The Post about John Paul II April 2nd

I have two very clear, very early memories about Pope John Paul II.

The first didn't directly involve him, but it changed the world.

I was four years old when my father took my sisters and I for a walk in the park. A half-block from home I could see my Mother crying on the porch.

From there she yelled the news to my father: Pope John Paul was dead.

The second memory is from when I was in first grade, and the principal of my Catholic school made a PA announcement.

In a short statement interrupted by her sobs, she told us Pope John Paul II had been shot in an assassination attempt. She asked us to pray for him, and for the man who shot him.

I remember no such reaction when Reagan was shot that year.

Today, the man who has been Pontiff for twenty-seven of my thirty-one years lies dying.

To a non-Catholic - and to many in the faith - the impact of his impending death must seem mystifying.

After all, he is just a man. A good man, and an influential one, but in the end just a man.

I agree.

I don't hold him to any special standard of humanity. I admire him, I respect his office and what it stands for, and I acknowledge him as my spiritual leader.

I don't think he's secured special favor with God simply by holding office.

I think his life guaranteed it.

He was born Karol Wojtyla in Poland in 1920. He secretly studied for the priesthood under the weight of WWII's Nazi occupation and rose to Cardinal under the equally repugnant rule of Communism.

He was the first non-Italian Pope in over four centuries, a learned scholar who spoke eight languages fluently, and a traveler who had seen more of the world and its people than any of his predecessors had.

He established diplomatic ties with Israel, met with the same Communist leaders who once denied his God, exchanged ambassadors with the US, and led the Church into its third millennium.

All of that is fodder for historians to ponder. What made him so appealing to me was something he had no control over: his nationality.

Even now - and I'm a hundred years removed from the old country - I'm proud that a strong, passionate Pope shared my heritage.

To have the honor of growing up in a time when Poles were leading the fight against communism behind the Iron Curtain while a strong and vigorous Polish Pope sat in the Vatican - well, it was almost enough towrite off all those lame Polish jokes as mere jealousy.

To be sure, not everyone is a fan. I once read a scathing attack in which the author thought a natural but painful death for the pontiff would be just 'retribution' for his policy on euthanasia.

In a similar vein, I've heard him called anti-woman, because apparently a sincere moral opposition to abortion can be nothing less.

I don't agree with everything the Pope's believed and preached, most recently his stance against US military actions.

Yet I can recognize a sincere and consistent philosophy: that life, in all its forms, is too precious to waste; too strong to be trampled by a mad dictator or suffocated by communism.

It was a philosophy he held dear. To the end he lived by that creed, handling his slow decline with grace and resoluteness.

I doubt I'll ever see a Pope of his caliber again.

I will pray for him, and I'll mourn the news of his passing.

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Additional Reading:

How the Pope Helped Break Communism

The Pope of Popes