Our Back Pages: Unmasking the mysterious Xavier Rynne

Redemptorist Father Francis X. Murphy, the mysterious Vatican insider who used the “Xavier Rynne” pseudonym to publish detailed reports about intrigue at the Second Vatican Council, acknowledged his true identity to readers of the Catholic Review 25 years ago this month.

Even though he had denied being Xavier Rynne for more than two decades, it’s not like Father Murphy tried very hard to keep his identity secret. For his nom de plume, he chose his middle name and his mother’s maiden name.

Father Murphy’s famous “Letters from Vatican City,” published in The New Yorker magazine from 1962 to 1965, caused an international sensation in revealing how a small group of church bureaucrats attempted to prevent some bishops from submitting ideas for discussion at the council. Many credit “Xavier Rynne’s” early letters with making the council more open.

“Generally most of the Curia was against the council,” said Father Murphy in a Jan. 9, 1991, article in the Catholic Review. “It was all over L’Osservatore Romano (the Vatican newspaper), and in the gossip going around.”

Father Murphy said the council ultimately had the effect of redefining the nature of the church as a “spiritual organization.”

“I don’t think anybody can be unhappy” with it, he said, adding that the way the council gave freer rein to Catholic thinking was “realistic.”

“It hinges on the dignity of the human being,” he said, “the intelligence of the human being.”

Father Murphy took a timely path to becoming a journalistic provocateur. After serving in parishes and at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis as a chaplain, he went to Rome in 1948 to help collect Redemptorist records.  He later taught patristic moral theology in the Eternal City at the same time St.  John XXIII announced the convening of the council.

The Bronx native, a scholar of medieval history, was appointed a “peritus” or council expert for Bishop Aloysius Willinger of Monterey-Fresno, Calif., a fellow Redemptorist. In that role, he had direct access to  council proceedings.

Father Murphy later wrote numerous articles for religious and secular publications and was a frequent lecturer. He was an adjunct professor of politics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1973 to 1975.

Father Murphy lived and ministered at St. Mary in Annapolis from 1985 until his death in 2002 at  age 87.

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