Enzo Bianchi, the cultured and sharp-witted monk who did not shy away from spiritual worldliness

News of the death of Enzo Bianchi, founder of the Bose Community, reached me as I switched on my devices while returning from the funeral of a loved one yesterday morning. It was an Ambrosian funeral, as Ambrosian as it could possibly be. For a fleeting moment, I found myself wishing that Enzo Bianchi too might have an Ambrosian funeral. That will not be the case, however; the service will be held in Castel Boglione, in the province of Asti, where he was born 83 years ago, and will therefore follow the Roman Rite. Compared to which, I take the liberty of saying, the Ambrosian Rite possesses a significant added beauty and depth. In the Ambrosian and Carolingian rites, the body of the deceased is received into the church and immediately sprinkled with holy water as a sign of purification, and then encircled with incense to honour the body which, though mortal, is destined for the resurrection. This does not mean that the same gestures are absent in the Church of Asti, but they occur only at the end of the service. The immediate embrace offered by the Ambrosian Church to the faithful departed—signifying that they are welcomed by God whatever their life may have been, whatever the state of their soul—carries a special poignancy. This gesture conveys a certain magnanimity—it will be up to God to judge—toward the imperfections of the baptized, a quality that Brother Enzo Bianchi sometimes lacked when he pontificated (in a ‘Christian’ manner) in the newspapers that adored him. Especially when, with his sharp tongue, he would lash out at his opponents – both anthropological and political (not least Berlusconi, who himself had a saintly Ambrosian funeral). And as, indeed, demonstrated by the silent diatribes and internal squabbles within his community that spread poison in his final years. Right up to his removal and expulsion from Eden.

Enzo Bianchi was never quite our cup of holy water, so to speak. Not only because of his language as a refined scholar of Eastern monasticism, which had the sharp edge of an evangelical but not its gentleness; nor because of the look in his eyes that grew impatient even before the words were spoken. But because of that air of pretentiousness and prophecy he shared with so much of the so-called ‘progressive’ Catholicism of the post-Council era. That which was always ready to judge the failings of the poor Church (not a poor church) and to generously absolve the world. He founded his community at Bose in 1965, just as the Council had ended, in a farmhouse in the Biella area. The Gospel without commentary, celibacy, prayer and work. There was plenty of ecumenism, as was the fashion at the time. He became a celebrated ‘voice of dialogue’, but only with those he fancied and who thought as he did. Enzo Bianchi was a lay monk, not only because he preferred to speak of and defer to the ideas of laypeople – from bioethics downwards (or upwards) – but also because of a worldly disposition, smug in his success. He was a frequent essayist, a ubiquitous public speaker and a contributor to the major secular press. An Eastern-style monk yet a favourite of the world, spiritual but not humble. He always loved to castigate not so much the unbelievers – how vulgar! – as the faithful whose sensibilities differed from his own. He had set himself the mission of chastising other people’s lifestyles. Ugh, Berlusconism, ugh, wealth. Ugh, what a pain those ‘non-negotiable values’ were – the very ones progressives disliked so much. He never liked St John Paul II; Professor Ratzinger, on the other hand, was intrigued by his refinements as a biblical scholar and exegete, and called him to serve as a synod expert. Then finally came Francis, his dear pauperist and progressive Pope, who appointed him as a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. And yet it was Francis himself, with his brusque manner, who removed him from Bose for his overly charismatic and temperamental leadership of the community. “Yes, Bose is a defeat, in the sense that my project was rejected,” he said. A touch egocentric.

When Ruini died, he wrote rather uncharitably on his account: “Cardinal Ruini has died too! A clergyman who caused many in the Church to suffer. He gave the Church the face of a stepmother, the face of a Church that seeks authority, influence and a seat amongst the powerful”. This assessment came from someone who, throughout his life, never shied away from the admiration of the powerful. It is particularly ironic that it was Francis himself who had criticised him for his spiritual worldliness and for his use of petty power that was ruining his monastery. May God now welcome him, but straight away, as the Ambrosian Church requires.