The Seminary Chronicles “A Pope Dies”

Pope john Paul I

Most of you will remember Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.  Even non-Catholics would remember him.  But how many will remember Pope John Paul I.

It is alright if you don’t.  He was only the Pope for 33 days.  Some say he was murdered, but that isn’t what this post is about.  This is the one Pope that I will not ever forget.  It isn’t because of what he did, how or why he died or even what kind of man he was.  It is because of what happened to me the night he died.

It was the beginning of the school year.  My sophomore year.  It was much easier getting into the routine and discipline of the seminary once you had the first year under your belt.  After two and half months of home life, I actually looked forward to the rigidness that is seminary life.  One falls into the routine so much that any interruption of the routine is always memorable.   Such an intrusion of the routine occurred on the 29th of September, 1978.

Now he officially died on the 28th, but I didn’t hear about it until the night of the 29th.  You must understand that back in those dark ages, there wasn’t Facebook.  There wasn’t Twitter.  There were only 4 channels on the TV and if you were lucky enough to have cable TV, which the school didn’t, you only had about 15 channels from which to choose.  For that matter, the Internet was not even invented yet.  Well, at least the Internet as we know it today.  There were no cell phones.  Only land lines.  There wasn’t CNN or 24 hour news.  And even if we did have any of these resources,  we as seminarians would not have had access to them nor been allowed to use them.  In any event we didn’t have these things, but we did have Fr. Cadei. 

At this point, you may want to go back and search the site for earlier posts about the good padre.  It is okay, I’ll wait.

Ah!  You are back!  So, yes, that Fr. Cadei!

Lights out at the school happened promptly at 11 PM.  No ifs, ands or butts.  The night of the 29th, however, was to be different.  Right before lights out, the school bell began to ring.  It was immediately followed by the loudspeaker blaring a message from Fr. Cadei, imploring us to come to chapel and be quick about it.  Serious stuff indeed and that of course set all of students abuzz with what this might all be about as we headed for the chapel.

As soon as the entire student body had assembled in the chaple, Fr. Cadei, blew into the room in his finest PJ’s and swept up to the lectern. He was always a man of high energy but on this night, he was blazing.

“We have suffered a great tragedy.” he began. “We have lost a great man.  We must pray.”  He then launched us into numerous Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s.  Being well trained in the fine art of following and reciting these prayers, we all followed although we were all wondering who the great man was.

Was it one of the priests at the school?  Could it be one of the priests who went to mission?  We were a missionary order and many priest who came into our lives at the school soon went to missions in the Philippians, Brazil and China.  Some of them had been martyred.  Was it a benefactor of the school?  Who was it, father?  Who?

After a untold number of said prayers, Fr. Cadei finnally stopped and took a breath.  We had been reciting prayers for over a half an hour at this point. And we were quite antsy as well.

It was then that Fr. Cadei informed us that Pope John Paul I had died.  He then launched into another series of recitable prayers and we dutifully followed. 

Now remember that I was a mere lad at this point and I could not help thinking, the Pope?  Really?  All of this hub bub for the Pope.  We were just getting used to the fact that he was “John Paul” not just Pope Paul.  And now here I was, way past bedtime reciting Hail Mary’s for a guy  that had been Pope for 33 stinking days?  Not that he didn’t need or deserve the prayers, mind you, but at midnight?  Prayers at midnight, led by a priest in his pajamas whom we all thought was, how to say this, nuts?  Eccentric may be better in hindsight, but at the time, nuts fit my thoughts pretty well.

We stayed in that chapel for another two hours.  Praying for a man that none of us, save Fr. Cadei, knew anything about.  We said a rosary, more prayers and reflected on the good man.  For over two and a half hours after we were supposed to be in bed. 

I didn’t find out until years after I left the seminary, that Pope John Paul I was found by a nun in the early morning of the 29th sitting up in his bed apparently dead of a heart attack.  It was because of this that we did not find out late that night of his demise.  And because the good church did not want the world to know that a nun had found the leader of the church, in his bed, we were forced into prayer for that man well into the early morning of the 30th by Fr. Cadei.

I do not remember going to bed that night, though I am sure we did at some point.  I do remember being very tired the next day.  I also remember trying to calm some of the freshman down a bit as well.  They were only in their first month of seminary life when Crazy Cadei led us on that late night vigil for a now forgotten Pope. 

They had so much to learn.