Unexpected Caring

April 16, 2001

One of the sentences in the “Nun’s Prayer,” found in the seventeenth century in a religious house in Gloucestershire, England, reads: “Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people, and give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.”

An historical example of this wisdom may be found in Pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Borgia, 1492-1503), the most notorious of the Borgia Popes. Among other acts, he ordered the burning at the stake of Savonarola, one of the precursors of the Reformation. Pope Alexander VI’s personal life seemingly knew no moral limits. He had many children, among whom were Cesare, who probably murdered his brother, Juan, and the infamous Lucrezia. Alexander VI kept his mistress, Giulia Farnese, in the Vatican, whose nephew became Pope Paul III, a half-century later.

According to some historians, Alexander VI staged orgies in the Vatican which were unlimited in lewdness, details of which are too shameful for me to recount.

Why in the world would he be an example of “talent in an unexpected person?”

In his book, CONSTANTINE’S SWORD, James Carroll documents the official role the Church played in the slaughters, discriminations, and contempt against Jews perpetrated through the Christian centuries. (Protestants need not feel smug, for the reformer, Martin Luther, was just as much a bigoted anti-Semite.)

Because the Inquisition in Spain expelled the Jews, as well as torturing them and seizing their wealth, large numbers of Iberian Jews sought help in the Papal States and Rome. Nine thousand is the estimated number.

Pope Alexander VI welcomed the Jewish refugees to Rome. He declared, “Jews are permitted to lead their lives free from interference from Christians, to continue in their own rites, to gain wealth and to enjoy many other privileges.” (Carroll, p. 364)

According to Carroll, there were at least twenty-three other Popes who took similar attitudes in spite of the anti-Semitism and contempt for Jewish people which was part of the theology and practice of the institutionalized Church all through Christian history.

Shakespeare had this same insight into finding some good in unexpected people. In ROMEO AND JULIET, Act II, Sc. 3, Friar Lawrence has a soliloquy which ends,

“Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
and vice sometimes by action dignified.”

The suggestion in the Nun’s Prayer that we have the grace to tell them, [but in this instance, we cannot.] Pope Alexander VI has been dead for almost five-hundred years. But he is a reminder that there may be some good in unexpected people, and the discerning eye and ear may find it.