Pope John Paul II

1920-2005

 

Introduction

John Paul II -- dead

“Our beloved Holy Father John Paul II has returned to the house of the Father,” said Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, announcing the Pope’s death to a huge crowd of Easter pilgrims and devotees who had gathered under the pontiff’s windows to pray for a miraculous recovery that never came. The announcement was met with a long applause--the Italian sign of respect. Bells tolled and many people wept openly while others sang hymns. The  pope, who reigned over the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics for more than 26 years, died in his apartment at 9:37 p. m. Rome time (1:37 our time) on  Saturday, April 2, 2005, surrounded by his closest aides. He is the third longest reigning pope in Catholic Church history.

 John & Paul

When elected on October 16, 1978, he chose two names for himself: John and Paul in honor of two recent popes. Pope John XXIII (called Good Pope John) was a poor peasant lad born  in a little Italian village of Bergamo (Sotto il Monte). He rose from his humble origins to become Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. When elected pope on October 28, 1958, at the age of 77, he announced, “Mi chimiamero’ Giovanni.” “I shall be called John.”  He said it in Italian instead of in Latin as was protocol. “This name is dear to me because it is the name of my father. It’s also the name of the patron saint of the humble parish where I was baptized.  I chose it also because almost all of those who bore that name had a brief pontificate!” (He liked to joke.)

 

The cardinals chose him because he was old, and they thought he’d die before he could do any harm. Instead he summoned the Church to the Second Vatican because he knew there was something seriously wrong that needed fixing.  He invited everybody to the Council: Orthodox,  Protestants, Jews, Muslims, yes, even atheists. And by the very kind of person he was, he invited his Church to put away fear, to relax and to laugh. Roly-poly man that he was, he remarked that his election wasn’t a beauty contest. When asked how many people worked in the Vatican he replied, “About half.”

 

On May 20, 1963, he held his last audience. On May 31st with a joyful heart he prepared to return to God. He asked to receive the last sacraments and said a few solemn words. Then on June 3rd  at 7:49 p.m., at the end of a Mass celebrated in St. Peter’s  Square, he died a serene death in the same papal apartment you saw over and over again these last two weeks on your TV screen—the same two windows on the third floor. He died praying, “Ut omnes unum sint”—“That they all might be one.” Jokingly he said he chose “John” because all Pope Johns had a short pontificate. He got his wish: he was pope only 5 years. It is from that man that Pope John Paul II got the first part of his name.

 

Then after good Pope John XXIII came Pope Paul VI, elected June 21, 1963. He brought the Second Vatican Council to completion and died on August 6, 1978. He was pope for 15 years.  It is from that man that Pope John Paul II got the second part of his name.

 

33 days followed by 26 years

After Paul VI died the Cardinals elected Albino Luciani on August 26, 1978. He took the name of his two predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI. When asked by what name shall you be called, he answered, “I shall be called John Paul I.”  It was from his immediate predecessor that John Paul II got the third part of his name.  The day after his election the new Pope addressed the Sunday crowd in St. Peter’s Square telling them, “I do not have the wisdom of heart of Pope John. I do not have the preparation and culture of Pope Paul. But now I stand in their place. I will try to serve the Church, and I hope that you will help me with your prayers.” Then suddenly the whole world was shocked to wake up to the new that the new pope had suddenly, almost mysteriously, died in the night of September 28, 1978. He had been pope for only 33 days.

 

Three days later on October 1, 1978 my mystic friend wrote this letter:

Albino Luciani. – While the Catholic Church was hustling and bustling in preparation for the new pope’s policy, he quietly slipped away. He left on the light and an open book: The imitation of Christ. He stunned the world by dying young at the Vatican Palace on the 34th day of his reign--a poor man. According to Brother Flavian of the Order of St. John of God, “the people are asking what it means. We don’t know what to think. We don’t know how to act.” –And here I am, wanting to clap my hands. Applaud. Rejoice. Celebrate. The Humor of God: Albino Luciani.

 

And now imagine this: if the next Pope should die young, and the next and the next, etc., the Vatican would exhaust its funds (on funeral expenses) and become poor. Perhaps we’d finally get the point. That would stun the world and church alike by being poor! No worldly princes would come to Rome anymore for funerals or coronations. No cameras, no press, no headlines. Who died? Just a poor man. A pope. A pauper.

 

“And what if the next pope  should die young, and the next pope and the next pope?” Well, the next pope following Albino Luciani, elected on October 16, 1978, was Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. He was a Slav, a Pole. His name was Karol Wojtyla. He took the name of John Paul II. He didn’t die young but reigned as pope for 26 years, and then he called it quits yesterday, April 2, 2005. A papacy of 33 days was followed by a papacy of 26 years!

The legacy of  “John Paul the Great”

And what did he do in the next 26 years? He visited his native Poland cowering under Communist oppression, and in his old Archdiocese of Krakow he sang songs with his fellow countrymen, especially the young. He ate kielbasa with them, and he gave the workers encouragement to throw off the Communist yoke. History gives credit to President  Reagan and John Paul II for tearing down the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain.

 

What did he do in the next twenty-six years? He came into leadership of a church that was opened wide by Vatican II and was now laboring under all sorts of confusion. John Paul II would clarify matters.  He made it clear that abortion was dead wrong, that divorce was wrong, that pre-marital sex was wrong, that artificial birth control (including the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS) was wrong, that homosexual relationships were wrong, that stem cell research was wrong. He made it clear that the church would not ordain women and would not do away with a celibate priesthood. You might not like that, but what it said was that this man wasn’t going to try to be politically correct.

 

But he also made it clear that Gulf War was wrong, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the death penalty is wrong, that removing hydration and feeding tube from Terri Schiavo was wrong.  That, too, you might not like, but what it said was that this man wasn’t going to try to be politically correct.

 

What did he do in the next twenty-six years? He made it clear that the Church’s persecution of the Jews down through the centuries was terribly wrong. He asked forgiveness from the Jewish community and became the first pope ever to enter the imposing chief synagogue in Rome along the Tiber.  He also made it clear to the Islamic world that the Christian Crusades were wrong, and he took off his shoes and became the first pope ever to enter a mosque in Syria. At the same time when he summoned all religious leaders of the world to summit with him for peace in Assisi, hometown of St. Francis, in response to the unspeakable terrorism of 9/11, he made it clear that never, never may one exercise terrorism in the name of God.

 

What did he do in the next twenty-six years. He did especially this – he clearly placed  before us the whole cycle of human life. On the day of his election as pope and of his Urbi et Orbi presentation to the Catholic faithful and to the world on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, he appeared as a strong, handsome athletic man who skied the slopes. But at the end of his long journey he presented himself as a feeble old man, bent over, hands trembling, spittle dripping from his mouth uttering undecipherable speeches and being wheeled about here and there and everywhere. He placed it all before us. Unashamed, he let it, as it were, all hang out, and he gave us courage not to be afraid.

 

In a little volume entitled, A View from the Ridge written in 1996, Morris West in his eightieth year writes that he feels like a mountain climber who after a long and arduous ascent has reached a height and then pauses to catch his breath in order to muster up enough courage for the last lap of his journey.  In one of his chapters he paints a portrait of two Popes: Pope John XXIII and John Paul II. Morris writes out of his own personal life experiences in the Church and with the Church. Though a kind of man’s man, when he writes of Pope John XXIII he becomes quite emotional. “I am very close to tears as I begin to set down the words. What can I say of a man so manifestly good? In his hands the crosier of the bishop has meant what it was meant to mean—the crook of the kindly Shepherd, to whom the way-worn and the stragglers meant more than those penned up safely in the sheepfold.”

 

West doesn’t speak so warmly about Pope John Paul II. He writes that John Paul II and he have things in common. They’re both  brothers in Christ by baptism. “John Paul was elected to be my spiritual father in Christ,” he writes. “That gives him authority over me, but it also gives me great claim over him.”

 

“We are contemporaries. I am four years older than he (written in 1996).  We both were educated in a strict religious climate—in the glow of the anathemas uttered by Pope Pius X against Modernism. He was educated to be a priest and I to be a Christian Brother. We both survived the same war. We both now experience the frustrations and diminutions of growing old. We both are impatient men who don’t suffer fools gladly.”  Then from his perspective he says, “I can grow old among my grandchildren while he will be locked up in the bleak solitude of power until he dies, becoming more dependent every day upon the counsels, good or bad, of those whom he has raised to office.”

 

At the end of that chapter Morris turns more kindly. Pope John Paul II’s style of government, he says, belies him. It doesn’t do justice, he says, to the compassion that’s really in him. “I have watched him in close-up through the eyes of a movie camera during the rituals of Holy Week in Rome: the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday, the Stations of the Cross in the Coliseum on Good Friday. These were more than ceremonies: they were  figurations of Christ himself in the last days of his life. The face I saw was that of a suffering man, full of unexpressed anguish. For those moments, the Vicar of Christ seemed to wear the face of Christ himself.”

 

Conclusion

The Good and the Great

Morris placed Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II side by side for comparison in his chapter entitled Diptych: Memorial of Two Popes. John came to be called Good Pope John.  John Paul II has already come to be called John Paul the Great.  It is interesting to note that the Church has buried John Paul II in the very crypt once occupied by the interred body of John XXIII before it was moved up into the basilica proper in preparation for his beatification, and to accommodate the great influx of pilgrims for the Jubilee Year 2000. Perhaps that curious fact is to remind us that what we are now looking for, hoping for, praying for, and what the cardinals of the Church must now be voting for is one who is both good and great.