Pope Francis is dead. We Catholics are taught to see the pope as our spiritual father on Earth (“Il Papa“), the Vicar of Christ, with a religious authority analogous to that Moses wielded over the Israelites. So for that reason, many are mourning his passing today, which seems like the filially pious thing to do. Whatever their flaws, we grieve our fathers when they die.
I imagine that FBI agent Robert Hanssen’s three sons mourned him when he died in prison two years ago, serving a life term for betraying the United States to the Soviet Union. According to the FBI website:
On January 12, 1976, Robert Philip Hanssen swore an oath to enforce the law and protect the nation as a newly minted FBI special agent. Instead, he ultimately became the most damaging spy in Bureau history.
On February 18, 2001, Hanssen was arrested and charged with committing espionage on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Hanssen—using the alias “Ramon Garcia” with his Russian handlers—had provided highly classified national security information to the Russians in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, bank funds, and diamonds.
The damage Hanson did was almost incalculable, as the Miller Center reports:
Hanssen had delivered to the intelligence service of the Soviet Union, the KGB, some of our nation’s most important intelligence secrets, such as US strategies in the event of a nuclear war, developments in US military weapon technologies, and the identities of Soviets who were spying for the United States. As a result of his disclosures, the Soviets executed at least three of these spies who had worked for the FBI or the CIA.
What If He’d Gotten Away with it?
But what if Hanssen’s story had turned out differently? What if he’d gone to his grave undetected, with his links to foreign intelligence services still intact, and proteges in place all through the FBI still handing secrets to our foreign enemies in Beijing and Teheran? If you were one of Hanssen’s patriotic, devoutly Catholic sons, and you knew about his hidden crimes, how would you feel standing at the solemn FBI memorial service held in his honor? When people Hanssen had recruited, whom you suspected of treason, stood up to praise his patriotism, what would you be tempted to step up and say?
Or would loyalty to a father compel you to keep silent, even nod in feigned agreement?
That’s the dilemma that faces candid, faithful believers with the death of Pope Francis, whose legacy Jules Gomes has already scrutinized here at The Stream.
Continue reading at The Stream