← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Battle Stations at the Vatican!
00:28:00
Allan Little says there are deep disagreements among the cardinals as they prepare to...
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Hello from the.
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From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting
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House in London, you've downloaded the latest
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edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, battle stations at the Vatican, disagreement among the cardinals as they prepare to choose the next Vicar of Christ. They're voting tomorrow in the Falklands too. The result there seems in little doubt. But what will they make of it in Argentina? No jobs, no economy, no security. That's the complaint in Tunisia, where the optimism of the Arab Spring has all but evaporated. And the correspondent who set out to interview a former leader of the Soviet Union and ended up accompanying him on the piano. Word finally came through from Rome yesterday afternoon that the conclave to select the next pope would begin on Tuesday. The cardinals are expected to take several days over their decision. We'll know they've reached it, of course, when a puff of white smoke finally appears over the Vatican. Alan Little says there's no doubt they're split over whether the top job should go to an old school European cardinal, or perhaps to one from Africa or Latin America.
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To get to the Sistine Chapel, where the cardinals will be locked in to cast their ballots, you pass through a long, narrow corridor known as the Vatican Gallery of Maps. It is lined with several dozen painted maps from the 16th century, depicting the lands where then the pope's authority held sway. The dukedoms of Ferrara and Modena, the Kingdom of Sicily, the Duchess of Monferrato and Savoy. From inside the walls of the Vatican, this is what the Catholic world looked like then, not now. Now there are more Catholics living in Brazil alone than in Italy, Spain and Poland put together. 30% of the world's Catholics live in Latin America. In Africa, the Church is growing faster than anywhere in Europe. It is aging and shrinking. Yet two thirds of the cardinals who'll choose the next pope come from the developed world, Europe or North America. There is much coded talk that has to be deciphered. We need a pastoral man, say the cardinal archbishops who have come to Rome from distant corners of the world. This is code for we have to sort out the Vatican. We have to reform the powerful and centralized and highly isolated Vatican civil service and state apparatus known as the Roman curi. It is also a coded criticism of the pontificate of Benedict xvi, who spent most of his career in academia or at his desk in the Vatican hierarchy. We need a pastoral man is also code for we refuse to be railroaded by the Italian cardinals who dominate the Roman Curia. The Curia men, and there are about three dozen of them in the College of Cardinals want a speedy conclave and a swift transition to a man they know and trust. The cardinals from out of town want more time before the conclave starts to get to know each other, to see if they can get some momentum behind a candidate who, as pope, would be able to take on the powerful vested interests that are so firmly entrenched in the Vatican. And we want a pastoral man is also code for we want a reformed church. But what kind of reform? Women priests, as many liberal European Catholics are pressing for? Certainly not that. An end to priestly celibacy? Not likely. The reform that most talk about concerns the highly clericalist nature of the church that John Paul II and Benedict built. It is a church that has bolstered and strengthened the priesthood as a kind of cast apart, a separate category of human experience that lives closer to God than the ordinary church. Going faithful. We want a pastoral man is also code for we want an end to the almost mystical authority of the priesthood. The developing world cardinals will never agree with European liberals on women priests and priestly celibacy, but they do find common ground on wanting to change the rigid centralized power of the Vatican and the papacy itself. Doctrinally, the pope is the Vicar of Christ, the latest in a long and unbroken line of succession that goes back to the first pope, St. Peter himself. Vicar. It is a word from the same root as vicarious meaning in place of. For Catholics, the pope is the representative on earth of Jesus himself. He is divinely ordained, chosen by the Holy Spirit, moving in the hearts of the College of Cardinals. But in these days of eager anticipation, it is amazing the conversations you find yourself casually engaged in as you stand in St. Peter's Square. This business of the Vicar of Christ. One man said to me casually, it wasn't always so, you know. The early popes for centuries were known as the Vicar of Peter. That's a wholly different thing. It was innocent III in 1215 who first claimed to be Vicar of Christ. It was his way of asserting that his spiritual authority made him the superior of the kings and princes of Europe, whose authority was only temporal, and therefore they owed fealty to him. 1215, the year of Magna Carta. Elsewhere in Europe, divine right kings were finding themselves for the first time held to account by those below them. The papacy was moving in the opposite direction. You sense now that there is a mood in the Church brought to Rome by the cardinals who work out there in the world among the faithful, for a real challenge to the power of Rome.
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Alan Little in Rome. The people of the Falklands are also preparing to vote for them. It's a two day referendum beginning tomorrow on the question should the islands remain British. A near unanimous yes vote is likely. The bookmakers Ladbrokes say it's the biggest voting certainty in political betting history. They say no one has placed a bet on a no vote. It's 31 years now since Britain and Argentina went to war over this archipelago in the distant South Atlantic. Caroline Wyatt, who's there, says that claims of sovereignty from Buenos Aires, increasingly vocal in recent times, are unsettling many of the islanders.
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The wind blows ceaselessly on the Falklands. It howls at doorways, raps at the windows and tugs at your clothes as you walk. Even on a clear sunny day. Out at San Carlos, where the calm, clear waters mirror sapphire blue skies, the wind bends the grass to its will before whispering gently at the walls of the British cemetery. San Carlos cemetery overlooks the waters, which became known as Bom Alley during the war in 1982, where Argentine bombs hit British ships. Sixteen of the British dead were laid to rest on the islands. Of the 255 servicemen who gave their lives to keep the Falklands British, Charlene Rowland, an islander, is showing a visit to the gravestones. Even 30 years on, they're tended with care. The grass around them cut with military precision, the poppies alongside the stone faded with the rains. On the passing of time, we still talk as though the war were just a few months ago, she says. For those of her generation, the war has never really gone away. The sense of gratitude to the veterans and the UK still fresh. Like many here, she is weary of Argentina reiterating its claim to the islands, as it has done more and more loudly over the past few years. Its latest claim, that the islanders wishes don't count because they were implanted by Britain and not native to the island, so stung. Charlene's family has lived here since around the 1850s. She feels British through and through, but a Falkland Islander too proud to call these remote and rocky isles home. Charlene suspects the Argentine president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirschner, is using the Falklands, or Las Malvinas, as Argentina calls them, to distract her people from their country's economic problems. The discovery of potentially rich oil fields around the Falklands and has only made the rhetoric from across the choppy waters louder. Although Charlene, like all here, hopes that Argentina's words will never again lead to war. From San Carlos, the South Atlantic wind blows remorselessly across the hills and grass to The Argentine cemetery, where a large white cross dominates row after row of smaller ones. Barely audible above the wind is the tinkling of what sounds like tiny bells. On every cross is a small plastic rosary or two or three in white or blue or grey. They chink as the wind lifts and then drops them restlessly against each cross. Below are the names of hundreds of Argentine soldiers who fell during the fighting. Robertos and Hectors, Miguels and Antonios, most in their late teens or twenties. Conscripts, almost all. On many of the marble stones below are engraved the words an Argentine Soldier known only to God. The conscripts were, the history books record, surprised that the population on the island was not Spanish speaking or oppressed, but happy to remain British and firmly on the side of the forces who sailed from 6,000 miles away to oust the Argentinian troops. The schoolbooks had taught the Argentine soldiers otherwise, and many, says Argentine historian Federico Lawrence, had at first felt proud to be asked to liberate what they saw as an integral part of their country. Even today, the schoolbooks there make much of Buenos Aires historic claim to the islands. Federico has been here in the Falklands these last few days to do more research into the war. Although it's a touchy subject on both sides, sensitivities are even higher thanks to the referendum. Many here hope that it will finally put an end to Argentina's bullying, as the islanders see it. They say the harassment of their fishing boats and attempts to prevent cruise ships visiting make life difficult and damage the island's economy. Today, referendum posters are everywhere in Port Stanley, urging people to vote yes, to remain British. Everyone we speak to says they will and that voting anything else is unthinkable. Federico says he wishes the relationship between Argentina and the islanders were a better one. We but says the vote won't make much difference to his country's view. But he tells me he has no doubt that the issue of the Falklands is being used by both governments. It's no coincidence that in the middle of an economic crisis in Europe and Latin America, you hold a referendum. And we once again raise the flag of Las Malvinas, he says. As I walked back along the waterfront at Port Stanley, I notice the ubiquitous Falklands flag flying near the memorial to those who died in 1982. Now a gentler wind fills the flag with renewed life, setting the red, white and blue dancing against the skies, dauntlessly, defiantly British.
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And that was Caroline Wyatt. The Tunisian prime minister yesterday unveiled a new coalition government which will serve until elections later this year. The country has been without a functioning administration since the assassination in February of Shukri Belayid, who was a vocal critic of the Islamist led coalition in power at the time. It's only two years since the popular uprising against dictatorship there, the so called Jasmine Revolution. Stephen Sacher from the Hard Talk program has been finding out how events since then have left Tunisians deeply disillusioned.
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The sand on the private beach of the Hotel Royale in Hammamet bears not a single human footprint. The beach bar is an empty shell. The Mediterranean has been whipped up by a late winter storm. In the distance, through squally rain, I spy a camel and rider. The beast lopes up to me and over the howling wind its owner yells, hey, mister, you want a camel ride? Given the foul weather and the malevolent look in the camel's eyes, I can't think of anything worse. I'm busy, I fib while privately wondering whether I've just met the most optimistic or the most desperate young man in all of Tunisia. Tourism has been badly buffeted by the turbulence that has hit Tunisia in the two years since the heady days of the Jasmine Revolution. The slump in visitor numbers has exacerbated the country's unemployment crisis. In the marble and gilt vastness of the five star Hotel Royale, sales director Annie Suissy mournfully acknowledges the scale of the problem. I don't know how much longer we can stay open, he confides. We have 266 rooms right now. We have less than 10% occupancy. Even in low season, it should be closer to 40. Since the killing of Shakri Belaid, we've had too many cancellations. The assassination of the outspoken leftist politician and human rights campaigner last month exposed a deep polarization within Tunisia. The alliance forged between secular and Islamist activists during the campaign to oust the hated Ben Ali regime has been sorely tested since Shokri Belaid's body was riddled with bullets. And who killed Belaid is a question which now preoccupies Tunisians of all ideological stripes. The post revolutionary political establishment, badly destabilized by the crisis, blames Salafists hard line fundamentalist Muslims, some of whom are committed to holy war. We are hunting down those individuals who spread violence and chaos, the leader of the ruling Anahda Islamist movement, Rashid Ganoushi, tells me. In Tunis, just like you in Britain, we will apply the law to root out terrorism. Ranousi, his beard trim, his smile broad, is the avuncular face of moderate political Islam. I ponder his emollient words as I make the journey through Tunisia's rural heartland to Sidi Bouzid, the dust coated town where the Arab revolt began when the young fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself to death in a protest against poverty and petty tyranny. I approach a group of youths playing football in a dirt field in the middle of the afternoon. I ask how many have jobs. They laugh at me. There is no work. Why? Well, no one seems inclined to answer. One player tells me to get lost so they can finish their game. In the center of town, Insiri Izzeddin is selling fruit at the corner where his old friend Bouazizi used to place his cartoon. The revolution was supposed to change everything for the better, he snorts. But we have no jobs, no economy, no security. As we're filming, young bearded men pile out of the town center mosque. Many are dressed in black, some in military style fatigues. They approach with obvious menace. Stop filming or we'll break your camera, one says. I ask a young man on a motorbike who seems to be a leader whether he might be interested in talking. We have no interest in you, he says. We know your lies. We don't want your democracy. We are Muslims. All we want is our Sharia law. In the last two years of tumult in the Arab world, Tunisia has been a beacon of hope. In some quarters, hope is now giving way to fear. Before leaving Tunis, I visit the apartment of independent blogger and journalist Olfa riyahi. This outspoken 29 year old woman is at the centre of a political storm, having accused the foreign minister, who happens to be the son in law of Islamist leader Rashid Ranousi, of misusing public funds. The minister has issued heated denials. Mizriah's passport has been confiscated by the authorities. Her name has appeared on a hit list circulated by Salafi militants. Maybe it's time for you to lie low, I say to her. No way, she responds. This is my country. I helped to make the revolution and I'm going to help to make the real democracy. And I'm ready to die for this.
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And that's Stephen Sacher. The town of Gorey in Georgia enjoyed a brief moment in the media spotlight this week as some marked the 60th anniversary of the death of its most notorious son, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. For others there, it was an awkward occasion. How should a town handle the legacy which comes with being the birthplace of a dictator who slaughtered millions? Bethany Bell says it's a problem. The people of Gorey Share with those in the Austrian town of Braunau Am Inn, the place where Adolf Hitler was born.
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In some ways, it would be hard to imagine two more different places than Gorey and Braunau Am Inn. Gori, with its crumbling Soviet era apartment blocks, is set in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. You can still see the scars from the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia when Russian troops entered the town. It's poor even in winter. Pensioners try to earn a few pennies, helping cars to park. Brownau, by contrast, is a comfortable little Austrian town with a beautifully preserved medieval centre. Cross the bridge over the Inn river, close to the main square, and you find yourself in Germany, in Bavaria, one of the wealthiest parts of Europe. But the towns have one thing in common. They've become known for their most notorious sons. Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau in 1889. Joseph Stalin was born in Gorey a decade earlier. Some people here will be very upset if you compare Stalin with Hitler, one Georgian told me. They see him as our local hero, the Georgian boy who won the Second World War and changed the world. But other people, especially the Westernisers, hate him as a bloody dictator who suppressed Georgian independence. I'm not trying to equate the two men, I replied. I'm just curious to see how each town deals with the legacy. In Gorey, the row over Stalin has changed the town's appearance. For years, the main boulevard, Stalin street, was dominated by a huge statue of Stalin. But in 2010, it was taken down by the pro Western government of Mikhail Saakashvili, much to the dismay of many in Gori. I used to ride my bicycle round it when I was a kid, Lela, who's 39, told me as she served me tea. She showed me a photo of the statue taken in the 1950s, which she keeps on her mobile. We need it back, she said. And her wish is about to come true. Partly because of a political upheaval in Georgia. Last year, Saakashvili's party was defeated in parliamentary elections by the Georgian Dream coalition, which wants to repair Georgia's relations with Russia. A few weeks ago, Gori City Council, now run by Georgian Dream, allocated funds to re erect the statue. It won't be returned to Stalin Street. It'll be put in Gorey's main tourist attraction, the Stalin Museum, still a shrine to the dictator, scarcely touched. Since it was built in 1957 in Braunau, having a Hitler street would be unthinkable. The 17th century former inn where he was born is unmarked. All that links it To Hitler is a stone on the pavement which says Never again Fascism. In memory of millions of dead. Hitler's name doesn't appear. We thought about putting up a plaque on the house just to mark the historical fact, a town official told me. But the owner wouldn't let us. He lowered his voice. She's difficult, he said, and so is the subject of Hitler. Brauner is torn between those who think Hitler should be more openly discussed and those who just want the issue to go away. We aren't guilty because Hitler was born here, one man told me. We don't need to apologize for our town. But Florian, a local historian, disagreed. Even though Hitler only spent three years of his life here. Braunau is contaminated, he said. We have to speak out against Nazism. During the Third Reich, the Nazis bought the house from the owners, a family named Pommer. After the war, the Pommers bought it back. Since the 1970s, the Austrian Interior Ministry has rented it from the current owner, Gerlinda Pommer, to prevent neo Nazis using it as a shrine. Until 2011, the house was used as a daycare centre for disabled people. But they had to move out because Mrs. Pommer didn't agree to renovations. And the simmering debate over how to deal with Hitler's legacy burst into a full fledged row. Some want the house to become a centre of responsibility confronting the Nazi past. Others say it should be used for flats or a college for adult education. One far right politician says it should become a clinic where women can give birth. A Russian MP even offered to blow it up. When I phoned Mrs. Palmer's lawyer for comment, the secretary hung up on me. In Braunau, Hitler is largely hidden, while in Gory, Stalin is very much on display. Opposing reactions to a difficult legacy. When I asked one man in Braunau which was best, he shrugged. You get criticized whatever you do, he said, but it's usually better to talk.
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And that's Bethany Bell. The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was back in the headlines this week after describing recent laws passed in Russia as an attack on the rights of citizens. President Vladimir Putin, he said, was a tense and worried man. And he had a go at the President's inner circle, saying it was full of thieves and corrupt officials. The interview was done by our Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, who tells us that what happened immediately afterwards made the occasion particularly memorable.
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I've been interviewing 82 year old Mikhail Gorbachev at the headquarters of his Moscow think tank. He's already warned us he can only spare 30 minutes and sure enough, half an hour into the interview, the former Soviet leader announces, sir, that's enough. He gets up, but he doesn't appear in any particular hurry to say goodbye, so we continue to chat. Mr. Gorbachev admits his finding life much harder these days. He recently spent more than a month in hospital, but he's trying to stay positive and to keep busy. He's just published the latest volume of his memoirs, which he's dedicated to his late wife, Raisa Maximovna. She died in 1999 of leukemia. They'd been married for nearly 46 years, and from the tender way in which she talks about Raisa, it's clear that Gorbachev misses her greatly. He invites me to sit down next to him at a table and shows me the book. Page one contains an entry from Gorbachev's diary. One year after Raisa's death, my life has lost its principal meaning, he writes. I have never had such an acute feeling of loneliness. But Gorbachev's eyes seem to light up as he points out the pictures of Raisa which are in the book. The holiday snaps, the family photos, the pictures of her accompanying him on official trips abroad, and his two favorite images, matching portraits of Michael and Raisa shortly before their wedding day in 1953. They look like Hollywood film stars. While Gorbachev and I have been looking through the book, our camera operator, Rachel, has been looking at the grand piano in the corner of the room. Can you play that? She asks Gorbachev. No need to. It plays itself, he replies. We all laugh, but he isn't joking. Gorbachev walks over to it, presses a few buttons, and the piano keys burst into life all by themselves. That's Chopin, he says, and with a cheeky grin and a bit of miming, he pretends to be playing the music himself. Then he flicks a switch, and the instrument falls silent. Of course, you can also play it like a normal piano, he points out. Can any of you play the piano? He asks. I tell him I can. Then please sit down. Play something. Gorbachev says. I didn't expect that. I'm a little taken aback and have to think, quick, what should I play? What tune would a former leader of the Soviet superpower appreciate? A little Beatles, perhaps? Back in the ussr, I play safe and launch into the Russian classic Moscow Nights. And as I'm playing, something even more unexpected happens. Mikhail Gorbachev starts to sing along, and he's good, perfectly in tune. We get to the end, and I ask him which other songs he likes. Gorbachev requests the Soviet wartime melody, Dark is the night. It tells of a soldier on the front line who's thinking about his wife back home. In the dark night, sings Gorbachev, I know that you, my love, are awake. Sitting by the crib, you're secretly wiping away a tear. How I love your deep, gentle eyes. How I want to press my lips to yours. Then the man who helped to end the Cold War smiles a broad, beautiful smile. Raisa loved my singing, he says. In that single short sentence, Mikhail Gorbachev has revealed more about himself than in a whole interview. There are many people in Russia who criticize him for the way perestroika turned out, who blame him for the collapse of the Soviet Union. But after those simple words and that smile, he comes across as a warm hearted, decent man who's still desperately in love with his wife and desperately sad that she is gone. Raisa is everywhere, in his books, in framed portraits on his office wall, and she's right here in the music. Gorbachev tells me that four years ago he recorded an album of Raisa's favorite romantic songs. Only a few copies were made, and they were sold to raise money for the charity which bears her name, the Raisa Gorbachev foundation, which is dedicated to the fight against child cancer. Raisa loved Russian ballads, he tells me, and requests one final song, one of her favorites, the Misty Morning. The morning is misty, the morning is grey, he sings. The sad fields are covered with snow. I reluctantly remember the time long past and the faces long forgotten.
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Steve Rosenberg in Moscow. And I bet he never guessed he'd be ending the day playing the piano for a former leader of the Soviet Union. I'll be back with more from our own correspondence next Thursday and Saturday. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.