It's serious. It's fun. It's your Catholic Drive Time with Joe McClane and Emily Alvarez

Joining us right now by a Zoom Chat is former Swiss Guard, Mario Enzler. He's also a former musician, a Swiss banker, tax lawyer. He's now the Dean of the Cameron School of Business at the University of Saint Thomas. He often speaks, gives workshops, but he also has a book out called uh I served a saint by iservedasaint.com. So just go to iservedasaint.com. You can find out more on that. Good morning to you, Mr Enzler. 

Good morning, Joe. How are you?

Praise to God. I am alive and that counts. How are you? 

I'm doing great. Thank you very much. It's always a joy to be with you.  

Absolutely. That's correct. And, uh, the ceremony that you are referring to happens on May 6th every year. Ok. And that, it's a celebration of the swearing of the new guards that they train, uh, around, uh, six months. Ok. And, uh, they swear to give their life in protection of the Supreme Pontiffs lives. And they've been doing that since 1506, which means, uh, 515 years. Ok, which was when the Swiss Guards was established on January 22nd, 1506.

Now, there's a number of questions I would love to ask around the Swiss Guard. I served in the Marine Corps. So I have appreciation for military life. Uh But let's start with your story. How did you uh find a calling to serve at the Swiss Guard?

Well, I found a call to, I, I owe it to my father because I, I'm an only child and I was born in Italy, Joe. Ok, from a Swiss dad and an Italian mom. As a matter of fact, I was born in a small village called Soul Monte, which is the town where John the 23rd was born. All right. So imagine my joy on April 27th, 2014 when Pope Francis canonized on the same day, uh Saint Pope John Paul the second, which I protected as a Swiss Guard for 40 months. And saint Pope John the 23rd, which is the Pope that I come from his own village. All right. But uh I owe it to my father because when I finished graduate school, he's the one that said that I need that structure in my life. I, I know if that's what your dad told you, but that's what my dad told me. And so he highly encouraged me to consider joining the officer school of uh army. And I'm saying uh army because at that time, I had Italian passport being born in Italy and Swiss passport from my dad. And when I looked at both officer school, the Swiss army school was shorter only 17 weeks. And so to please my dad, I went that path and while I was there, somebody approached me saying, hey, we are, you know, we are looking at you, we see your uh commitment, we see your uh language, knowledge of different languages. I think you should at the end of the training, join the Swiss Guard and pay your duties while you be a Swiss Guard. And you know, Joe, I told them, I said, no, thanks. I don't really see myself dressed up as a clown. That's not my style. But then, you know, I thought a little bit more and my life changed dramatically, you know, when I arrived in the Vatican, and I realized that as a Swiss Guard, first and foremost, you carry a noble title and that are not that you become a prince or a duke, but three Latin words which means uh defensor Libertas Ecclesia protectors of the church's freedom. And that's why I joined the Swiss Guard to make sure to keep that freedom safe.

Mario Enzler is our guest and he is a former Swiss Guard. We're talking about his, his uh call his story about how he joined the world's smallest army to protect the church and, and the vicar of Christ on Earth. Um So as a young man, you, you joined this uh unit, uh how many languages must one speak? How many languages are spoken among the Swiss Guard? It's a pretty eclectic group. Is it not?

Right? So we have four national language, we always say 34 because one is a very small. So every Swiss Guard speaks Italian, French and German. And then depending on which kind of education you receive in Switzerland, you also speak English. So even though I was born in Italy, but I was able to keep all the languages because of my dad and because of schooling, so four languages, it's easy. OK? For, for and you can speak and you can write and that's a blessing. That's why I tell everybody learn as many languages as you can because those are keys to open many, many, many doors.

I thought you had to be from a certain, I thought the rumor was you had to be from a certain village in Switzerland in order to serve the Swiss guard, I guess that's not the case. No.

So in order to be a Swiss Guard, you have to have, you have to be Catholic. And remember Switzerland is mainly a Protestant country. OK. And the fact that since 515 years they've been able to provide Catholic men. It's quite extraordinary. You have to be 5, 10, you have to be Catholic. You have to be done with college. OK? With an undergraduate degree. And uh your background check has to be immaculate as you mentioned. Then you take a, a selection in Switzerland. So I did it at the end of my training schools. All right. And then if you pass the selection, you wait, like in the United States, you wait until they call you. All right. And to me, they call me three weeks after I finished my training in Switzerland. So I departed from Switzerland, went back home to my parents and then I went into the Vatican and then you arrive there and for the first uh six weeks you do an intense training, you don't wear a uniform. It's all training, you know, defense training, strategy, tactics and so on. And then you start wearing the, the, the, the uniform and you enter in the first level of service, which means you protect the only father but you see him from afar. All right, you're not right next to him and then you keep training and the more you grow in seniority and experience, the closer you get to his holiness to become actually his shield.

We have about uh, I don't know, 45 seconds before we have to take a break. But were you intimidated when you showed up to the Vatican? Was it, was it overwhelming?

He was absolutely overwhelming. Especially Joe in 45 seconds. The first time that I met his holiness because I was in the apostolic palace and he arrived, they told me he's going to walk by so close the rooms I went up in my attention and imagine and by myself, mid twenties, he is all in his camp looks me in the eyes. And then he says, you must be a new one. And I said, yes, I am. And he said, well, thank you for coming to serve who serves.

All right, hold that thought right there. And there's a lot of questions. I'm very curious because like I served in the Marine Corps. So I have an appreciation for military life. And I, I, one of the questions that comes to mind is the training itself, the level of sophistication, the level of, of military expertise. I think a lot of people see the Swiss Guard as, as people wearing costumes and putting on a show. I'm sure you've heard this criticism many times in your life. What, how do you respond to that?

Well, um wearing a uniform, you know, such a color for uniform. It's part of the protocol of the daily life because there are, there is a huge ceremonial going on every day, joy as you can imagine, you know, presidents and you know, ambassadors, people that they come and there is a military protocol. So you have to have a, a platoon of guards and the national. So the uniforms, ok, represent the state. The color of the uniform are, are the color of the Vatican, you know, the yellow, the blue and the gold. All right. So the uniform that was designed not as everybody mistakenly thinks by Michelangelo, but it was designed by a colonel of the Swiss Guards. Ok? As the specificity to make you understand that you are in the Vatican, as a matter of fact, when you arrive in Rome and you can see, I don't know if people can see us on the screen. But behind me, ST Peter's Square, when you arrive at the Vatican, the moment that you see the uniform of the Swiss Guard, you understand that you are at the Vatican. All right. But the true service of the guard is when they wear a dark suit. All right. So when you are next to the only father, you are like the secret service in the United States, you wear a dark suit, you carry your weapon, ok? And you are trained to take the bullet. All right. So you know how to shield him with your body. But the difference between Isolines and the president of a country is you cannot take him up and put him into a car. Isolines will never allow you to stop a child to pass over the barricades and come and get a hug. Ok? So you have to protect him, but at the same time, you have to, then he be trying mission, which is to give himself to the people. So that's the uniqueness of being a bodyguard of a Pope. And for me to be a bodyguard of a saint at that uniqueness trying to anticipate his thoughts. Oh, there is that elderly person on a wheelchair, he's gonna get off the line. He's gonna go there. I have to clear the path because I know that he wants to go and caress that person.

So you're trained in weapons tactics and self defense training.

Yes, you're trained and we do that in Switzerland. So you join the Swiss Guard and then they send you to the equivalent of the marine that for us are the grenadier, ok? And you do a four weeks tactics on self defense and fighting and combat, ok? And then you come back, you know, into the Vatican and you carry training for the rest of your time. All right. And you still have all of the updated, ok? The guards carry a nine millimeter, ok? It's a sig nine millimeters and that in all the posts inside the apostolic ball or on the square, there are places with more weaponry. Ok. In case of a leak.

Sorry, could you

tell us a little bit about what it was like to work with Saint John Paul the second? I mean, what an incredible opportunity. We have a photo up of you with him passing by. What was he like?

He was an amazing man. You can tell that he was, uh, um, a very special person that he was gifted with an enormous ability to communicate and uh with a brilliant intellect. And uh I was my answer to you is I was daily struck by the richness of his intuition, by the depth of his spirituality, by the example of his dreadfulness, but most of all by his immense humility, which was rooted in his intimate union with Christ. And today still today, I'm convinced that it was his humility which permitted him to continue to guide the church and to give an eloquent message even when his physical strength was fell in him. Don't forget three days before he passed away, he came to the window, you know, of the apostolic palace, he was pushed on a wheelchair and he could not talk and the world saw his face. And another date is, you know, this week on May 13, our Lady of Fatima, it will be 40 year of his healing attempt by Ali AJ. OK. He was shot on a May 1319 81. So what these men did for me and for many others throughout 27 plus years of his pontificate is unbelievable. And he was, as I said, a man of humility, a courageous man, a real man, a funny man. OK. But uh ultimately, he will always say one thing Joe and this is for all of us today, be more, stop thinking of doing more and start being more. And this is the message that I've been counting in my heart since then.

Wow. And you said that he recognized that you were new. So did he interact with the Swiss guards a lot? Oh,

yeah, he did interact with us a lot as a matter of fact, one time. Ok. And this is also, I think it fits perfectly the situation that we've been living for the past year and a half one time. I was with him and we were talking and I asked him boldly. I said, you're all in a seven question. You constantly tell us to not be afraid. Can you please tell me, how can I not be afraid? And you know Joe, you know what he told me, Mario, you cannot be afraid because God is always one day ahead of you. Isn't this beautiful job? This sums up the the theology of that man, ok. That he was fearless because he knew that God was one day ahead of him.

Mario Enzler is our guest and uh check out his book. It's I served a saint.com. I served a saint.com Mario was it easier for you to serve under uh someone like a JP two? Uh, because you obviously felt found him to be very inspirational. Um Was that, did that make life easier for you? I remember interviewing uh Andreas Fit and, you know, he starts his book out with, uh being sad and depressed, being so far away from his family among strangers that he did not know and, and it was his encounter with JP Two on his watch, that sort of changed that. But what was that like for you? Was it easier to serve under a JP two or uh I guess I did you find separation anxiety from your family? That's what I'm trying to get to.

Ok. So for me, as I said before, because I, I am the only Swiss Guard till today that I was born abroad and raised abroad. So being born in Bergamo, just outside of Milano, being Italiano, my mother tongue language, I did not suffer there, I didn't leave the Alps. Ok. Like many guards do and was home sick. So for me, when I finished the officer school training and I went back to Bergamo three weeks later, I went to Rome, I was still in Italy in a big city. And honestly, Joe, I decided to join the Swiss Guard because of that concept of freedom. But also because I thought, hey, I'm going to be a Swiss Guard. I'm going to be a bodyguard. I'm going to be living in Rome Caput, Mundi. How cool is that? All right. So, no, for me, it was completely the opposite full of enthusiasm, euphoria. And then, you know, a and fidelity fiercely and faithfully. That's the motto of the Swiss Guard. I really wanted to understand it better. And then my life changed when I, I started interacting with Saint Pope John Paul the second and because of being a sanguine person, OK. And uh uh speaking multiple languages, I had many, many occasions to interact with him. And then when everything came clear to him.

So what happened exactly whenever uh the multiple times that JP two was uh was attacked, what was the, what was the Swiss Guard at? And how many times did the Swiss Guard prevent him from ever even getting close to being attacked? Uh What, what, what's it like in that, in those kind of situations? Well,

there are many, you know, many, many, many situations that you have no idea. I, I witnessed one that his holiness, he was walking uh inside the Saint Peter Kri, his holiness was walking, you know, to start mess. And a gentleman, you know, he had a syringe in his hands, OK? And a gentleman came with his hand and the syringe outside of the crowd and the, the guard in front of me was able to grab his wrist and block the syringe. OK. But so those are events that you don't see nobody writes, nobody reports. But if this is somebody that wants to harm the only father and making a joke, nun's religious sister, they always come out and they also want to touch his holiness and sometimes they wanna take a baton as a legal rally, right? OK. So you also need to grab the hands of the leave the battles there. No, it's a combination of things and on May 13th, if I may say when he was shot in ST Peter's Square, don't forget that when he fell down, he fell in the Swiss Guard hands. OK? Of the captain that was on the Jeep and was the Swiss Guard that grabbed Ali J because somebody saw him shooting as a matter of fact, a nun and she was the one that y is running. It was the Swiss Guard that tackled Ali Aja so his own ins and inside the barracks, we still have the shirt that the Captain Alois Esterman was wearing. When John Paul, I, I fell down and was donated at the Swiss Guard as a major relics because that shirt of the captain is full of ST Pope John Paul, the second block.

We're just about down to 60 seconds left in our conversation with Mario Enzler. I served a saint.com is uh book now, uh I imagine this is a small fraternity of, of, of men who have served over the last 500 years or whatever uh in the last 60 30 45 seconds. What is it like being a part of the fraternity today or do you still, uh, engage with them?

Yes, we have, uh, you know, in the United States there are only two or three of us that live here. All right. But we have an association of the former Swiss Guards. Ok. And we are, we are very active and we do want an annual gathering in Switzerland. I attended several, obviously not for the past two years, but there's a lot of voluntary efforts that we provide food bank services and it's good to be with the former Swiss Guards. All right, and

for all, I'm going to cut you off there, but God bless you, Mario Enzler. Thank you for your time this morning. We appreciate you telling us all about what it's like to be part of the Swiss Guard. God bless you and God love you. All right. That is gonna do it for our number one. If you can join us in our number two, we're gonna play our fear and trivia, our fear and trembling trivia game show and prizes are involved. Go to GRN online.com/cdt to get the rules and to watch live. God

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