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6 Up there we were all peasants....
EARLY LIFE -- Albino Luciani is pictured at age 3 (left) in 1915 and at age 11 in 1924
when he began his studies in the seminary.
Mother’s Inspiring Influence
WASHINGTON (NC) - When he was a boy in
Venice, Albino Luciani’s mother worked as a
servant for a Jewish family.
The family was very kind to Mrs. Luciani, and
their faith in Judaism greatly impressed her.
She passed her respect for that family and their
religion on to her son, who traces his warm feelings
toward Judaism to that experience.
That’s the story the then-Cardinal Luciani told
10 Catholic and Jewish leaders at a reception during
an international conference on Catholic-Jewish
relations held in Venice two years ago.
gondola, common transportation in Venice’s canals.
“He was affable, friendly, warm ... You liked
him right away,” Bishop Mugavero said.
“He said he had warm feelings toward Judaism,”
Bishop Mugavero said. “It was nice of him to say it
and he meant it. He was very much ‘with it’
in terms of understanding the purpose of the
meeting,” furthering understanding between
Catholics and Jews.
Another American participant, Msgr. George
Higgins, secretary of research for the U.S. Catholic
Conference, recalled Cardinal Luciani as “an
extraordinarily modest man, soft-spoken, so quiet
you had to strain to hear him.”
Several American participants in that meeting
recalled the story and their impression of Cardinal
Luciani shortly after he was elected pope and took
the name John Paul I.
One participant, Bishop Francis Mugavero of
Brooklyn, recalled that the cardinal arrived in a
Two American rabbis present at the Venice
meeting - Rabbi Saul Teplitz, president of the
Synagogue Council of America, and Rabbi Henry
Sigman, executive vice-president of the Synagogue
Council - recalled their “warm and inspiring”
meeting with Cardinal Luciani in a telegram of
congratulations on his election.
POPE’S BIRTHPLACE - In Canale 1912. Tourists have continuously converged
D’Agordo, Italy, crowds gather outside the on the village since the announcement of the
house where Pope John Paul I was born in Papal election.
Silvio Luciani had been predicting for two years that his first
cousin would be the next pope, but no one believed him until Aug.
26, the day Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul I.
When the retired handyman from Marysville, Mich., heard the
news of his cousin’s election, he says, “I went half nuts ... I’ve been
telling people around here for the last two years, but nobody would
take me seriously. They never heard of my cousin. But they heard of
him today.”
Attilio Bramuzza of Tort Lauderdale, Fla., had a different
reaction. He recalled the childhood days when he and Albino
Luciani “used to throw snowballs at each other” in the Italian village
of Canale D’Agordo (then known as Fomo di Canale).
Silvio Luciani, 78, left the village before his cousin Albino was
bom. He first met him in 1965 when then Bishop Luciani headed
the diocese of Vittorio Veneto in northern Italy. “He was living in a
castle there,” Luciani said. “He said he wanted to give us ... a good
welcome, so he gave us Coca-Cola to drink. The new pope likes his
Coca-Cola.”
The 65-year-old Bramuzza has not seen his childhood chum since
leaving the village in 1920, but remembers the new pope as “my first
rival in school.”
“I had a hell of a time trying to keep up with him,” said
Bramuzza, who retired in 1974 after 40 years with Stroh’s Brewery.
“He was sharp like a razor blade. I may have been his equal, but it
took every ounce of my energy. We were both learning to be altar
boys and we went to Mass together.
“I’ll tell you one thing - that boy knows starvation, he knows
hunger, he knows the horrors of war,” Bramuzza added. “Up there
we were all peasants. We would go barefooted, but not to church.”
When Luciani, a World War I veteran of the Italian Army, visited
his cousin, “there was little we had in common to talk about,” he
says. “But it was the little things, his concern, the real kindness was
there in his eyes and face.
‘The pope calls me ‘uncle’. That’s the way it is in Italy. He’s my
dad’s brother’s son, but he still calls me ‘uncle’,” Luciani adds. “He
was a nice man. He was a good cardinal. He’ll make a great pope.”
POPE’S BROTHER AND SISTER - Edoardo Luciani.
61-year-old retired teacher and brother of Pope John Paul
I, is shown at his home at Canale D’Agordo, Italy. Luciani,
the father of 10, said that the new pope was always very
close to his family and always first in his class in school.
Behind him is their sister, Nina.
POPE’S COUSIN - Silvio Luciani, 78-year-old retired
bricklayer, shows a photograph of his cousin, Pope John
Paul I. The Marysville, Michigan, man said he had been
telling people for two years that Cardinal Albino Luciani
would become pope, “but nobody would take me
seriously. They never heard of my cousin.”
...knew starvation...the horrors of war.’