When I say Black to a Dipper, he assumes I mean Germany. When I say Green, he assumes I mean Italy. Well, not always.
A few weeks ago within a 72 hour period the world marked the passing of two remarkable individuals whose combined careers as professional diplomats totaled nearly 90 years. "The Black" was Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the man who led the Vatican to detente. "The Green" was Marshall Green, the man who was the U.S. State Department's leading expert on East Asia. If there were ever professional diplomats who could serve as role models for Diplomacy players; these two would be them. I find no evidence that the two ever met each other, although I was fortunate to have met both of them once. The world's media was filled with obituaries for Casaroli: AP, Reuters, the BBC, The New York Times and the rest. He was, after all, a major player on the international scene for many years. I only saw one obituary for Ambassador Green, but The New York Times gave him the same pride of space, headlines, photograph, and amount of space as it did the Cardinal; only one day later.
As I read over their biographies I couldn't help but notice the similarities and differences in the lives and careers of these two men. What I am going to do is give you some perspective on their individual careers, then do a parallel chronological listing of the highlights of their lives, and finally close with my own, brief, remembrances. I hope you'll learn something about them, our times, and what a real live diplomat's life is all about.
AGOSTINO CARDINAL CASAROLI
Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, second-in-command to Pope John Paul II during the most active and turbulent times of his papacy and the architect of reconciliation with the Communist world, died today in Rome. He was 83.
The cause of death was an infection after minor surgery, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
The high point of Cardinal Casaroli's career came in 1989, a year before his retirement, when he helped arrange the historic meeting between the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
Today, in a condolence message, the Pope described the Cardinal as "an impassioned weaver of peaceful relations between individuals and nations, carrying out courageous and meaningful steps with fine diplomatic sensitivity --- in particular to improve the situation of the church in Eastern Europe."
Even before he was appointed Secretary of State in April 1979, Cardinal Casaroli's efforts to restore diplomatic ties with the Soviet bloc had earned him the sobriquet "the Pope's Henry Kissinger." In the 1960's and 70's he was the principal architect of the Vatican's policy of cautious reconciliation with Communist governments, which began under Pope John XXIII and which sought to improve conditions for the Catholic clergy behind the Iron Curtain.
In 1971, as an archbishop, he was the first Vatican official to visit the Soviet Union since 1924. Three years later he was the first to visit Cuba under Fidel Castro.
Even earlier, he had brokered an easing of relations between the church and state in Poland. After one visit there in 1967, the Polish Government agreed to allow the elevation of Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Cracow, to Cardinal. Karol Wojtyla later became Pope John Paul II.
Seven months after the Pope was elected, he appointed Cardinal Casaroli Secretary of State, a position equivalent to prime minister.
The election of a Polish pope was fraught with potential difficulties, including a worsening of Polish-Russian and Catholic-Orthodox relations. The Pope calculated that Cardinal Casaroli's experience in the diplomacy of detente could ease those tensions, and soon after his appointment, Cardinal Casaroli met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.
The Cardinal was on his way to New York to receive an honorary doctorate from St. John's University when the Pope was shot in 1981. Two hours after his plane landed, Cardinal Casaroli boarded a return flight to Rome, telling reporters, "My duty is to be with the Holy Father." He ran the Vatican while the Pope recuperated.
In the beginning of their relationship, the Pope, a fierce anti-Communist did not always agree
with his more cautious deputy, preferring a more uncompromising stance. But those differences
were soon smoothed out and the two men worked closely to help sustain the driving force,
especially in Poland, behind the democratic changes that swept one Eastern-bloc country after
another in the late 1980's.
AMBASSADOR MARSHALL GREEN
Marshall Green, who was the State Department's leading expert on East Asia and served as Ambassador to Indonesia during the violent uprising in the 1960's that brought President Suharto to power, died on Saturday. He was 82 and lived in Washington.
His family said he suffered a heart attack while playing golf with one of his sons.
At the side of a succession of Presidents and Secretaries of State, Mr. Green helped steer foreign policy in East Asia as the United States deepened its involvement there in the decades after World War II.
He was a witness to history from the earliest days of his career, which began with his appointment in 1939 as the private secretary to the United States Ambassador to Tokyo. He left the Embassy only a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
In 1961 he was the senior American diplomat in South Korea during a coup that toppled a democratically elected Government. Four years later he was Ambassador to Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno and his replacement by President Suharto. In 1969 he was named a member of the United States delegation to talks in Paris to end the Vietnam War.
In the 1970's he was a key aide to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and accompanied President Richard Nixon on his historic 1972 visit to China. After the China trip, Nixon sent Mr. Green to several Asian nations to calm their fears about the new relationship with Beijing.
"History is likely to regard the period from 1940 to about 1970 as the golden age of the
American Foreign Service," said William P. Bundy, who preceded Mr. Green as Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and later edited Foreign Affairs magazine.
"No career officer exemplifies that period and its ethos better than Marshall Green."
PARALLEL CHRONOLOGY
24 November 1914 - Agostino Casaroli was born in Castel San Giovanni, in Piacenza, in northern
Italy. The son of a tailor, he had an uncle who was a bishop and another who was a rector of a
seminary, and be began studying for the priesthood at 16. He was ordained in 1937 and entered
the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome the same year.
27 January 1916 - Marshall Green was born in Holyoke, Mass., and graduated from Yale in 1939.
His introduction to Asia came later that year, with his appointment as secretary to Ambassador
Joseph Clark Grew in Japan.
1940 - Affable and courtly but reserved, Father Casaroli joined the office of the Secretary of State
as an archivist in 1940, during the reign of Pope Pius XII. He taught protocol and "diplomatic
style" at the Pontifical Academy from 1956 to 1961, the year he was recruited by Pope John
XXIII to serve as an undersecretary in the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, where he dealt
with Latin America.
1941 - Shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Green returned to the United States to prepare to take the examination for the Foreign Service. With the start of the war in the Pacific, he joined the Navy as a Japanese-language translator. He had learned to speak Japanese during his years in Tokyo. After his discharge from the Navy in 1945, he joined the Foreign Service and received his first assignment --- third secretary in Wellington, New Zealand, for two years.
Mr. Green was admired by his State Department colleagues for his persuasive speaking style, his almost preternatural calm and his quick wit.
He endeared himself to many diplomats --- although not to Mr. Kissinger --- when he let slip in a speech that the former Secretary of State was a "self-made man who worshiped his creator."
His cool head served him well as he managed the American response to diplomatic and military crises in East Asia, beginning in 1958 with the Chinese Communists shelling of Quemoy and Matsu, two offshore islands held by the Nationalists on Taiwan. The clash brought the United States and China to the brink of war.
Mr. Bundy later said that Mr. Green, who was the State Department's chief working-level
officer on the issue, "argued at the moment of greatest apparent crisis that China was in fact easing
off, and that a policy of quiet firmness would win out and bring the threat to an end without
outright war. He was right."
1961 - It was as a protégé of the next Pontiff, Pope Paul VI, who was elected in 1963, that Father Casaroli's policy of closer ties began paying off in Eastern Europe. He made frequent fact-finding trips to Soviet-controlled countries, often traveling incognito in civilian clothes. In 1964 he signed a partial accord between the Vatican and Hungary, the first such agreement of the cold war, and negotiated the restoration of full relations with Yugoslavia in 1970. He often cited a remark of John XXIII, "There are enemies of the church, but the church has no enemies."
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1961 - Mr. Green was the senior American diplomat in Seoul, South Korea, when Gen. Park Chung Hee seized power in a military coup that ousted an elected government. As soon as he learned of the coup, Mr. Green announced on local radio that the United States continued to back the ousted civilian Government, a decision that did not endear him to the Korean military.
He was named Ambassador to Indonesia in July, 1965, only weeks ahead of an anti-Communist purge there that would see Sukarno replaced with Mr. Suharto and would lead to the deaths of an estimated 500,000 Indonesians.
To make clear the tensions between Indonesia and the United States at the time of Mr. Green's appointment --- the Indonesians were opposed to American military involvement in Vietnam --- Mr. Sukarno organized a "Go Home, Green" protest by thousands of demonstrators outside of the Ambassador's residence, only hours after Mr. Green presented his credentials to the Indonesian leader.
Ambassador Green, who was widely praised within the State Department for his bravery during
the months of bloodshed that followed, practiced what he described as a "low-profile concept" of
diplomacy during his years in Indonesia.
1972 - The Cardinal, who spoke Spanish, French, English, German and Portugese, and studied Polish, Russian and Chinese, was tactful in all of them.
His diplomatic finesse was put to good use in 1972, when Juan D. Peron, the former Argentine
dictator, who was on his way back to Buenos Aires, stopped in Rome to seek an audience with the
Pope. Even though it was clear that Peron would return to power, the Vatican wanted to avoid
the appearance of giving him its blessing. Cardinal Casaroli met with Peron for 90 minutes in his
hotel and emerged to announce, "Mr. Peron has himself considered it opportune to forgo seeking
an audience with the Pontiff."
1969 - 1973 At the height of the Vietnam War, Mr. Green served in Washington as the Assistant
Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, a post in which he helped oversee foreign policy in all
of the Far East. His office did much of the background work in preparation for Mr. Nixon's visit
to China, and he was one of the 13 senior American officials who accompanied the President to
Beijing.
1975 - Often portrayed as a skillful seeker of compromise, the Cardinal could also hew to a
tougher line. He was credited with helping to draft the unstinting language on human rights and
religious freedom in the declaration signed at the 1975 Helsinki Conference on European Security
and Cooperation.
1973 - 1975 - Mr. Green was Ambassador to Australia. He returned from Australia to become the
State Department's coordinator of population affairs. He retired in 1979 and went on to write
three books, all of them touching on his experiences in Asia.
1979 - Appointed Secretary of State in April, he was named a cardinal by John Paul II in June.
Under his tenure as Secretary of State, the Vatican's relationship to the Italian Government also changed dramatically. Cardinal Casaroli signed a concordat in 1984 under which Roman Catholicism ceased to be the state religion of Italy. But he insured that the state would still help the Vatican, notably in maintaining churches and preserving religious art.
And when the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works, was found to have financial ties
to Banco Ambrosiano and became embroiled in the scandal surrounding Ambrosiano's collapse in
1982, Cardinal Casaroli was instrumental in deflecting the disgrace. He directed the Vatican to
negotiate a settlement with Ambrosiano's creditors worth $244 million. He also supervised the
rewriting of Vatican rules to limit its financial activities at commercial banks.
Legend - Legend has it that upon his arrival in the Tokyo Embassy in 1939 as the secretary to the
Ambassador, Mr. Green saw the portrait of a young woman named Lispenard Seabury Crocker on
the mantelpiece of the home of her father, a senior diplomat in the Embassy, and announced that
he would marry her. In 1942, he did. The couple had three children, two of whom survive. Mrs.
Green died in 1986.
1989 - The Cardinal submitted his resignation in 1989 when he turned 75, but the Pope asked him
to stay on. When he finally left office in 1990, and was replaced by Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the
Pope explained that he delayed the retirement because "I considered that I could not immediately
deprive myself of such a wise and expert collaborator." The Cardinal's funeral was held in St.
Peter's Basilica.
REMEMBRANCES
I met Mr. Green, probably during 1969, when I was Chief of Protocol for the Institute on World Affairs at San Diego State University, a summertime program that brought a wide variety of guest speakers to the school to lecture on a variety of subjects. During my three years in that role I heard many great lecturers in the field of international affairs. Some I remember vividly. Some I do not. Mr. Green falls into the second group, perhaps because I didn't get to drive him back and forth to the airport (one of my primary functions), so I never had a real opportunity to chat with him one-on-one, as I did with many of the other dignitaries who attended the Institute. My program notes only record that I gave him a B for his lecture style, a B+ for his lecture content, and a cryptic note that he had "the heaviest damn briefcase I've ever carried!" Not a bad obit, I think.
My audience (it really can't be called anything else) with Cardinal Casaroli was an entirely different matter. I still don't know exactly how it happened, perhaps Divine intervention, or perhaps one archivist's curiosity about another. It was the summer of 1988, and I had spent three years as DIPLOMACY WORLD's publisher and editor and, along the way, put together a huge collection of Diplomacy publications, including the hobby's Archives. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I knew I needed advice. I was also busy planning and prepping for my first big, extended trip to Europe. I was going to spend 3 weeks in London and then another 4 weeks in Italy, culminating with a week in Rome over my birthday. During my research for my trip I must have come across a reference to the Vatican Archives. That got me to thinking. Surely they could advise me what to do with mine. (Only a non-Catholic, non-Italian would think like that, right?). So, I called the local Diocese office and found a clerk who had a copy of the Vatican phone book (Yes, such a thing exists.) She spent a good half-hour with me trying to find a listing for The Vatican Archives. No such listing. She did find the Pope's listing however. It was the first one in the book. Anyway, eventually, under the Secretary of State's office she found a listing for Archives. She gave me the number. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I dialed it.
I had never called anybody in Italy in my life, let alone anybody in The Vatican. Well, the ring
sounded rather strange but the phone worked! After a few rings, a man's voice answered in,
surprise, Italian! Well, I didn't speak a word of Italian, so I just said "Hello?" There was a pause,
and then a rather surprised "Hello?" I'm not sure exactly what I said other than the basics that I
was an American diplomacy archivist coming to Rome and would it be possible to see the
Vatican's Archives. Dead silence. The voice asked if I was bringing a letter of introduction from
my bishop or priest. Long pause. Well, no, I said. I'm not Catholic. Longer dead silence.
Well, to make a long story shorter, I did get to Rome and I did get to meet the fellow that I had
talked to. It turned out he was the Vatican archivist and he was also an American monsignor from,
of all places, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He met me just as I was finishing a professionally guided
tour of the Vatican museums. I'll never forget that look on that tour guide's face when this priest
comes up to the group and asks if there is a Mr. Peery in her party. Anyway, he took me off
down a series of long halls and we spent several hours looking at and discussing how the Vatican
Archives operate. He told me that I was the first person from the States to call him since he had
had his job as Archivist and the first person ever to actually be interested in the Archives for their
own sake. He asked me a lot of questions, as well, probably trying to figure out if I was sane, or
perhaps a Protestant spy! Eventually he asked if I would like to meet his boss. Well, that floored
me a bit; since I knew the Pope was at his summer palace. But I readily agree. He got on the
phone and spoke a few hundred words in rapid-fire Italian. Hanging up, he looked surprised and
said, "He agreed." And so we raced off down some more halls!
The Vatican halls are huge! They are intended to allow two people talking to each other to
stroll side by side, in both directions, with plenty of room between the traffic flow. I would guess
most of them are 20 feet wide, and equally high. And they go on forever, and then you turn a
corner, and they go even more! And after a while they all look alike. We eventually came to a
door, probably 12 feet high. No sign, no number, no guard, no nothing. Just one out of hundreds
of doors! Actually, it reminded me of the Kremlin. Anyway, he knocked softly. I didn't hear a
sound, but he opened the door and gestured for me to come in. What I saw was straight out of
Premminger's movie The Cardinal. The office was probably 60 feet square and 20 feet high. The
colors were white and gold and all the art looked like it belonged in the Vatican museums. Way
over in one corner of the room there was one desk, rather small and very Rocco; and two chairs.
That was it. On the desk was one lamp, a phone, and a spotless blotter!
Sitting behind the desk was the archivist's boss, the Secretary of State Cardinal Casaroli. He just looked at me while my escort rattled off some more gunfire Italian. He was obviously an older man, and very Italian-looking. Only the bit of red on his black cassock suggested he might be important. Finally he took off his glasses, laid them on the blotter, and rubbed his eyes! A strange greeting, I thought. He left them off, looked at and through me, and asked a few questions:
"Where are you from?"
"San Diego, California."
"What parish?"
" Well, I live in Blessed Sacrament, but I'm not Catholic."
That got a raised eye-brow response.
"Why did you come to Rome?"
"Because I studied Latin for four years, and it is greatest city in the world."
"Did you study Latin in a Catholic school?
"No. Public school. Classical Latin, not Church Latin."
Another raised eye-brow.
"You are an archivist?"
"Yes, of diplomacy materials."
"How big is your archives?"
"250,000 items, give or take a few thousand."
That got two raised eye-brows.
"How long have you been collecting?"
"Twenty-three years."
"Have you learned anything from your visit here?"
"Yes. You need more filing boxes and you need more help."
Finally, a slight smile.
We chatted about some of the places I had seen in Rome and the other places I had visited in Italy. I mentioned that I was going to see Aida at the Baths the following night since it was my birthday. And that led us to a discussion of opera, of all things.
Finally, with what seemed like an almost audible sigh, he reached for his glasses and put them on.
And the next thing I knew, I was back in the hall.
LAST WORDS
It wasn't until I read the obits that I realized that Casaroli had begun his Vatican career as an archivist, and perhaps that was in the back of his mind as well as we chatted. I wonder what my American monsignor was thinking?
What did catch my eye, however, was that second paragraph, "The cause of death was an infection after minor surgery." The Vatican's medical support facilities in Rome are terrible. This is not the first time something like this has happened. What should have been a routine medical procedure went bad and a patient died! Casaroli deserved better.
Marshall Green, on the other hand, went the way any red-blooded American diplomat would have wanted; playing golf with family at hand.
No doubt the two of them are busy now going through a debriefing process at the Pearly Gates.