VATICAN CITY — When Baghdad fell — most spectacularly in the statue of Saddam Hussein — on April 9 the attention of the Holy See shifted immediately to the work of reconstruction, with one leading cardinal giving thanks that the war went well.

“It's a relief; naturally we are all happy,” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said. “It could have gone badly, and it was never possible to foresee what would happen, given that with chemical weapons, everything was possible. We thank the Lord; it seems that all went well.”

At his general audience on April 9, Pope John Paul II referred to the Iraq war only in passing and focused instead on recent massacres and summary executions in Congo and central Africa. Developments were moving too fast for the papal speechwriters to keep pace.

The volume of statements about the war — a veritable prewar flood from many sources, even including retired bishops — slowed to a trickle during the three-week military campaign. As soon as the war began, the Secretariat of State issued an order that no one was to speak on the war without prior approval and applied the silencing order even to heads of Vatican departments — an unusual move. Vatican Radio was also told not to interview curial figures.

Off-the-record sources told the Register there was concern the carefully crafted papal statements were being over-whelmed by a torrent of commentary from other officials taking much more strident positions.

So it was the case that the only statements on April 9 were from Cardinal Ratzinger speaking at a long-planned conference on political ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

“We thank God that everything went as it did; it could have been different,” he added, referring to the relatively low number of casualties. “Today's weapons are able to destroy many innocents, as often happens. We hope that everything can be limited.”

In fact, that very same morning, the Holy See's “foreign minister,” Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, received John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control — the highest-ranking American official to visit the Vatican since the war began.

“Regarding the Iraq crisis, Mr. Bolton repeated the duty of his government to respect the ius in bello,” said papal spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls, referring to the just-war requirement that wars be prosecuted with maximum care to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.

Yet even as that meeting was going on, attention was turning

from the prosecution of the war to post-Saddam questions. Given the bitterness of some of the prewar rhetoric, there was a clear desire not to revisit those debates but to focus on the future.

“It is important that the reconstruction of Iraq not be the work of one power but of nations; it is a common responsibility of us all for this tormented country,” Cardinal Ratzinger said.

The following day the official Holy See position was communicated in a brief unsigned statement from the Secretariat of State, which considered the events in Baghdad to be a “turning point in the Iraq conflict.”

Taking a slightly different line than before war, the Secretariat of State spoke of the current moment as “a significant opportunity for the future of the [Iraqi] people” — a suggestion the Holy See welcomed the fall of Saddam.

A quick end to the fighting in other parts of Iraq was hoped for, followed by an offer that the Catholic Church is ready to assist with the “material, political and social reconstruction of the country … through her social and charitable institutions.” In particular, the Vatican indicated that “the dioceses of Iraq are likewise available to offer their structures to contribute to an equitable distribution of humanitarian aid.”

Notable, given that the statement was issued the day before the Russian-German-French summit in Moscow, no mention was made of who should be responsible for the reconstruction of Iraq. While the general foreign policy approach of the Holy See would favor a U.N. solution as opposed to an American-British solution, the decision not to enter that debate possibly indicated a greater reserve on the part of the Holy See in the postwar debates. For now, only a general exhortation for cooperation was issued.

“The Secretariat of State hopes once again that, with the silencing of weapons,” the statement said, “the Iraqis and the international community will know how to meet the compelling present challenge which is to definitively bring an era of peace to the Middle East.”

Father Raymond J. de Souza writes from Rome.