Opaque Lucidity

Extreme Unction

I was 7 when Karol Joseph Wojtyla was elected Pope. Our principal, a stern Bostonian named Sister Anne Robert Gray (that’s right---S.A.R.G.---you can’t make this stuff up), got on the school intercom and yelled, “We have a new Pope!”. We were excited because 7 and 8-year olds get excited over anything out of the norm in a strict Catholic school. To me, the election of a Pope was the same as the election of a President: an event that happened every now and then. The adults got worked up over such things, so I did, too.

This Pope was different. The frail man we see today is a shadow of the man who first sat in the chair of Peter in 1978. He was an outdoorsman who skied and loved to travel (he is the most traveled Pope in history). He is the first non-Italian Pope in more than 450 years. He attended a seminary in Poland during the German occupation. After the war, the Soviets occupied the country (they had actually split it with the Germans in 1939 but, later, had to recapture the entire nation from them---but that’s another story) and the young priest was first exposed to communism. It left an indelible impression on him. Many say that his first trip to Poland as Pope in 1979 was the trigger that gave rise to the Solidarity movement, the slow uprising that began in a Gdansk shipyard and ended with the collapse of the communist regime in Warsaw.

John Paul II reached out to Jews and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as Muslims. Some of his efforts in this area were considered controversial, but all were done with the intention of creating and maintaining friendly relations among the world’s religions. I will always remember the day he told an audience in Rome that Jews are “our older brothers.” After all, Jesus was a Jew.

Anyone who spends more than 26 years in any position is going to be judged as much on his failures as his successes, and John Paul is no exception. He met with Yassar Arafat in the Vatican, a move that did nothing but embolden the Palestinian leader. He acted with undue slowness when news of pedophile priests in the United States became front page news. There have even been rumors in the past few years that John Paul is no longer making decisions on a daily basis, but is instead relying on his advisors to create and shape policy.

But despite this, I believe the man we now see struggling for his life will be remembered as one of the most influential and effective Popes in Church history. During his tenure, the office of the papacy changed. Earlier Popes were remote figures who lead from behind the wall of the Vatican. John Paul brought his light to the world. He was, in many ways, the first Pope of the modern age.

As I write this, the news is reporting that the archbishop who will lead the Church until the next papal election has met with His Holiness. The end is near. As I think about this great man today, I am reminded about what Malachi Martin wrote about him in his book “Vatican”. Martin’s book was technically a novel, but all the characters and events were real people. The “fictional” Polish bishop wanted to start a new church in a small town in Poland. The state police, worried about his influence, denied him use of the land. In response, he began saying Mass on the proposed site. A government official visited him soon after and told him that it would be terrible is something were to “happen” to the young bishop. His response? “You can kill me, and they will send someone else. And they will send someone after him and after him. And one day, when your ideology is dead and gone from this place, the Church will be here.” I wonder if he thought that he would live to see that day?