Man from the Vatican

Inside the tiny church, parishioners crowded close to get a better view of the visitor, dressed splendidly in a braided gold miter and brocade cope. As they watched, the prelate moved in front of a large table, pronouncing the words of blessing with a Maurice Chevalier accent and making the sign of the Cross over hammers and screwdrivers, a violin, a teacher's notebook, a housewife's wooden spoon, an artist's brushes.

The Blessing of the Tools is a Labor Day tradition at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Fairfax Station, Va., and this year the man who had come to do the honor was the Pope's ambassador to U.S. Catholicism. For Archbishop Jean Jadot, who logs more air miles than President Ford, it was a typical visit to small-town America. Jadot has given a speech in Nashville's Grand Ole Opry House (saying a few good words for country music), climbed aboard a corn combine during a rural-life conference in Iowa, and said Mass for Vietnamese refugees in Indiantown Gap, Pa.

If the U.S. were like the 82 countries that maintain diplomatic relations with the Vatican, Jadot would be a nuncio, a papal ambassador accredited to the capital. In the absence of such ties, Jadot's mission as Apostolic Delegate is directly to the U.S. church. His duties, nonetheless, embrace the diplomat's task of reporting home on every pertinent detail about his host country. In his two years in the U.S., Archbishop Jadot has plunged into American life as no other Apostolic Delegate has done since the post was established in 1893.

A priest for four decades, Jadot, now 65, was born into a prominent Belgian family of engineers, but gave up certain secular success for a priestly vocation. As chief chaplain to Belgium's colonial forces in the Congo, a friend recalls, he learned to walk a tightrope, quietly encouraging Congolese independence while the army steadfastly opposed it. In 1968, Pope Paul made him a titular archbishop and tapped him to be a papal envoy, first to Thailand, then to several posts in West Africa.

1,000 Words. In the U.S., Jadot "looks upon the whole country as his parish," a fellow bishop notes. "He has grasped the ethnic culture of Cleveland and the Chicano culture of the Southwest. He understands Guam and the problems of blacks." Jadot's casual style is in itself quite American. A few weeks after his arrival in Washington, a group of priests invited him to dinner; he accepted on condition that he could wear sports clothes. He will spend hours chatting over beers with young seminarians, or take a break from his 16-hour workday to tool off in his Volkswagen for a walk in one of Washington's parks.

To Jadot's buff limestone headquarters on Massachusetts Avenue come scores of U.S. periodicals which are examined by the speed-reading prelate (1,000 words per minute in English) and six assistants. Jadot briefs the Holy See on many subjects, from the controvery over women priests to such matters as American help for famine-stricken countries, the feelings of U.S. Jews about Vatican policies, even advances in the techniques of mass communications. Most dispatches go to Rome by sealed diplomatic pouch, but more urgent messages are cabled in the Vatican's own diplomatic code.

Vanishing Breed. Some of Jadot's most important messages concern candidates for U.S. bishoprics. When a see is vacated, a committee of U.S. bishops sends Jadot a terna -a list of three candidates for the job. Jadot prepares his own assessments of the men, then sends the list to the Sacred Congregation for Bishops. Pope Paul makes the final decision. So far, the 35 bishops who have been appointed to U.S. dioceses since Jadot's arrival in the U.S. show a distinct trend that the Vatican favors. They tend to be pastoral leaders, "holy men with intelligence," as one bishop puts it, who get out among the people -such men as Santa Fe's Robert Sanchez, 41, the first Mexican-American archbishop in the U.S.. The more remote and authoritarian administrators of past decades are a gradually vanishing breed.

American Catholics, Jadot observes, now rely less on formularized doctrine, but show "a deepening of faith." Even among the left and right extremists in the church, he perceives that "there is always something good in what they want." Returning the compliment, conservative and liberal Catholics show a rare unity in their warm approval of the man from the Vatican.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.