Those who remember the epic pontificate of St John Paul II may recall a tall, handsome layman with well combed, iron-grey hair, dressed in a black business suit, white shirt, and black tie, following the clerical members of the papal household into St Peter’s Square on many great occasions, or carrying an umbrella over the pope’s head when it rained.
That same man is at centre stage in photos of the assassination attempt of 13 May, 1981, helping support the stricken pontiff in the Popemobile.
His name was Angelo Gugel, and he died on 15 January at the age of 90.
The Vatican News story on his death gave him his official, somewhat baroque, title: First Assistant of the Chamber of His Holiness.
The story’s headline called him the pope’s “private attendant.” To PG Wodehouse, Angelo would have been the papal “gentleman’s gentleman.” In plain English, he was John Paul II’s valet. I remember him best, however, as a master chef.
John Paul II was in no sense a gourmand. He had a terrific sweet tooth and loved his dolce (dessert). In the main, however, he cared little about food, which made him something of an anomaly in Italy.
The Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that the pope brought to Rome from Kraków took exquisite care of the papal apartment and its residents. (They were also discretion incarnate; John Paul puckishly shocked one of them in 1996 by saying to me in a loud stage-whisper, as he was showing me out of the apartment one night and the sister was setting up for morning Mass, “You should talk to her, she knows a lot!” And it was Sr Tobiana Sobotka, SSCJ, who was tenderly supporting John Paul’s head as he died.) Their cuisine, however, tended to be a bit bland.
So it was an even greater pleasure to get invited to the papal board for lunch on Sisters-Day-Off, when Angelo Gugel took a break from his valet duties to cook. For Angelo, like many Italian men, knew his way around a kitchen. I especially remember a fettuccine con funghi porcini that he prepared, not only because of its exquisite flavour but because the pope’s secretary, then-Monsignor Stanisław Dziwisz, insisted on my taking a massive second helping, saying that he wanted my wife to know that “we’re feeding you properly.”
John Paul II “inherited” Angelo Gugel from Pope John Paul I, who had invited Gugel, whom Albino Luciani had known in Venice, to come to Rome as his valet.
That role, of course, lasted less than a month, and then Angelo found himself with a new, and wholly unknown master: one whose character he quickly discerned when the Polish pope, on the day of his inaugural public Mass, asked Gugel to come to his study, read him the homily that would become world famous for its Christocentric summons to fearlessness and evangelisation — and then asked the valet to correct his Italian pronunciation, making pencil notations on the text.
John Paul II’s papal household had a familial character, if of a distinctive sort, given the office held by its master. The papal apartment operated in a dialectic of respect and reserve, formality and informality, the atmosphere of fellowship sustained by prayer. On one occasion, that prayer took a dramatic turn. As the Vatican News story put it, drawing on an interview with Angelo:
When [Gugel’s] wife Maria Luisa was expecting their fourth child — whom they planned to name Carla Luciana Maria in honor of Pope John Paul I (Luciani) and Pope John Paul II ([Karol] Wojtyla) — ‘very serious problems arose in the uterus.’ The gynecologists at the Gemelli Polyclinic said the pregnancy could not continue. Then, Mr Gugel recounted, one day John Paul II told him, ‘Today I celebrated Mass for your wife.’ On 9 April, Maria Luisa was taken into the operating room for a caesarean delivery. Afterwards, one doctor remarked, ‘Someone must have been praying a great deal.’ On the birth certificate he wrote, ‘7:15 a.m.,’ which was the exact moment when the Pope’s morning Mass reached the Sanctus. At breakfast, Sr Tobiana … told the Pope that Carla Luciana Maria had been born. ‘Deo gratias,’ the Pope exclaimed. And on April 27, he himself baptised her in his private chapel.
In more than a decade of frequenting the papal apartment, I exchanged many smiles, but no more than ten words, with Angelo Gugel. He was a quiet man who sought no attention and knew he was serving a saint. May he rest in peace, reunited with his old master at the Throne of Grace.
George Weigel is the Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies Ethics and Public Policy Center. His column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.
