Renato Raffaele Cardinal Martino Gail Heriot

Cardinal Martino, the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, will give a talk here at USD’s Institute for Peace and Justice on Monday, August 21st at 3:00.  According to a campuswide e-mail I received, his topic will be … uh …”the global impact of the Church through its social teachings, especially in the pursuit of peace and justice.”

Many of you may recall Cardinal Martino as the Vatican official who protested the handling of Saddam Hussein’s arrest.  According to the BBC, Cardinal Martino “said he had felt pity watching video of ‘this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a beast’.”  “The cardinal, a leading critic of the US-led war in Iraq, said he hoped the capture would not make matters ‘worse’.” 

At the time, it struck me as an ill-considered outburst.  It’s fine, even good, for all human beings to feel a visceral sympathy when they see a once-powerful dictator reduced to the level of Saddam Hussein that day.  I certainly felt it.  But for a Vatican official to make his public statement focus on that visceral reaction shows a lack of moral seriousness.  The arrest of man responsible for the murder and torture of thousands is not an ideal occasion to get weepy-eyed over the sight of the once-mighty-turned-pathetic.  Above all else, it’s an occasion to thank God that he has been brought to justice (and that those who carried out the arrest were not hurt).

Michael Novak had this to report at the time.