When I arrived in Rome three months ago, I wasn’t to know that I was about to get a first-hand experience of one of the biggest crises of the western world’s oldest and largest institution: the Roman Catholic Church.
As I started my internship with the BBC, I was immediately intrigued by the subtle yet omnipresent power of the Church that pervaded all of Rome: not only a visual and physical power – the colossal St Peter’s church, hundreds of priests and nuns walking silently on the streets – but also a fiercely strong political and social one.

I understood what it meant to live in the same city as the Pope when I was sent to interview the head of a Roman state school. The man had provoked the Vatican’s wrath by installing a condom machine for students. It ‘trivializes sexuality’ wrote Cardinal Augosto Vallini, Vicar General of Rome, in an official statement that was relayed by most Italian newspapers. Within a few hours, everyone knew about the small Kepler school situated in a lower-middle class district on the outskirts of Rome. Heading to the interview, I gave the taxi driver the school’s address not expecting that he would know about it but he immediately replied: ‘Ha, you want to go to the ‘condom school!’ and seeing me surprised he added, ‘It’s been on the radio all day’. On that afternoon, I witnessed the Vatican’s success in creating a media storm in Italy out of a decision that many schools around the world had made before without any particular public interest.

I observed a similar attempt by the Church to control the lives of the Italian laity during the regional elections in March 2010. Two women were competing for the presidency of Lazio, the region comprising Rome and the Vatican; Renata Polverini was from Berlusconi’s PDL party and Emma Bonino was the centre-left Democratic Party’s candidate, well known for her pro-abortion views. They had been head-to-head in the polls throughout the campaign. It has been argued that what eventually gave Polverini the advantage was the Church’s official intervention asking citizens to act according to their Catholic conscience thus avoiding voting for pro-abortion candidates.
‘It is with regard to the primordial right to life that in this third millennium, the whole of society still has to carry out an examination of conscience. Every citizen must bare this in mind when voting, both for national and local elections’, wrote Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Bishops Conference, in an official statement issued a few days before the elections. On the 29th of March 2010, Renata Polverini won the elections with 51.14% of the votes.

The problem is that the Vatican tends to impose its views when it does not strictly need to intervene, but conveniently remains quiet on more critical matters when they threaten its reputation. This wall of silence has been under attack for many years but when I arrived in Rome it finally seemed to be breaking down.

It is not the first time that the Vatican has been plagued by sex scandals – the Boston priests’ case in the 1990s caused public outrage and forced Pope John Paul II to call an emergency meeting with US cardinals in 2002, which resulted in Archbishop Bernard Law’s resignation later that year. But this particular crisis seems particularly tenacious, and therefore extremely dangerous for the Church. ‘I have never seen a graver crisis affecting the Church’ said David Willey, the BBC’s Vatican specialist who has been reporting from the principality for the past forty years and for whom I had the privilege to work. ‘The façade is finally beginning to crack’, he added. That is because the scandals now directly involve the Vatican’s most holy and powerful representative: the Pope.

Did Benedict XVI (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the time) know about all these atrocities, and if so, why did he not report them to the authorities? The fact that the press all around the world has repeatedly raised this question is quite an exceptional event in itself. For the first time, the Church’s leader is accused of being somewhat responsible for covering up heinous crimes that were allegedly reported to him while he was Archbishop of Munich in the 1970s and later in Rome. Indeed, between 1981 and 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in charge, amongst other things, of dealing with clerical sexual misconduct.

In May 2001, Ratzinger sent a letter to all Catholic Bishops ordering that ‘preliminary investigations’ into claims of sexual abuse should be sent directly to the CDF office, without informing authorities for ‘cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret’. Some argue that this letter proved Cardinal Ratzinger’s deliberate attempt to obstruct an inquiry into sex abuse, but others claim it showed his determination to organize the Church’s chaotic system by centralizing all the allegations to his office. As a matter of fact, Ratzinger’s defenders portray him as the first Pope who has demonstrated a real dedication to free the Church from sexual crimes. Not only has Benedict XVI commented on the scandals more frequently than his predecessor, but he also tried investigating an estimated two thousand sexual abuses on boys committed during the 1990s by the Austrian Cardinal Groër, John Paul II’s close friend, but the Vatican stopped him. Could John Paul II, the much-loved pope, have done a worse job than the austere Benedict XVI in handling cases of sexual abuse? ‘I doubt that Ratzinger will go down in history as a better pope than his predecessor, but he may well have prevented him ever becoming a Saint’ David Willey told me.

It is interesting to see how Ratzinger’s 2001 letter can be interpreted in such drastically opposed, yet justifiable, ways. Unfortunately, the Vatican’s media strategy has been appalling throughout the crisis and therefore the other side of the story has rarely been heard. The Vatican would ‘shoot the messenger’ – a New York Times’ article was said to be an ‘ignoble attempt to attack at any cost Benedict XVI’ – but never rationally invalidated the accusations regarding the Pope’s handling of the sexual abuse cases.

It is key to remember that the word ‘cases’ objectifies what is fundamentally a terrible human tragedy, as I realized during the afternoon I spent at the BBC office with two American men who had been sexually abused by priests more than thirty years ago. No words could ever describe what they had to endure, and the psychological torture they still suffer today. They had come to Rome to be heard, having felt that the moment of truth had finally arrived. ‘It is amazing to see that no matter where we come from, the same rule of silence has been imposed upon priests’ victims’ one of the men told me. ‘I still believe in God, but not in the Church’, he added in a calm but resolute tone. When I left the office that night and walked through St Peter’s square, not even the beautiful façade of the church in the twilight could make me forget what I had heard.

Typical freshers’ week scene: the JCR bar, a hundred post-pubescents desperately attempting to look cool and the same four or five questions asked again and again. After name/course/building comes the inevitable question ‘so, whereabouts are you from?’ For me, to reply to this question is to look like a wanker. If I reply ‘near Newcastle’, questions about my accent, or lack thereof, would be raised, leading me to make some excuse about being ‘educated in the south’; yet if I say ‘Northumberland’ I am met with blank stares and feel obliged to patronise them (it is England’s sixth largest county after all) with ‘almost Scotland, but not quite’. So either I look pompous or they look stupid. Maybe it would have been easier to have just picked them up on their fag-end preposition?

Hexham might be familiar to any of you studying Classics or Ancient History, as it is located just off Hadrian’s Wall. As such, much of the town’s tourism is devoted to all things Roman, including a particular local known as ‘Jefficus’ who holds talks for tourist in full Roman officer get-up. Perhaps the town’s golden era was in the early nineties when Kevin Costner’s 1991 epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves decided to use a local portion of the Wall in the film. Not only did it introduce Hexham to black people (Morgan Freeman played Robin’s Moorish sidekick) but it also gave weight to Tourism North East’s claim that, when travelling from Dover to Nottingham, Northumberland is worth the 300 mile detour.

It seems that no ‘Hometown’ piece would be complete without the obligatory mention of the local nightclub. Dontino’s (technically renamed ‘Studio’) is the only place to go on a Friday night, and by that I mean that there really is nowhere else. Being a classy establishment, entry is denied to those wearing tracksuit bottoms (although it is only a short walk to the new, controversial, 24-hour Tesco Extra). Yet still I have never been without a male member of my group and another member of the throng having a physical disagreement. Men from Hexham, however, are extremely chivalrous and willing to buy any girl a pizza in exchange for a mobile number.

Joking aside, Hexham, like much of the North East, is famous for its cheery locals, a trait that works as a happy counterbalance to the miserable weather. However, one can’t help to feel claustrophobic in a town so static that the imminent arrival of Waitrose was front page news for about a year, giving the local populus a break from such gems as ‘TRAMPOLINES: This Summer’s Death Trap!’ and ‘Jimmy, the Talented Tyneside Teenager’ who can hold twelve eggs in one hand. Mammia Mia sold out, two screenings a day, for twelve consecutive weeks (honestly).

Finally, as it is Election Day, I would like to mention briefly local politics and bring up a bugbear of mine. Hexhamshire is a painfully safe Tory seat and today a new Conservative candidate is running. Very few areas have the same strength of regional pride as the North East, and it is an area typically misunderstood by Westminster. Rather than fielding a local candidate, Conservative HQ has shipped in one of Cameron’s catamites: a city lawyer who has until now had no connection with the region. To believe that someone like him could represent an area with such a sense of local identity is the typical condescension of the South Eastern elite. All they needed was to choose a candidate of their political leaning, who was engaging and had spent some proper time in the area. Kevin Costner, anyone?

Organ scholars – a fundamental part of Oxford life, you might say. In all likelihood, there is one, probably two, pottering around your college (chapel) as you read, in raptures over their latest voluntary. Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, perhaps. Their right to be here is protected in College Constitutions; they are a necessary cog in the endless, timeless cycle of evensongs, May Day madrigals and Communion services. No one questions them; they are simply accepted as part of the Oxford experience. You might, in fact, spend a whole three years here only glimpsing, during Evensong, the back of your college organ scholar’s head, sequestered from the lowly pews in their lonely loft. Unless you are at Jesus, that is, in which case the highlight of Sunday evening is the resident organist’s quick bow over the parapet to end the service.

Where else are they to be found? Practising, attending classical concerts, and, I have it on good authority, packing out the King’s Arms post-Sunday Evensong – check it out next time you’re there (they’ll be the immaculately-dressed ones, gossiping about chaplains and putting their respective services through a post-mortem).

You could, on the other hand, stalk them on Facebook, where they are easily identifiable by their generic profile pictures, which largely centre around an organ, or at a push, a piano. (This was true for six out of ten profiles examined). Indeed, the senior Jesus organ scholar was apparently unable to relinquish this beloved position even for a Fit College photo last term. A wall-post on one organ scholar’s profile, simply stating ‘sacrilege’ and containing a link, provided a further glimpse into their unfathomable lives.

The sacrilege in question, was the use of the setting for Thomas Tallis’ ‘If Ye Love Me’ for – shock, horror (evidently) – a completely different Latin text. This had caused serious bewilderment and pain to all scholars involved. The bonds between scholar and instrument clearly run deep. Their attachment to their music – you have to be dedicated when, outside of Oxford, the organ has become rather an obscure instrument – has led to unkind, and, I argue, unfounded comments concerning the existence of their social lives, and in fact, their characters as a whole.

Everyone knows the classic line,
‘What do organ scholars use for birth control?’
‘Their personality.’

Yet, is this fair? One need only go as far as looking at the outcome of last year’s Organ Scholars’ Dinner to be assured that this subculture is full of fun-loving, free-wheeling spirits. The smart four-course dinner, held at Brasenose College, became rather derailed after certain scholars indulged in the delights of food-fighting.

This did not go down well, as we can see from this e-mail of disapproval, which arrived the next morning (7th November 2009) and asserted that ‘whilst the majority of those who attended the dinner proved to be absolutely delightful company, a few scholars demonstrated a magnificent display of immaturity. I am very saddened to report that some people find ‘food fights’, and general silliness amusing. It is particularly disappointing (and embarrassing) when this is done in front of senior members, including, of course, Dame Gillian Weir.’

According to reports on the night, Dame Gillian narrowly escaped receiving a pomegranate to the face, courtesy of a rather sauced member of this musical Bullingdon Club. Terrified culprits were later summoned to a meeting with the fearsome dragon of Oxford’s ecclesiastical empire, the notorious Edward Higginbottom, New College’s Director of Music. I’m yet to ascertain whether they’ve been seen since.

Organ scholars’ general behaviour when drunk really does sound amusing, and from these anecdotes, I would recommend you spend a night with a few organists for baroque/classical/romantic decadence.
One organ scholar, for example, describes a life dogged by complaints concerning his drunken behaviour, as it often involves complying with requests for loud music on either the chapel organ or his bedroom’s piano.

Choir dinner is another frequently sordid affair, ‘notorious from a few years ago when a drunken orgy took place under the dinner table’. This event was swiftly followed by a ‘rave’ back at college, ‘in which clothing was swapped between debauched scholars and singers, and in which drunken blondes romped on my bed (the springs have never been the same since)’.

Indeed, choirs appear to provide happy hunting grounds for all organ scholars, and not just for one-night romps: a notable example is the Jesus scholar, who, upon learning of a fresher’s singing credentials as early as 0th week in Michaelmas, promptly ensnared her into the choir, and consequently made her his girlfriend.

It seems that our male organ scholars, surrounding themselves with choral groupies and exerting their musical egos, are certainly living the rock star life. The few female organ scholars will surely find this draining experience of a male-dominated society invaluable preparation for such careers as stockbroking or investment banking in the masculine world of the City.

From all of this, I conclude that organ scholars may be an institution, but they’re an institution that deserves exploring. Seek them out in the KA or chapel, watch them escape to London or Cambridge for a night at the opera or King’s College respectively. Moreover, take a look at the instruments they’re actually playing – the huge, daunting and earplug-warranting organ at New College, or the beautifully decorated affair at Exeter, check out the guy/girl in the loft: there might be more to them than you think.