It passed like a murmur, just 33 days, as many as the years of Jesus’ life.
He was forgotten by scholars, sages, and important ecclesiastical circles, nearly crushed between two great popes and two great pontificates - his predecessor Paul VI and his successor John Paul II.
Yet Pope Albino Luciani, the humble mountain son of a socialist worker, remains in the heart of the simple folk.
Many of the faithful are still moved and attracted by the grateful smile that John Paul I showed to the world during his briefest of reigns.
Born 17 October 1912 in Forno di Canale (today Canale d’Agordo), a handful of houses clinging to the Dolomites a thousand meters above sea level, he was ordained in July 1935 and aspired to become chaplain of the parish in the nearby city of Falcade.
I am the dust; the great episcopal dignity and the Diocese of Vittorio Veneto are wonderful things that God deigned to write on me; if a little good comes out of this writing, it is clear even now that it will be all due to the grace and mercy of the Lord.
«Behind his humble simplicity and ability to explain all truths, from the most difficult to the most simple, there was a vast repository of culture, assimilated through the books he had devoured since childhood. His own priest had explained to him that the homily must be understood even by the little old lady sitting in the back of the church for Mass, who had never gone to school».
So, from the beginning of his mission, Albino Luciani would learn to do what he called “catechism in crumbs” - teaching the truths of the faith simply, directly, and comprehensible to all, with the same feeling as a mother who leans down to give bread to her many hungry children.
«I have a conviction» he would write, «that every sermon, even to adults, even to the college-educated, is more effective the more it is catechistic; that is, the more the content is limited to the true fundamentals and the more plain and familiar forms, far from any rhetoric and rich in examples. For me the best choice of seed, the optimum, is the catechism…».
The touching passages contained in the homilies and writings of this Pope are innumerable.
His greatness, as his successor Karol Wojtyla observed, «is inversely proportional to the duration of his pontificate».
One of the examples he used most often in his sermons was an elevator.
«On the path of holiness», he used to say, «the arms of God carry us like an elevator, and to be carried upon them one must not only be small, but to become ever smaller. If we are small. God carries us; if we want to do it alone, God lets us walk by ourselves».
Even as a bishop, and then as the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, Albino Luciani would continue to confess often.
This would accentuate his sensitivity toward the problems of married couples: in 1968, when Paul VI consults the bishops before deciding on the merits of artificial contraception, and to publish the Humane Vitae encyclical which would declare such means illicit, the prelate of Vittorio Veneto studies the problem for the Cardinal of Venice, Giovanni Urbani.
He presents a cautiously possibilist report on the approval of contraception methods. It is said that Luciani was familiar with family situations like that of his brother Edoardo, who had ten children.
After the publication of the agonized-over papal document, with which he would promptly comply, inviting all the faithful to do likewise, he writes to his diocesans: «I confess that I had hoped in my innermost heart that these very serious difficulties could be overcome and that the response of the teacher, who speaks with special charisma and in the name of the Lord, could coincide, at least in part, with the hopes conceived by many spouses».
He stood firmly in the truth of faith, in the few things truly essential to Christianity, willing to go against the tide in making decisions, as when he dissolved the Venice Italian Catholic University Federation.
In 1974, the organization had publicly declared itself in favor of divorce, contrary to the teachings of the church.
Albino Luciani would always emphasize the aspect of mercy in his teaching.
During the audience of 6 September 1978 at the Vatican, John Paul I explains: «I risk speaking mistakenly, but I will say it: the Lord loves humility so much that, at times, he allows serious sins. Why? Because those who have sinned, these sinners, after repenting, remain humble».
They do not want to believe themselves to be quasi-angels, when they know they have committed serious misconduct. The Lord has told us so often: be humble. Even if you have done great things, say «I am a useless servant». Instead the tendency in all of us is rather the opposite - to put ourselves on display.
«Lower yourself, lower yourself: it is the Christian virtue regarding ourselves» - words full of mercy, of total abandonment to God.
This Pope was firm in the truth of faith, who could break down the teachings and make them accessible to all, but who was also very open socially. It is not a coincidence that at the conclave of August 1978, the Brazilian cardinals who were the leading exponents of Catholic progressivism looked first to him.
On 23 September, during his single exit from the Vatican after the election to take possession of St. John’s Basilica in Laterano, the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, John Paul I responded to the greeting of the Roman Mayor Giulio Carlo Argan by saying: «Some of your words reminded me of a prayer that I used to recite with my mother as a boy».
It went like this: «The sins that cry to heaven for vengeance in the presence of God are ... oppressing the poor, defrauding the proper compensation of the workers»: In his turn, the priest asked me at catechism school: «Of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance in the presence of God, which are the most serious and fatal?’ And I responded with the Catechism of Pius X: …those that are directly contrary to the good of humanity and so hateful that they provoke, more than others, the castigation of God. Rome would be a real Christian community, if God were honored there not only with the affluence of the faithful at church, not only with private lives lived in moderation, but also with the love of the poor».
«These» said the Roman deacon Lorenza, « are the real treasures of the Church: they should therefore be helped by those who are able, to have and to be more without being humiliated and offended by ostentatious wealth, with money squandered in useless ways and not invested - when possible - in enterprises of common benefit».
Despite his increasingly important commitments and duties, Luciani, as a bishop and then as cardinal, rarely came to Rome. He had never felt at home in the depths of the Curia, never having acquired the usual tricks of diplomacy. Newly elected, he felt oppressed by the papal style of his predecessor Montini.
Montini had lived most of his life in the central government of the Church and was a hard worker who was able to grind out a suitcase of documents each day, arriving each morning from the Secretary of State to be assessed and returned twenty-four hours after careful examination.
The weight of the pontificate and an environment unwelcoming of his disarming simplicity, could have provoked the early end of the smiling Pope.
Citing his predecessor Paul VI, he would say on another occasion during his brief pontificate: «Private property is not an unconditional and absolute right for anyone. No one is authorized to reserve to his exclusive use more than what he needs, when others lack the necessities».
In 1947, while giving a course on spiritual exercises, Albino composed this prayer: «I ask for your grace, please be near me in the hour when I close my eyes upon the earth. Please hold my hand in yours, as a mother with her child at a time of danger. Thank you, Lord!» The evening of 28 September 1978, Someone in Heaven heard that prayer. John Paul I died with a smile on his lips.
In this John Paul I would follow the example and the footsteps of another Patriarch of Venice and then Pope born in the Veneto, Saint Pius X, author of the famous question and answer catechism, which he used to teach the doctrine to children even during his pontificate.
Absent of any ambition, he would find himself on the Throne of Peter.
Named Bishop of Vittorio Veneto by Pope John in December 1958, this is how he presents himself to the faithful: «Just appointed Bishop, I thought that God was using an old system, even with me: to write certain things not on bronze or marble, but right in the dust, so that if the writing remains intact, undisrupted or dispersed by the wind, it is clear that the credit is completely God’s alone».