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the small ones from the mud of the streets. He takes the people of the fields. He takes others away from their nets in the sea or the lake, and he makes them Apostles. It’s his old system.
As soon as I became consecrated a priest I started to receive from my superiors tasks of responsibility and I have understood what it is for a man to be in authority. It is like a ball that is pumped up. If you watch the children who play on the grass outside this Cathedral when their ball is punctured they don’teven bother to look at it. It can stay with tranquillity in a corner. But when it is pumped up the children jump out from all sides and every one believes that they have the right to kick it. This is what happens to men when they move up. Do not therefore be envious.
     
    Later he talked to the 400 priests who were now answerable to him. A number of them had offered him gifts, food, money. He declined these. When they were all gathered he attempted to explain the reason: ‘I come without five lire. I want to leave without five lire.’
     
He continued:
     
My dear priests. My dear faithful. I would be a very unfortunate bishop if I didn’t love you. I assure you that I do, and that I want to be at your service and put at your disposal all of my poor energies, the little that I have and the little that I am.
     
    He had the choice of living in a luxurious apartment in the city or a more spartan life in the Castle of San Martino. He chose the Castle.
    For many bishops their life is a relatively remote one. There is an automatic gulf between them and their flock, accepted by both. The bishop is an elusive figure, seen only on special occasions. Albino Luciani took a different view of his role in Vittorio Veneto. He dressed as a simple priest and took the gospel to his people. With his priests he practised a form of democracy that was at that time extremely rare within the Church. His Presbyterial Council for example was elected entirely without nominations from the bishop.
    When that same Council recommended the closure of a particular minor seminary despite the fact that he did not agree with the decision, he went to all his parishes and quietly talked over the issue with the parish priests. As soon as it became clear to him that the majority favoured the closure he authorized it. The pupils were sent on the instructions of this former seminarian to state schools. He later stated publicly that the majority view had been right and his own wrong.
    No priest ever had to make an appointment to see his bishop. If one came, he was seen. Some considered his democracy a weakness. Others saw him differently and compared him to the man who had made him bishop.
     
It was like having your own personal Pope. It was as if Papa Roncalli [John XXIII] was here in this diocese working alongsideus. His table usually had two or three priests at it. He simply could not stop giving of himself. One moment he would be visiting the sick or the handicapped. They never knew at the hospitals when he was coming. He would just turn up on a bike or in his old car leaving his secretary to read outside while he wandered the wards. The next moment he would turn up in one of the mountain villages to discuss a particular problem with the local priest.
     
    In the second week of January 1959, less than three weeks after he had ordained Bishop Luciani, Pope John was discussing world affairs with his pro-Secretary of State, Cardinal Domenico Tardini. They discussed the implications of what a young man named Fidel Castro was doing to the Batista regime in Cuba; of the fact that France had a new President, General Charles de Gaulle; of the Russian demonstration of advanced technology in sending a new rocket into orbit around the moon. They discussed the revolt in Algeria, the appalling poverty in many Latin American countries, the changing face of Africa with a new nation seemingly emerging each week. It seemed to John that the Roman Catholic Church was not coming to