (b) “primacy in our ministry for the evangelisation of the poor”. The first notion prioritised the eschewing of titles and the embrace of evangelical poverty, whereas the second notion emphasised pastoral actions toward the poor and the world of work (Curnow 2012, p. 426; Carneiro de Andrade 2015, p. 32).

What is often depicted as being defeated at the council on the issue of poverty, to some extent, was the Francophone position. Even Pope Paul VI and a key figure on the issue, like Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, leaned more toward the Anglophone perspective. For instance, in his last pastoral letter as the archbishop of Milan, titled The Christian and Comfort, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini described poverty as the “robe of Christ, and of his followers who want to imitate, represent and preach him”. Poverty is “spiritual, helped and sustained from heaven”. At the personal level, each Christian “must have a special reverence and a great concern for the poor” (cited in O’Grady 1965, p. 131). The position of Cardinal Lercaro was not different. His preference leaned towards mystical poverty, understood as a virtue and a path to God, although without showing any accurate specification about the nature of poverty. This was visible in his emphasis on the mystery of Christ in the poor; the eminent dignity of the poor in the kingdom of God and the church; and the evangelisation of the poor (Cabestrero 2007, p. 47; Curnow 2012, p. 427).

Although the definitive stance of Vatican II on poverty, as reflected in Lumen Gentium 8 §3, appears to be a fusion of the Anglophone and Francophone perspectives, the stronger leaning toward the Anglophone position is not in doubt. The council acknowledges that Jesus Christ “carried out the work of redemption in poverty and persecution”, which is a path that the Church ought to follow. At the same time, the Church must not dispossess itself of its material possessions since “it needs human resources to carry out its mission…” It appears to be a misreading of the historical context and the various nuances at play to assert that most of the conciliar fathers were not committed to “seeing the Church as devoted to the poor, in poverty and powerless, being poor herself” (Sobrino 2015, p. 113). As the Congregation for the Doctrine and Faith underscored in its 1986 Instruction, the Church has always had special care for those at the peripheries of society. It maintains that “those who are oppressed by poverty are the object of a love of preference on the part of the Church, which since her origin and despite the failings of many of her members has not ceased to work for their relief, defence and liberation” (Congregation for the Doctrine and Faith 1986, no. #68).

It is equally a misrepresentation to hold the stance that most bishops and theologians who happened to be Europeans and who played key roles at the council were not acutely aware of the problem of poverty (Codina 2007, p. 63). The contrary is somewhat true because the idea of the church of the poor originated in Europe. This is in the context of the ubiquitous existence of poverty and social injustice in Latin American society not provoking a general social consciousness within the Latin American church, with liberation theology yet to be born (Cabestrero 2007, pp. 46–47). Apart from the isolated initiatives of a few courageous bishops, like their counterparts from Africa and Asia, the overall influence of Latin American bishops on the council was marginal. Alongside the new emerging churches in the Third World, the church in Latin America belonged to the church of the silent at the council (Codina 2007, p. 64). Its turning point was at Medellín in 1968 regarding critical reflections on the social, economic and political realities of Latin America. As has been made abundantly clear, that turning point would not have been possible without Vatican II, which brought about great transformations in the church’s overall theological and pastoral orientations (Piccone-Camere 2025, pp. 2, 5). It was also those transformations that made it possible for liberation theology to enjoy a certain modicum of institutional rapport in its years of gestation and also be accepted, albeit bravely, as the “official theology” of the Latin American Church (Recio Huetos 2023, p. 4).

5. “The Pact” and a Poor-Servant Church

Francis Fukuyama, in his paraphrase of Karl Marx on the social forces and conditions that determine ideologies, remarks that “ideas do not become powerful unless they speak to the concerns of large numbers of ordinary people” (Fukuyama 2012, p. 53). That appears to have been the fate of the “Pact of the Catacombs” because it went almost into a state of complete oblivion as soon as Vatican II ended. Perhaps it did not immediately speak to ordinary Catholics until the (Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) 1968) convocation in Medellín (Colombia). Some parts of the document were incorporated into Document XIV of the Conference on “The Poverty of the Church” (Documentos Finales de Medellín XIV). Even at that, not many mentions of it were made afterward because there remained an enormous gulf between ideal and actual ecclesiastical practice. As Desmond O’Grady rightly pointed out, it is a contradiction to refer to the Church as the church of the poor because a church of princes cannot possibly at the same time be a church of the poor. The Belgian theologian Jacques Leclercq once posed this question: “The bishop is often called the father of his diocese: how can you see a father in a person you must address as “Excellency?” (cited in O’Grady 1965, p. 152). Given the attention to poverty and the ecclesial social awakening, the hope was even expressed in some quarters during the years of the council that the bishops might sell their jewelled rings and give the proceeds to charity to alleviate poverty, but that never happened (MacEoin 1966, p. 127). References to “The Pact” were patchy here and there, and often used only in connection to the church of the poor but rarely and specifically on its own as a landmark document. One of the few publications in which the complete text of it was preserved is by the German-Brazilian theologian and future bishop Boaventura Kloppenburg (1919–2009). The text appeared under the title “Pact of the Servant Church” in his book, Concilio Vaticano II, published in 1966, a year after the close of the council. Kloppenburg probably drew from his closeness to the church of the poor because he served as a peritus to the Brazilian bishops at the council (Tradition in Action 2006). The text also appeared in Journal du Concile by the French journalist Henri Fesquet, also published in 1966. Fesquet was the first person to report on the discreet Eucharistic celebration of the bishops in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla. His report was published three weeks after the event in the French newspaper Le Monde, and titled “Un groupe d’évêques anonymes s’engage à donner le témoignage extérieur d’une vie de stricte pauvreté” (“An anonymous group of bishops commit to giving outward witness of a life of strict poverty”) (Pikaza and Antunes da Silva 2015, p. 17).

“The Pact” drew from various sources for its inspiration. It may be safe to assume that there was not a single architect behind the document. The reason is that the discreet nature of the document and its almost clandestine provenance makes it difficult to ascribe it to a single source. Monsignor Luigi Bettazzi was one of the bishops at the catacombs. He was also the only Italian bishop to sign the document and the last surviving bishop who was present at the fiftieth anniversary of the document in Rome in 2015. About the personalities behind the document and their influence on it, Monsignor Bettazzi recalled that “A group of bishops organized the meeting at the Catacombs of Domitilla” and “most of us learned about it by word of mouth” (cited in Poggioli 2015). Regarding the document being relegated to obscurity, he said: “There was no coordination or follow-up, and slowly over time, it was a bit forgotten” (cited in Wooden 2015). Another reason according to him was due to the fear of mischaracterisation of the church: “Pope Paul VI was afraid that too much emphasis on the church of the poor would spill into politics. It was the peak of the Cold War, it could appear the church was leaning toward one side” (cited in Poggioli 2015).

Regarding the face value of the document, an attentive reading of it may reveal its closer affinity to the group’s wing that emphasised a pastoral approach to the problem of poverty. The document contains a list of thirteen personal commitments by the signatory bishops to their pastoral mission in their dioceses (Comblin 2009, p. 18). Some of the sources obliviously include Congar’s Power and Poverty in the Church, as well as his presentation at the first meeting of the church of the poor in 1962. There is also undoubtedly the contribution of Bishop Câmara, especially with his push for bishops to substitute plain wooden crosses for their jewel-studded pectoral crosses of gold (Câmara 1963). Despite the importance of such a daring suggestion by Bishop Câmara, his proposal may not have been the only reason that persuaded Pope Paul VI to gift each participating bishop a simple plain gold ring as a souvenir at the end of the council (MacEoin 1966, pp. 118, 126–27; Scerri 2019, p. 326). Despite its remarkable idealism and obvious concern for the crushing poverty in which many people found themselves, the Pact limited its scope to the personal embrace of poverty by each bishop and a simple lifestyle conceived as befitting the episcopal ministry of the bishop as a shepherd, not as an administrator and a princely ruler. It may best be described as “the praxis” of an authentic Christian response to poverty and wealth in the world, as should be modelled in the life of the hierarchy (Ethel Ezeh 2015, p. 138). Concerning titles, it is not known if any bishop, even those who signed the document, was ever addressed without ecclesiastical titles since it is one of the privileges that the document unambiguously frowned upon.

For all its hype, the document did not so much consider poverty as a socioeconomic and political problem that demanded the church’s denunciation of the root causes of poverty and the economic and political systems that perpetually keep people in poverty. The bishops, however, pledged to do their “utmost so that those responsible for our government and for our public services make, and put into practice, laws, structures and social institutions required by justice and charity, equality and the harmonic and holistic development of all men and women…”. (The Pact of the Catacombs, no. 10). The document bears the marks of the tension between two conceptions of the problem—one treated it emotively and the other treated it more as a doctrinal and political issue. The latter would have its field day at the Latin American Bishops’ Conference in 1968, which emphasized the need for the church to denounce injustice and accompany the poor in their struggle for liberation (Carneiro de Andrade 2015, p. 30). The lesson has been learned, as appeals to the moral conscience or personal social responsibility of individuals as private citizens are not sufficient to overcome poverty, extreme inequality, and human misery of any kind (Sung 2015a, p. 56).

It was at Medellín that the distinction between material poverty and spiritual poverty became much clearer. In their incorporation of “The Pact” in the final documents of Medellín, as highlighted in number 4, the Latin American bishops distinguished between material poverty and spiritual poverty. On the one hand, material poverty is described as a lack of the goods of this world and regarded as evil because the biblical prophets denounce it as contrary to the will of God and the fruit of injustice. On the other hand, spiritual poverty is portrayed as the attitude of openness to God. It shows the availability of those who expect it from the Lord (Documentos Finales de Medellín XIV, no. 4). Medellín went beyond Vatican II specifically in the way the Latin American bishops made a commitment to the alleviation of the suffering of the poor and the achievement of liberation from structured economic, social and political oppressions as an integral component of the authentic practice of religion (Surlis 1978, p. 681). It is also pertinent to make a connection between the clarity of perspectives at the Medellín conference and the future direction of the church’s social concerns, which were already delineated by John XXIII. One of the novelties brought by John XXIII to Catholic Social Teaching is his extension of human rights to include socioeconomic rights such as necessities like food, shelter, and access to water and medical services (McGovern 1990, p. 37). At the conclusion of the council, Paul VI observed that the church at Vatican II made “herself the servant of humanity”. The reason is that “Never before perhaps, so much as on this occasion, has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives…”. Consequently, the church, in its mission, “must recognize the countenance of Christ (cf. Matt. 25:40), the Son of Man, especially when tears and sorrows make it plain to see” since “a knowledge of man is a prerequisite for a knowledge of God” (Paul VI 1965c).

‘The Pact” within the general optics of Vatican II is better conceived as a programmatic manifesto of a prophetic mission and a pathway for the emergence of a poor-servant church. As Bishop Câmara always insisted, it is imperative to do so to keep poverty from sinking into misery because “it mars the image of God revealed in human beings to seek wholeness and perfection”. It is “a crying misery that we have no right to remain indifferent” (Câmara 1972:2). That is also why a fellow Brazilian, Hugo Assmann, asserted that hunger is one of the ten most urgent problems in the world. Given the place of food for human survival, he argues that it is not permitted for the church and its theology to be indifferent, even to the level of cynicism (Assmann 1975, p. 71; Sung 2015b, p. 68). Elsewhere, he opines that “it is no good doing theology just within itself” if it shields the theologian from hearing the human cries of agony and poverty (Assmann 1993:45). Against this background, Gustavo Gutiérrez cautions against a sentimental view of poverty that may accord priority to spiritual poverty at the expense of material poverty, which he describes as “a scandalous condition” (Gutiérrez [1971] 1994, p. 171). Therefore, it is in consideration of this fact that the church of the poor movement deserves credit for keeping alive the consciousness, among the conciliar fathers, of the problem of poverty in the world and the plights of its many victims (Planeallas Barnosell 2015:69). Their actions constantly reminded the college of bishops of the aphorism of the Church Fathers: “Feed the man dying of hunger because if you have not fed him, you have killed him” (Ethel Ezeh 2015, p. 131). The importance of the document as a programmatic manifesto is discernible in the citation of it by the Latin American bishops at Medellín, using it to express their desire to lead a simple and modest lifestyle in episcopal houses and dressings, and their renunciation of honorific titles, which they adjudged as “belonging to another era” (Documentos Finales de Medellín XIV, no. 12).

6. Conclusions

The Pact of the Catacombs of Domitilla cannot be dissociated from the climes of the 1960s regarding contemporary Catholicism, which was dominated by great insights and the outstanding leadership of John XXIII and Paul VI. The way was led by John XXIII’s convocation of the Second Vatican Council and followed by his two extraordinary encyclicals: Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963). The general orientation of Vatican II, predicated mostly on reading “the signs of the time”, made possible the evolution of the church of the poor, from whose enclave issued forth “The Pact”. Additionally, the Catholic Church, during the pontificate of Paul VI, flourished due to many pioneer initiatives tackling social questions and the plights of the poor and their countries. In many ways, bishops at various local levels dedicated pastoral letters to social issues, showing them as the men of their generation in setting them apart from their episcopal successors. It must not be forgotten that the postconciliar theological and pastoral solidarity of the episcopacy with the poor in many parts of the world gave credibility to the Catholic Church as a formidable social force in many parts of the world (Boff [1985] 2011, p. 21). As has been demonstrated herein, “The Pact” is historically connected to the awakenings and concerns of the “Third World” about poverty, hunger, and economic underdevelopment, regarding national security as a major priority for the First and Second Worlds of the Cold War era. But within the orbit of Vatican II and the non-emergence of a poor-servant church as an institution, the unique importance of “The Pact” lies in the fact that it made sure that the official church did not forget the poor. It may be safely surmised that the document is relevant as an ideal and a guideline for evaluating ecclesiastical practices regarding wealth and power, prestige and pastoral life.