Leo-Jozef Cardinal Suenens, 65, is Primate of Belgium and Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, one of the largest Roman Catholic dioceses in the world. Lately he has taken on another role as well: outspoken critic of the Vatican. For years, Suenens has been known as an ecclesiastical progressive, but he argued his case for church renewal quietly —in books and behind the scenes at the Second Vatican Council. Last May the cardinal changed his tactics. He gave an interview to a French Catholic magazine, Informations Catholiques Internationales, which was quickly published in five other languages. It was perhaps the most encyclopedic indictment of outdated church practices by a ranking Roman Catholic cleric in modern times.
The objects of Suenens' complaints ranged from the repressive measures employed against modern Catholic theologians to the church's attitude toward women. But his prime target was Vatican bureaucracy. The Pope is indeed head of the universal church, Suenens affirmed, but he is also the prisoner of a curial system that makes him more an emperor than a successor of Peter. Most contemporary church problems, the cardinal suggested, stem from the legalistic mentality of the cardinals and other functionaries who surround the Pope—men who refuse to recognize that bishops, priests and laity must also participate in the governing of the church.
The Pope, Suenens insisted, ought to be elected by all the Catholic bishops of the world.
The Curia was quick to strike back. Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, 85, dean of the college of cardinals, wrote a letter to Suenens reportedly charging that his public statements were defamatory and slanderous. Tisserant demanded a retraction. Suenens answered that such an accusation was "unacceptable" and said he saw "no cause for retraction."
Christian Duty. What has made Suenens sound such alarms so publicly? "He was convinced that he could not get a proper hearing for his ideas in Rome," says a close friend. Moreover, "he was certain that the Bishops' Synod in October would be too restricted to provide an adequate forum for such issues, and he considered it his duty as a Christian leader to speak out." Says Suenens himself: "Perhaps if more church leaders had spoken out in the 15th century, Luther and the Protestants would not have had to break away."
The son of a Brussels restaurant owner, Suenens was raised by his widowed mother, sponsored for the priesthood and sent to Rome to study at 17 by Belgium's Desire Cardinal Mercier. The young Suenens chose the progressive cardinal as his spiritual director and carried on a close correspondence with him. A brilliant student at Rome's Gregorian University, where he earned doctorates in theology and philosophy and a baccalaureate in canon law, Suenens returned to Belgium to become a professor of philosophy, at the age of 25, at Malines Seminary. A decade later he was named vice-rector of Belgium's famed Louvain University, and in 1945, was consecrated a bishop.