French Cardinal Danilou

Dies in a Prostitute's
House

Last reviewed: June 2016

Date May 20, 1974

The mysterious death of Roman Catholic

theologian and scholar Jean Danilou in the
house of a prostitute led to a scandal in the
popular press and among colleagues. His life and
work suggested several possible explanations for
his death, including the possibilities that he was
assassinated by philosophical enemies, that he
died while ministering at the brothel, or that he
died following an intimate encounter with a
prostitute.

Locale Paris, France

Key Figures

Jean Danilou (1905-1974), French

theologian and scholar
Alain Danilou (1907-1994), Hindu
scholar and brother of Jean Danilou
Mimi Santoni (b. c. 1950), dancer and
friend of Jean Danilou

Summary of Event
 Jean Danilous background and
achievements were impressive. Educated at the
Sorbonne and the University of Lyon, he held
doctorates in both letters and theology. Entering
the Jesuit order as a young man, he was ordained
priest in 1938. In 1969, he became an
archbishop, and the same year his personal
friend, Pope Paul VI, made him a cardinal. As his
reputation grew, he was invited to lecture
internationally, notably at the University of Notre
Dame in the United States in 1950. At the
Institute Catholique de Paris, he was professor of
primitive Christianity from 1943 to his death,
serving as dean in the last decade of his service
there. He founded study circles and edited
numerous publications. Honored as a Chevalier
of the Legion of Honor, he was also a member of
the French Academy.

Danilou told his friends numerous times that,

I am naturally a pagan, and a Christian only
with difficulty. As he entered his sixties, he
confided his fear that opponents in his church
were plotting against him. However, he arrived
at the last day of his life seemingly without
premonition. On that Monday, May 20, 1974, he
arose as usual, said mass, worked at his desk,
and received a few visitors. At noon he lunched
at a favorite restaurant and talked by phone with
a Sorbonne University colleague. He then
collected some mail and returned briefly to his
residence, before departing again at 3:15 p.m.,
leaving word that he would return by 5 p.m.

Thirty-eight minutes later, an emergency call

was received by the police, from Madam Santoni,
who lived on the upper floor of a building in Rue
Dulong, which was in a disreputable quarter of
Paris. According to Santoni, Danilou had
hastened up the steps to her flat, collapsing at
the top. Fearing she would be charged with his
death, she quickly summoned help and tore his
clothes apart in an unsuccessful attempt to
revive him.

Church dignitaries, including the apostolic

nuncio, the Jesuit provincial of France, and the
superior of the Jesuits in Paris, along with nuns
called in to tend the body, quickly arrived on the
scene. Reporters from France Soir also arrived,
but they were cautioned to maintain discretion.
The press was informed that the cardinal had
died in the street or in the stairway. Reporters
quickly discovered that Santoni, who called
herself Mimi, was a married woman, well known
to the police as a bar host and a cabaret and
striptease dancer. Allegedly, she also ran a
brothel with her husband, who at the time of
Danilous death was in jail for pimping.

Danilou was known for his wit and urbanity.

There was something slightly bohemian about
him, according to friends, a tendency to seek out
social rejects. Mary Magdalene, the reformed
harlot of the Bible, especially intrigued him.
Possibly through sympathy with the open sexual
orientation of his brother Alain, he held regular
masses for gays and lesbians. With his
disheveled appearance, knowledge of cinema,
and his secular friends, he often resembled a
new wave film critic more than a Catholic
cardinal. The National Review observed that he
looked as if he had been drinking very black
coffee for fifteen years in a sidewalk caf with
[French philosopher and feminist] Simone de
Beauvoir. He lived simply at his Paris residence,
without a secretary or an automobile, yet his life
was not an open book.

In earlier years, Danilou had been identified

as a Catholic progressive. He read the books of
the controversial Jesuit paleontologist Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin and seemed to make
common cause with innovative Dutch and
Belgian churchmen. The best known exponent of
this new theology was Swiss professor Hans
Kng. Kngs early admiration of Danilou,
however, would change when, with the
pontificate of Paul VI, Danilou became
increasingly conservative and a staunch
defender of papal infallibility. Kng came to
believe that raw ambition drove Danilou to
pander to the pope to become a cardinal. When
the circumstances of his death were later
reported, Kng, along with other church liberals
who already suspected Danilou of expediency,
put the most scandalous interpretation on the
event.

Danilou wrote voluminously, both scholarly

and popular works on religious history,
philosophy, ethics, and theology. Some scholars
regarded him as the standard authority on the
early Christian church. He explored the newly
discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, outlining parallels
between the teachings of the people who
produced them and early Christianity. He also
was an expert in Greek patristics and Hellenistic
culture. His writings were characterized by both
learning and clarity.
 Christianity, Danilou believed, must be
actively applied. Early in his career he had been
sympathetic to the French worker-priest
movement, which was later disbanded. His
explorations in world religions, perhaps in part
stimulated by the career of his brother Alain
Danilou, led him to conclude that, while
Christianity was the lighted path, elements of
useful truth could be found in all traditions. With
this tolerance, not common in his milieu, he
pursued dialogue not only with Protestant
scholars but also representatives of all religions.
He founded the Fraternity of Abraham, an
interfaith group composed of Jews, Christians,
and Muslims, and was a strong supporter of
Catholic initiatives in appointing more African
and Asian cardinals.

Danilous family background may shed light

on his curious death. The Danilous were a
distinguished Breton family. The father, Charles,
a politician who held numerous French
ministerial posts, usually was absent from the
family scene. The dominant influence was the
mother, Madeleine Clamorgan Danilou,
descended from Norman nobility, deeply
religious, and committed to female education.
The institutions she founded to educate devout
women took priority over her family of four sons
and two daughters. Two of her sons would
receive international recognition. Alain, the
cardinals younger brother by two years,
converted to Shaivite Hinduism, becoming a
classical dancer, musicologist, and authority on
Indian music.

The death of Alains brother remained a

mystery, yet Church officials rejected requests
for an official inquiry. Cardinal Danilou was
buried with full honors in a Jesuit cemetery. The
Danilou family accepted the Churchs
explanation that he had died of a heart attack
during a pastoral visit to a woman he had
previously consoled. The three thousand francs
found in his pocket was said to be bail money for
Santonis husband. A Jesuit spokesperson
pronounced that this was a most appropriate
way for a man of God to die, on a mission of
mercy to a social outcast.

Not surprisingly, leftist anticlerical

newspapers took another interpretation. Le
Canard Enchaines investigation suggested that
the cardinal had been paying regular visits to
Mimi for some time. His body, the paper alleged,
had been hurriedly dressed, and the money in his
pocket was intended payment for her
professional services.

Further explanations were advanced by

others. Danilou had once referred to the liberal
school of Catholic theologians as assassins of
the faith, and some believed that this group had
framed or possibly even murdered him. Another
scenario, worthy of the so-called Da Vinci-code
theorists, was that Danilou had run afoul of
secret societies, specifically the Grand Lodge of
France.

Impact

The immediate reaction to Danilous death

was scandalous titillation in French popular
newspapers and beyond. American publications
relished the irony of a prince of the Church dying
on the steps of a brothel. The cardinals
theological enemies, who believed that he had
betrayed the renewal movement in the Church,
took the circumstances of his death as evidence
of his hypocrisy and self-serving indulgence.
Admirers, colleagues in the Jesuit order, and his
family saw in his death a Christ-like ministry to
the dejected of society. The mystery has never
been conclusively solved.

The scandal had more far reaching

repercussions. For some, it was a wake-up call,
heralding the major sex scandals that would rock
the Catholic Church in the last decades of the
twentieth century. For Church reformers,
Danilous questionable death seemed further
confirmation of the need for married and female
priests.

The circumstances of Danilous death,

however, did not diminish the cardinals
importance as a scholar, and his books continue
to be widely read. His patristic writings would
serve as foundation for other scholars, while his
more popular books on the Dead Sea Scrolls,
angels, and Christian approaches to non-
Christian religions would have special relevance
to the increasingly diverse populations of Europe
and the United States. He would also be honored
as an important pioneer in Christian ecumenism
and interfaith dialogue.

Bibliography

Boysson, Emmanuelle de. Le Cardinal et

LHindouiste. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1999.
The most thorough examination of Jean and Alain
Danilou, within the context of their family,
written by their great niece. In French.

Clinton, Farley. The Jesuit Confrontation.

National Review 26 (October 11, 1974): 1162-
1164. A perceptive examination of Danilous
mysterious death and its relevance to the
modern Catholic Church.

Danilou, Jean. God and the Ways of Knowing.

1957. Reprint. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius
Press, 2003. Danilou wrote that this book is
not to record what I say of God, but what God
has said of Himself. This work places religions
and philosophies in their proper relationship
with the knowledge of God. A good starting
point for any serious study of Danilou and his
theology.

Kng, Hans. My Struggle for Freedom: A

Memoir. Translated by John Bowden. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2003. A
discussion of innovative movements in the
Catholic Church, with a harsh judgment of
Danilous opposition to those movements.

Derived from: "French Cardinal Danilou

Dies in a Prostitute's House." Great Events
from History: Modern Scandals. Salem
Press. 2009.
Titre:
French Cardinal Danilou Dies in a Prostitute's House.
Auteurs:
Phy-Olsen, Allene
Source:
Salem Press Encyclopedia, January, 2016. 3p.
Type de document:
Article
Termes de sujet:
DANIELOU, Jean, 1905-1974
Rsum:
Jean Danilous background and achievements were
impressive. Educated at the Sorbonne and the University
of Lyon, he held doctorates in both letters and theology.
Entering the Jesuit order as a young man, he was
ordained priest in 1938. In 1969, he became an
archbishop, and the same year his personal friend, Pope
Paul VI, made him a cardinal. As his reputation grew, he
was invited to lecture internationally, notably at the
University of Notre Dame in the United States in 1950.
At the Institute Catholique de Paris, he was professor of
primitive Christianity from 1943 to his death, serving as
dean in the last decade of his service there. He founded
study circles and edited numerous publications. Honored
as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, he was also a
member of the French Academy.
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1638
Numro d'accs:
89476054
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