In Prague, Father Miloslav Vlk, a hard-pressed underground priest, got the news from friends the night of October 16. Since his ordination in June 1968, during the last weeks of Alexander Dubček’s Prague Spring, Father Vlk had rarely been able to practice his ministry publicly. The state had suspended his license to work out of a church or to celebrate the sacraments in public. To avoid arrest as a vagrant, Vlk, like many other Czechoslovak priests, had taken a menial job, in his case, as a window washer. So he washed windows by day and conducted a clandestine ministry in homes at night. Wojtyła’s election was, for Vlk, a sign of “living hope.” He was a fellow Slav who knew the communists’ “lies and tactics” and would know what to do to help.73
Archbishop Francis Arinze of Onitsha, a forty-five-year-old Nigerian, was in Belfast, Northern Ireland, speaking on behalf of the Irish Missionary Union. The parish priests with whom he was staying didn’t know who Wojtyła was. Arinze had met him at the Synod of Bishops and described him to his Irish hosts as “a happy person, a joyful man, who spoke with clarity and courage.” “Now,” the African told the Irishmen, “we are going to have a bit of clarity in the Church. We are going to know where we stand, clearly, without being aggressive—but clear.” John Paul II, Arinze was convinced, would put a “positive” face on Catholicism again.74
World press reaction to Wojtyła’s election focused, understandably enough, on the novelty of a non-Italian Pope. John Paul II’s Polishness was of intense interest to the media, and swarms of reporters descended on Kraków and Wadowice, looking for the inside story on this pope who had come from such an exotic cultural background and whose pre-papal life was so dissimilar to that of his predecessors. Despite widespread misreporting of Wojtyła’s position vis-à-vis the Polish regime (i.e., that he was a “moderate,” in contrast to Wyszyński the “hard-liner”), some commentators began to intuit that the election of a Slavic Pope, a Pole, might have unexpected consequences in the Cold War. The KGB agreed, and ordered up a special study on how Wojtyła had been elected and what his papacy portended.
It was an exciting, heady time, those days immediately following the appearance of un Polacco on the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square. The discomfort of the last years of Paul VI and the shock of John Paul I’s death were quickly dissipated. Enthusiasm about the future was in the air. Millions around the world found it deeply moving that the Polish Church, which had suffered so long and had fought so hard against overwhelming odds, had now been rewarded.
The most penetrating comment came from André Frossard, a French journalist who had converted to Catholicism from the fashionable atheism of the intellectual class. Frossard knew the crisis of humanism from the inside and, as an adult, had struggled out of the slough of skeptical cynicism and found liberation in faith. He believed that humanity was going through “a remarkably fluid period of history, one devoid of any solid moral or rational base, a time of collapsing values and ideologies in which he who wishes to go forward has only one choice left…to walk on the water.”75
Now, on seeing the new Pope and sensing in him the power of a witness, André Frossard wired back to his Parisian newspaper: “This is not a Pope from Poland; this is a Pope from Galilee.”
“Be Not Afraid!”
A Pope for the World
OCTOBER 22, 1978
Pope John Paul II solemnly inaugurates his ministry as universal pastor of the Church.
OCTOBER 29, 1978
John Paul visits the Marian shrine at Mentorella.
OCTOBER 1978
The KGB and the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party commission analyses of Karol Wojtyła’s election as pope.
NOVEMBER 1978
The Lithuanian Catholic Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights is formed.
NOVEMBER 5, 1978
John Paul visits the shrines of Italy’s patron saints, Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena.
NOVEMBER 12, 1978
Pope John Paul II takes possession of his Roman cathedral, the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
NOVEMBER 20, 1978
John Paul meets with Cardinal Iosyf Slipyi, head of the persecuted Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.
DECEMBER 3, 1978
John Paul II makes his first Roman parish visitation.
DECEMBER 11, 1978
John Paul urges religious freedom for all on the thirtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
DECEMBER 23, 1978
John Paul II sends Cardinal Antonio Samorè to mediate the Beagle Channel border dispute between Argentina and Chile.
DECEMBER 29, 1978
John Paul appoints Franciszek Macharski his successor as Archbishop of Kraków, ordaining him a bishop on January 6, 1979.
JANUARY 28, 1979
John Paul II addresses the third general conference of Latin American bishops in Puebla, Mexico.
FEBRUARY 25, 1979
John Paul presides at the wedding of a Roman street-cleaner’s daughter.
MARCH 4, 1979
Redemptor Hominis, John Paul’s inaugural encyclical.
Papal coronations once began with the new pontiff enthroned on the sedia gestatoria, carried above throngs of Romans and pilgrims. The solemn inauguration of the papal ministry of Pope John Paul II, 264th Bishop of Rome, began on October 22, 1978, with the new Pope kneeling in prayer at the tomb of the apostle beneath the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Around the dome’s interior, in letters six feet high, is the Latin inscription, Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum [You are Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my Church and I shall give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16.18)]. Karol Wojtyła finished his prayer at the tomb of the Galilean fisherman and processed out to the great square in front of the basilica, preceded by 112 cardinals. There, in the course of a simplified but still splendid ritual, he would explain just what Christ’s words to Peter meant in the last quarter of the last century of the second millennium of Christian history.
At the beginning of the rite, Cardinal Pericle Felici placed the pallium—a simple yoke of white lamb’s wool, decorated with six black crosses and worn by metropolitan archbishops as a sign of their service and their authority—over the shoulders of John Paul II, formally investing him with the symbol of the power he had received six days before, from the moment he had said, “I accept,” in the Sistine Chapel. The College of Cardinals, led by its dean, Carlo Confalonieri, lined up in single file so that each cardinal could pledge fidelity to the new Pope. After the dean had genuflected before the seated Pope and made his obedience, precedent was broken again. For the second cardinal in line was not the next-most senior member of the College, but the Primate of Poland, Stefan Wyszyński. He had just begun his genuflection when John Paul II rose from his throne, bent down, seized the old man, and locked him in a long embrace.
After the cardinals’ obedience, the inauguration Mass continued. The first reading, in English, was taken from the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah and described Jerusalem’s joy at its redemption by the Lord. The second reading, in Polish, was from 1 Peter. In it, the governors of the Church were admonished to lead by example and by love. The Gospel was from John 21. As a sign of the Church’s universality, Christ’s exhortation to Peter to “feed my sheep” was proclaimed in both Latin and Greek.
At the conclusion of the Gospel, John Paul II—clad in white and gold vestments and wearing a white miter—sat on a portable throne facing a crowd of perhaps 300,000, which had spilled out of St. Peter’s Square down the Via della Conciliazione. Red and white gladioli, Poland’s national colors, surrounded the altar. To his right were some 300 bishops; to his left, 800 dignitaries from around the globe, representatives of the world of power. With his ingrained sense of timing, he looked out over the vast crowd, above which Polish flags were being rhythmically waved back and forth. An international television and radio audience also waited—including tens of mil
lions of his countrymen, witnessing the first Mass in history on Polish state television. An unaccustomed quiet fell over the huge congregation. What would this unexpected Pope say?
He began with an act of faith, in the words of the man at whose tomb he had prayed, a little more than an hour before:
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16.16).
Anyone assuming the Office of Peter in the Church, John Paul said, had to begin this way. Peter’s confession of faith on the road to Caesarea Philippi was born of “deeply lived and experienced conviction,” but it was not an act of his will alone. Faith was a gift, and Christ had called Peter blessed “because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16.17). Peter’s successor could only begin his own Petrine service “on this day and in this place [with] these same words: You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Salvation history, the new Pope proposed, did not run parallel with human history. Salvation history was human history read in its true depth, against the horizon of its true destiny. Since the Church was immersed in history as a witness to that truth, it was important to understand that Peter’s confession was not just about Peter and Jesus. It was the starting point of the Church, and in Peter’s act of faith, the history of salvation took on a new, “ecclesial dimension.” The story of the Church, a pilgrim in history, was humanity’s story, rightly understood.
Christ had brought humanity close to “the mystery of the living God.” No one else could do this but God’s own Son, and he had done it in a way that we could recognize, as one like us. Christ, the Son of the living God, had not only told us about his Father, he had told us “the ultimate and definitive truth” about ourselves. Jesus Christ, John Paul proclaimed, is the truth about the human condition. That was what the Church must tell the world, believers and seekers, skeptics and doubters. And so he had a request to make: “Please, listen once again….”
To bear witness to the truth about God and about humanity, Peter had been led to Rome. “Perhaps,” John Paul said, “the fisherman of Galilee did not want to come here. Perhaps he would have preferred to stay there, on the shores of the lake of Genesareth, with his boat and his nets.” But he was obedient, and he came, and he stayed, obedient to the point of martyrdom, the fullness of Christian witness. Now a new Bishop of Rome had come to the city. Perhaps he, too, would have preferred to remain in another place. Yet he had come to Rome, “full of trepidation, conscious of his unworthiness,” to make the witness required of him. He had come to Peter’s city prepared to spend out his life in service to the truth that human beings, redeemed in Christ, were so much greater than they imagined.
This new Bishop of Rome was “a son of Poland.” Yet “from this moment he, too, becomes a Roman. Yes—a Roman.” And he was a Roman not only by office, but because he had been, in a sense, a Roman all along. He was “the son of a nation…which has always remained faithful to this See of Rome.” The world might find it odd that a Pole was now Bishop of Rome. The Church should not.
This new Bishop of Rome would not be crowned with the triregnum, the papal tiara. Rightly or wrongly, John Paul noted, the tiara had come to be considered a symbol of the Pope’s temporal power. Today, after the Second Vatican Council, the Church was not a Church of power, but a Church of evangelical witness. The tiara could express something else, though: the threefold office of Christ as priest, prophet, and king, which Christ had bestowed on the people of the Church, the Body of Christ in time and history. That was what the papacy, and indeed all authority in the Church, was for: “service, service with a single purpose—to ensure that all the People of God share in the threefold mission of Christ and always remain under the power of the Lord.” “The mystery of the cross and resurrection” was the only power the Church possessed and the only power the Church should want: “the absolute and yet sweet and gentle power of the Lord,” which “responds to the whole depths of the human person, to his loftiest aspirations of intellect, heart, and will.” The language of charity and truth, not the language of force, was the Church’s language.
This new Bishop of Rome intended to be a servant. And so, before the eyes of the world, John Paul II prayed, “Christ, make me become and remain the servant of your unique power, the servant of your sweet power, the servant of your power that knows no eventide. Make me a servant. Indeed, the servant of your servants.”
And the message of this “servant of the servants of God” was the call of Christ to his disciples: Be not afraid!
Be not afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ’s power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind.
Be not afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization, and development.
Be not afraid. Christ knows “what is in man.” He alone knows it.
The world, he reflected, was afraid of itself and of its future. To all those who were afraid, to all those caught in the great loneliness of the modern world, “I ask you…I beg you, let Christ speak to [you]. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life.”
The new Bishop of Rome thanked those who had come to share this day—the representatives of the nations, the hierarchy of the Church, priests and religious, pilgrims in their tens of thousands, all those listening or watching on radio and television. He added greetings in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian. The most heartfelt were those he spoke in Polish, citing the great Mickiewicz, poet laureate of Polish freedom:
My dear fellow-countrymen…Everything I could say would fade into insignificance compared with what my heart feels, and your hearts feel, at this moment. So let us leave aside words. Let there remain just great silence before God, the silence that becomes prayer. I ask you: be with me at Jasna Góra and everywhere. Do not cease to be with the Pope who prays with the words of the poet, “Mother of God, you who defend bright Częstochowa and shine at Ostrabrama….”
He appealed first to his fellow Catholics, then to all Christians, for prayer. Finally, John Paul turned again to the world. The world might think that the Pope was only for the Church. The Pope could not think of himself that way. And so he appealed to all humanity, “Pray for me. Help me to be able to serve you. Amen.”
When the three-hour inaugural Mass ended, about 1 P.M., John Paul II didn’t go directly back into the basilica. In another break with precedent, he walked alone toward the enormous throng in the square. He greeted and blessed a group of handicapped people who had been brought to the Mass in wheelchairs. A small boy broke through the barriers to give him flowers, and an officious Italian prelate tried to shoo him away. John Paul II grabbed the boy and hugged him. Although he couldn’t embrace the whole crowd, he could salute them. So he took the great silver papal crosier in both hands and shook it at the cheering throng, as if it were a sword of the spirit wrenched free of the stone in which it had been imprisoned.
When he finally returned to the papal apartment, the cheers continued and he came to the window several times to wave back. They only dispersed when John Paul II sent them home with a laugh: “It’s time for everyone to eat lunch,” he said, “even the Pope.”1
DETERMINED TO LEAD
The papacy is unlike any other office in the world, and not simply because of its institutional longevity. The pope is called the “Supreme Pontiff,” a contraction of the Latin pontifex, “bridge builder.” A bridge goes from somewhere to somewhere. What does the Supreme Pontiff bridge? He is a bridge between God and humanity; between the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian Churches and ecclesial communities; between the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism; between the Roman Catholic Church and other world religions; between the Roman Catholic Church and the worlds of political, economic, and cultural power; between the center of the Church’s unity and the college of bis
hops dispersed in local Churches throughout the world. As the custodian of an authoritative teaching tradition, the pope is also, according to Catholic theology, a “bridge” between historical humanity and the truth about its origin, nature, and destiny.
To be pope is to take on a task that is, by precise theological definition, impossible. Like every other office in the Church, the papacy exists for the sake of holiness. The office, though, is a creature of time and space, and holiness is eternal. No one, not even a pope who is a saint, can fully satisfy the office’s demands. Yet the office, according to the Church’s faith, is of the will of God, and the office cannot fail, although the officeholder will always fall short of the mark. That distinction between the office and the man who holds it is a consolation to any pope. According to one distinguished theologian, it is also “unutterably terrible.” The office reflects the unity of person and mission in Jesus Christ, of whom the pope is vicar. Every pope, the saints as well as the scoundrels, “stands at an utterly tragic place,” because he cannot be fully what the office demands. If he tries to be that, he arrogantly makes himself the equal of the Lord. If he consoles himself too easily with the thought that he must, necessarily, fail, he betrays the demand that the office makes of him, the demand of radical love. The Office of Peter always reflects Christ’s words to Peter—that, because of the depth of his love, he will be led where he does not want to go (see John 21.18).2
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