Why He Is a Saint

by Slawomir Oder

  History has shown the effect that this conversation had on subsequent events. Not long afterward, the pope told a friend, “I received a letter from Pinochet in which he told me that, as a Catholic, he had listened to my words, he had accepted them, and he had decided to begin the process to change the leadership of his country.” And in fact the elections promised for 1988 did take place: Pinochet was forced to accept his defeat and, in 1990, gave up the office of president. Commenting on this episode, Wojtyła observed that it was necessary to meet everyone, without exception, but to do so with the simplicity and strength that derive from the Gospels.

  The trip to Nicaragua, in March 1983, was probably the one most freighted with risk. At the time, the Communist movement of the Sandinistas held power, and a part of the clergy, in the context of the doctrine of liberation theology, had joined ranks with the revolutionaries in favor of a popular church, opposed to the hierarchical church. Presented with the attendant difficulties, John Paul II was certain: “We must go, even though it will not be a great success. This church needs to be reinforced now, when it is passing through a very critical moment. Then we can hope that better times will come, and that the pope will receive a better welcome, but I must go there now as well.”

  The people in charge of Vatican security, after performing a preliminary inspection, determined that there was a grave threat to the lives of the Holy Father and the people traveling with him. They therefore decided that everyone would have to wear bulletproof vests under their cassocks. When John Paul II was informed of this recommendation, he said only, “If any in my entourage wish to wear a bulletproof vest, they need not accompany me on this visit. We are in the hands of God and we will be protected by him.” On another occasion, with the subtle irony that distinguished him, the pope offered this reply to the French cardinal Albert Decourtray, who had reminded him of the dire prophecy of Nostradamus concerning his journey to Lyons in 1986: “I assure you, Your Eminence, that no place is as dangerous as St. Peter’s Square!”

  Incidentally many who knew him were struck by the way his sense of humor never failed him. Once, after making a difficult decision, he commented, “We are in the hands of God … and it’s a good thing, because if we were in our hands, we would already be lost.” During an exchange of gifts, as he extended to a political leader a painting of St. Peter’s Square, he explained, “St. Peter’s Square. How shall I say? It’s where I work!” And when a journalist asked him if he felt he was in good shape for the upcoming 1998 voyage to Cuba, he responded, “Certainly I am older than I was in 1979, but so far Providence has preserved me. And then, if I want to know anything about my health and my infirmities, I can read about it in the press!”

  With reference to his travels in Latin America, certain critics accused him of employing a double standard, showing greater indulgence toward right-wing dictatorships than toward their left-wing counterparts. To this provocation John Paul II responded with an explanation based on his own personal experience: “A right-wing dictatorship is the dictatorship of a single man, and when that man dies, the regime dies with him. A left-wing dictatorship, in contrast, is guided by a system, and that is much more difficult to uproot.” Behind what some interpreted as a compromise with power, there was actually a desire to emphasize the spirit of reconciliation rather than opposition, and to somehow encourage a peaceful transition to democracy.

  Without doubt, however, there were those in his entourage who showed a greater inclination to the right than to the left. One such instance was the initial omission from the Ecumenical Commemoration of Witnesses to the Faith in the Twentieth Century held on May 7, 2000, in the Colosseum, of the name of Monsignor Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered in 1980 while he was celebrating Mass. When that absence was mentioned to him, Pope Wojtyła justified it by explaining that a collaborator had described Romero to him as a “banner of the left.” But then he examined the question more closely and ordered that Romero be included. For that matter, during the planning of the 1983 pastoral voyage to El Salvador, when someone suggested that he not visit the archbishop’s grave, he replied in no uncertain terms, “No, the pope must go, this was a bishop who was murdered in the very midst of his pastoral ministry, during the celebration of the Holy Mass.”

  The pontiff never shirked a difficult decision. In 1982, a visit to Great Britain was already planned, from May 28 to June 2, when war broke out with Argentina over the possession of the Malvinas, or Falkland Islands. It was suggested that he postpone the trip, but he decided instead to add another trip, ten days later, to Argentina—twenty-nine hours of travel and only a twenty-eight-hour stay—to send a signal that war could not hinder the pope from performing his ministry among the peoples of the world. He showed the same determination three years later on the occasion of a planned visit to the Netherlands. The Dutch church at the time was riven by bitter internal disputes, and the Secretariat of State recommended waiting for better times, but John Paul II retorted that the crisis made the trip, if anything, even more necessary, an opportunity to begin a concrete program of reconstruction.

  In particularly delicate situations, he did not hesitate to bypass the official institutional channels in favor of unconventional ones. This happened, for instance, when he expressed the intention to travel, in a single journey, to the three principal ethnic entities in the Balkans: the Croatian capital of Zagreb, the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, and the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Unbeknownst to the Secretariat of State, he asked a trusted bishop to establish secret contacts to determine the feasibility of the plan. It seemed to meet with the favor of the various political leaders—Franjo Tudjman, Radovan Karadžić, Alija Izetbegović, and Slobodan Milošević—but not that of Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church. When someone from the Secretariat of State expressed disappointment at this unusual method of doing business, the pope replied with serenity, “In the Secretariat of State there is a First Section, there is a Second Section, and there can also be another section.… There’s no reason to be shocked, we just need to get to the objective, and sometimes unofficial channels can get us there. In time, it will become clear.”

  John Paul II experienced with extraordinary sensitivity the pain of the victims of natural calamities, and never hesitated to travel to bring comfort in person to the stricken populations. He did this on November 25, 1980, when he chose to go to the earthquake-devastated Italian regions of Campania and Basilicata, and again six years later when he went to Colombia in July 1986 to visit the territory that had been engulfed a few months earlier by the eruption of the volcano of Nevado del Ruiz. He descended from the helicopter that had brought him to the sands of that immense tomb, fell to his knees, and prayed at length in silence, visibly moved. On his return, he reflected, “Humanity, crushed! But humanity cannot be crushed, because God was crushed in Christ. This is difficult to comprehend: God crushed! Not even Peter could understand it.”

  The mysterium iniquitatis (the “mystery of iniquity” that is mentioned in the second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians) constituted one of the chief points of reflection for the pontiff. John Paul II referred explicitly to it as he looked with sadness at the images of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. Even in those dramatic moments, however, his gaze of faith managed to win out over all emotions. As a privileged witness recounted, “In the very instant in which he had a presentiment of the apocalypse, on September 11, 2001, the pope turned to him who is the source of all grace, saying to him: ‘They are yours.’ It was an act of total trust. It was the most difficult act: it was as if he were reminding God himself of his duty. It was one of those moments of struggle with God in order to concede his grace. It belongs among the greatest moments in the history of spirituality. Like Moses. However, unlike Moses, John Paul II never chose to turn away from his own people.”

  A MATCHLESS MAGISTERIUM

  During an international voyage, a journalist asked Pope Wojtyła whether he felt he was too critical in hi
s speeches. His reply was, “I have thought about that sometimes, but I have always seen that the word of God is much more demanding, and my duty is to proclaim it at all times.”

  There can be no doubt that John Paul II fully performed this duty, not only by addressing the world with a stupefying quantity of speeches and documents, but also by conveying his message always in language that was clear and accessible to all.

  From the very first days of his pontificate, he began to reflect on the question of how he should present the customary catechesis during the general audience on Wednesdays. He had asked a number of specialists to help him gather material on specific themes, identifying the biblical passages and doctrinal sections from the Church Fathers that seemed best to explore. Then, however, he considered the best way to write the texts, to ensure that they were comprehensible to the greatest possible number of listeners. “I have learned how to write in poetic language, philosophical language, and homiletic language, but I’m not really sure what it means to speak in catechetic language. Yet I realize that the way in which the message is transmitted also determines the acceptance of the content,” he confided to his closest collaborators. With those who assisted him in composing the texts, he was very demanding: he always wanted to put his mark on the texts, both in terms of content and in terms of form.

  During a luncheon at Castel Gandolfo, he said, referring to himself, “I don’t know whether history will remember this pope; I doubt it. If so, I hope that he will be remembered as the pope of the family.” In fact, issues linked to marriage and the family were always at the heart of his pastoral concerns. When speaking with people who were divorced or remarried, he was never judgmental or accusatory. Quite the opposite. “What struck me deeply,” one authoritative witness recalled, “were his expressions of affection and love toward people who are struggling with a difficult family situation. I felt all the afflatus of forgiveness and reconciliation that so often may not be perceived in the same way on those public occasions when the Church and its teachings are expressed on these matters.”

  Unquestionably, his pastoral commitment to the laity was just as great. He considered the ecclesial movements authentic “signs of the times,” and he valued and appreciated all initiatives that were aimed at announcing the message of the Gospels, on the biblical principle that if something is created by men, it will die, but if it comes from God, we must not oppose it but rather comply with it, because it may well be a gift of Providence. In the pontiff’s view, however, it was appropriate to ensure that the new lay organizations not be confused with the religious structures, and on more than one occasion he opposed the request of those who wished to transform themselves into a secular institute under the umbrella of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (formerly Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes), suggesting instead that they try for recognition from the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

  Pope Wojtyła was absolutely certain that the laity was destined to acquire greater power and prominence within the Church. It was this awareness that impelled him to institute World Youth Days, beginning with the historic event in Rome in the square in front of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in March 1985. The United Nations had proclaimed that year the International Year of Youth, and John Paul II decided to celebrate with a massive gathering. A number of his colleagues doubted that the initiative could succeed, but the pope was confident: “We must make a beginning, for this is the future of the Church.” The success of the event was spectacular, and from that day forward, Palm Sunday was devoted to this mass gathering.

  The huge initiative in Rome also represented, in a certain sense, an opportunity to translate into reality another of John Paul II’s heartfelt aspirations: to make his diocese an example for the rest of the Catholic world. How could he exhort the other bishops to make their dioceses vibrant, he often said to the cardinal vicar and to the auxiliary bishops, if his own diocese did not lead the way? Playing on the Roma/amor palindrome in Latin, he summarized the ecclesial mandate with the emblematic words “La missione di Roma è amor” (The mission of Rome is love), thereby placing special emphasis on his role as the bishop of Rome and on the Roman tradition of Urbi et Orbi—urbi referring to Rome and orbi to the world at large, the two forming a single pastoral strategy. He had had a large map of the diocese of Rome hung on one of his bedroom walls, with all of the parishes identified. Many, clearly marked over the course of the years, had already been visited; many others, as he himself was forced to acknowledge from time to time when he stopped to examine the map, were still waiting.

  He also felt a great pastoral responsibility toward Italy. “As the bishop of this apostolic see and as the primate of Italy, I feel that I am a participant in the destiny, in the joys and the sufferings, of all the people of Italy,” he clearly stated. It was he who encouraged, in 1994, the initiative of the prayer for Italy, that the severe crisis afflicting the country might be serenely overcome. On January 6 of that year, he even sent a personal letter to the Italian bishops, with a serious reminder of the responsibilities that Catholics were obliged to assume in the face of the challenges of that historical moment.

  John Paul II was especially concerned about the secessionist divides that threatened Italy’s national unity. As an eyewitness from that period recalled, “I still remember clearly the pope’s concern during the summer of 1996, when the Northern League staged a gathering at the source of the Po River. He perceived their political gesture as a crime against Italian unity, and he asked me why the Italian carabinieri did not intervene, and why the president of the Italian Republic was doing nothing. He was well aware what a precious resource Italy constituted for the Holy See and for the pope. This conviction was a major factor as well in his decision to add to the responsibilities of the cardinal vicar of Rome the role of president of the Italian bishops’ conference”

  IN DIALOGUE WITH THE OTHER FAITHS

  A man of dialogue and engagement, John Paul II did not hestitate to work to orient his papacy toward the achievement of an ambitious ecumenical project. That undertaking had one of its most intensely emblematic moments in the interreligious meeting that took place in Assisi on October 27, 1986, the World Day of Prayer for Peace.

  Knowing full well that the idea could lead to mixed messages and missed signals, the pope reflected at length before announcing it publicly. Then, encouraged by the support of then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who had expressed a positive opinion at lunch, he decided to announce the event personally during the general audience of October 22, explaining that the World Day of Prayer for Peace would be an opportunity “to gather together and pray … side by side, to implore God to give the gift that all humanity now needs more than any other in order to survive: peace.”

  While remaining firmly convinced that Jesus Christ was the sole Savior of the world, John Paul II still held in his heart the possibility of a dialogue with other religious faiths in which, in accordance with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, he encountered the presence of “rays of the one truth.” Indeed, according to one witness, “the fruit of Assisi was that, instead of hostility and enmity between religions, the principle of a dialogue was introduced.” For this reason as well, the pontiff, despite the disagreement of some cardinals who saw the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi as a one-time thing, insisted that the experience be reprised each year, in a different town in Europe or the Mediterranean basin, and made the community of Sant’Egidio responsible for the event.

  Wojtyła evinced an attitude of remarkable openness and flexibility toward the Islamic world, and consistently reiterated this position. While speaking with a major political figure about the idea of Turkey entering the European Union, he observed, “If we had to judge from history, we might not expect much good to come of this, but we must look to the future and the need to prevent the triumph of selfishness and fanaticism of religious origin.”

  This enlightened propensity for dialogue received it
s emblematic seal on May 14, 1999, when Raphael I Bidawid, the Iraqi Chaldean patriarch, was received in the Vatican, accompanied by a number of civil and religious authorities from Iraq. At the end of the audience, some Muslim members of the delegation presented a copy of the Koran as a gift to the pontiff. He bowed and kissed the book in a sign of respect.

  Interpreting this extraordinary gesture as a doctrinal concession on the part of the pontiff, many attacked him with malicious criticisms and insinuations. In truth, that kiss was nothing more than an instrument through which a man of faith expressed his profound charity toward the people and culture that acknowledge Abraham as the common father of all those who believe in one God. In its directness and simplicity, moreover, that gesture appealed to the sensibilities of his interlocutors, communicating an implicit yet unequivocal appeal for reciprocity.

  This was not the only time that an action intended by the pontiff to revitalize relations with another confession was clearly misinterpreted. On June 29, 1995, the pope welcomed to St. Peter’s Basilica the patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and recited with him the Creed in its Constantinopolitan form, thereby limiting himself to stating that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father” without the addition of “and from the Son” (Filioque). It is an exquisitely theological topic, but for centuries it has divided the Eastern and Western churches.