The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  Kasper gave the Kazanskaya to Aleksy in an August 28 ceremony at the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Dormition (the Orthodox term for what Catholicism calls the Assumption) and delivered a formal message from the Pope, in which John Paul wrote that “during the long years of her pilgrimage the Mother of God in her sacred icon … has gathered about her the Orthodox faithful and their Catholic brethren from other parts of the world.”132 Thus the Kazanskaya had become a symbol of the Christian unity that Russian Orthodoxy had so bitterly resisted within Russia since 1991. Cardinal Kasper’s remarks to Aleksy underscored the Pope’s affection for those who had deemed him an aggressor, and asked that Rome and Moscow work together in rebuilding the Christian foundations of European civilization:

  I would like to end with the words that Pope John Paul II spoke at the Vatican last Wednesday, solemnly bidding farewell to this icon: “May the ancient image of the Mother of God tell His Holiness Aleksy II and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Successor of Peter’s affection for them and for all the faithful entrusted to their care. May it speak of his esteem for the great spiritual tradition of which the Holy Russian Church is custodian. May it speak of the desire and firm determination of the Pope of Rome to progress with them on the journey of reciprocal knowledge and reconciliation, to hasten the day of that full unity of believers for which the Lord Jesus ardently prayed.…”

  Your Holiness, I return the Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan to your hands. May the Most Holy Mother of God be the mother of her people and their refuge in all danger and need; may she be the mother of Europe and of all humanity; may she be the mother of peace in the world; the mother of the church and of full unity between East and West; may she be our common mother, our advocate, our helper, and sustain us on our pilgrimage towards a future that we hope will be reconciled and peaceful. Holy Mary, intercede for us!133

  Joaquín Navarro-Valls described the return of the Kazanskaya as a historic moment that marked a “new beginning,” and noted that the Kasper delegation had been given a “very cordial welcome” in Moscow.134 The hospitality was certainly appreciated; the further truth of the matter was that all honor in the affair of the Kazanskaya and her return to Russia belonged to John Paul II. He had borne abuse and bitter criticism from Russian churchmen whose own performance under communism had been less than honorable; he had never once raised the point of comparison between their behavior and his, when both had been confronted by the greatest persecutor of Christians in history. He had asked only that he be allowed to provide for the pastoral care of Catholics in Russia, as the Moscow Patriarchate was welcome to provide pastoral care for its people in historically Catholic lands—and had been deemed an aggressive “proselytizer” for doing so. His efforts throughout the pontificate to build a bridge to Orthodoxy’s largest Church had run aground on ancient Russian animosities toward Poles and on the Patriarchate of Moscow’s theologically dubious identification of Russian Orthodoxy with Russian ethnicity and Russian nationalism. The return of the Kazanskaya was the last, dramatic clarification of who had behaved in a manner befitting a Christian in these controversies, and who had not.

  On October 3, John Paul II celebrated what would turn out to be his final beatification ceremony in St. Peter’s Square; among the five new beati were Anne Catherine Emmerick, a German stigmatic and mystic, and the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, Karl (or Charles) of Austria, who died in exile on Madeira in 1922 and whom John Paul had once called (when greeting his widow, Zita) “my father’s sovereign.” The day before the beatification Mass, the Pope received the Prix du Courage Politique from the French journal Politique Internationale in cooperation with the Foreign Policy Association of the Sorbonne and the French Catholic television channel, KTO. John Paul used the occasion to plead for an end to the “trading in human lives” that was displayed in hostage taking, especially in Iraq.

  The principal papal document of the last half of 2004 was the apostolic letter Mane Nobiscum Domine [Stay with Us, Lord], which John Paul II signed on October 7 to reflect on a Year of the Eucharist that would be celebrated between October 2004 and October 2005. The title was beyond poignant, in that the Gospel story of the two disciples who asked the Risen Christ to “stay with us” on the road to Emmaus that first Easter did so because “it is toward evening and the day is now far spent” (Luke 24.29)—as it surely was for Karol Wojtyła. The Year of the Eucharist was to have two bookends: an October 2004 International Eucharistic Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, and a Synod of Bishops on “The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church,” which would be held in October 2005. The Pope addressed the Eucharistic Congress via a live television hookup from the high altar of St. Peter’s on Sunday, October 17, concluding with a moving and manifestly personal prayer:

  Mane nobiscum, Domine! Like the two disciples in the Gospel, we implore you, Lord Jesus, stay with us!

  Divine Wayfarer, expert in our ways and reader of our hearts, do not leave us prisoners in the evening shadows.

  Sustain us in our weariness, forgive ours sins, and direct our steps on the path of goodness. Bless the children, the young people, the elderly, families, and the sick in particular.…

  In the Eucharist, you made yourself the “medicine of immortality”: give us the taste for a full life that will help us journey on as trusting and joyful pilgrims on this earth, our gaze fixed on the goal of life without end.

  Stay with us, Lord! Stay with us! Amen.135

  Mane Nobiscum Domine ended with a plea to the world Church to respond in solidarity to “the many forms of poverty present in our world”: hunger, disease, loneliness, unemployment, the struggles of immigrants. Christian concern for those in need had, from biblical times on, been a distinguishing hallmark of the followers of Christ; “this will be the criterion,” John Paul wrote, “by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebrations is judged.”136

  The Pope was well enough to enjoy company at lunch and dinner, taking the trouble to write Christmas greetings by hand, if laboriously, to the family of a guest who came to see him shortly before the holiday. Presented with a book of photographs of U.S. national parks as a Christmas gift, John Paul immediately recognized Rocky Mountain National Park outside Denver, which he had visited during World Youth Day-1993, and couldn’t resist a fraternal jibe at the American prelates who had warned that the World Youth Day format would never work in the United States: “Denver!” he said. “The bishops said it couldn’t be done. I proved them wrong!”137

  Throughout 2004, John Paul II’s determination to carry on with his mission despite increasing incapacity, and in a condition the world often regarded as embarrassing, demonstrated in action what he had taught so firmly throughout his life: there are no disposable human beings. There was nothing of ego, vanity, or stubbornness in his commitment to see his pontificate through to his death. This was the way of discipleship, and a pope was, before all else, a Christian disciple. He enjoyed Christmas, as he always did, singing Polish Christmas carols over the phone with his old Środowisko kayaking companions, who had gathered around a phone in Kraków for this annual rite. Within a few weeks, however, the joyful mysteries of the Christmas season would give way to the sorrowful mysteries, as Karol Wojtyła set out on the final pathway of his disciple’s life—the way of the cross.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Last Encyclical

  January–April 2005

  February 1, 2005 Suffering from breathing difficulties, Pope John Paul II is taken to the Policlinico Gemelli.

  February 7, 2005 Memory and Identity, John Paul II’s last book, is published.

  February 9, 2005 John Paul celebrates Ash Wednesday Mass in the Gemelli.

  February 10, 2005 John Paul II returns to the Vatican from the Gemelli through crowds of cheering Romans.

  February 24, 2005 John Paul is taken back to the Gemelli and receives a tracheotomy.

  March 13, 2005 John Paul II returns to the Vatican.

  March 20, 2005 U
nable to speak, the Pope blesses the Palm Sunday congregation in St. Peter’s Square.

  March 25, 2005 John Paul participates in the Via Crucis at the Roman Colosseum through a television in the chapel of the papal apartment.

  March 27, 2005 John Paul II attempts to speak to Easter crowds in St. Peter’s Square but manages only a silent blessing.

  March 31, 2005 John Paul falls into septic shock.

  April 1, 2005 John Paul concelebrates Mass for the last time and receives visitors.

  April 2, 2005 Pope John Paul II dies at 9:37 P.M.

  April 8, 2005 Pope John Paul II is interred in the Vatican grottos.

  The Stations of the Cross played an important role in Karol Wojtyła’s spiritual life for more than seventy-five years. As a boy, he had seen Christ’s passion dramatically reenacted at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, the Holy Land shrine near his hometown of Wadowice, shortly after his mother’s death. As a priest and bishop, he prayed the fourteen stations every Friday; during Lent, he prayed them every day. As pope, he had a set of ceramic stations installed in the roof garden atop the Apostolic Palace so that he could pray outdoors, in privacy, when the weather was clement. And, of course, he had led the annual Via Crucis at the Roman Colosseum on the evening of Good Friday for a quarter century.

  On Good Friday 2005, his health rapidly failing, Pope John Paul II once again led the Church through its walk with Christ from the tribunal of Pontius Pilate to Calvary, the cross, and the tomb—albeit at a distance and in a different way.

  The ceremony at the Colosseum was led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals, who had written the meditations for each station at the Pope’s request. Ratzinger’s brief reflections, insightful and eloquent, linked the Via Crucis to the Year of the Eucharist the Catholic Church was celebrating throughout the world; they would later be published in booklet form. Yet what struck the Church and the world most powerfully as Good Friday drew to a close on the night of March 25, 2005, was the witness of the man who was not there: John Paul II.

  He could barely whisper. But as Cardinal Ratzinger led the solemn procession through the ruins of antiquity, John Paul II prayed the Via Crucis while watching the ceremony at the Colosseum on a television set that had been placed in the chapel of the papal apartment. A television camera at the door of the chapel showed the world John Paul’s prayer. He was seated, and grasped in his arms a large crucifix, as he prayed through the fourteen stations with the congregation near the Roman Forum. Those watching at the Colosseum and on television could see only John Paul’s back; his face was never shown. Contrary to press speculations, however, he was not hiding his pain or the ravages of weeks of illness. Rather, he was doing what he had always done, which was not to say, “Look at me,” but rather, “Look to Christ.”

  The last two months of the life of Pope John Paul II were in some respects the most dramatic in a life already replete with drama. As papal chief of staff Leonardo Sandri (who became the Pope’s voice to the Church and the world when John Paul’s own voice failed) put it, those last two months were also an eloquent summary of the years of his pontificate since the Great Jubilee of 2000: “His sense of his own weakness paralleled his sense of the power of God at work in him and in the Church. The Cross was a means of joy in his last years, even amidst deep frustration. His silences, punctuated by those vigilant and expressive eyes, were times of meditation.”1

  Pope John Paul II died a priest’s death and his dying was his last great teaching moment. His suffering and the manner of his dying led the Church and the world, as Catholic priests must, into a deeper experience of the mystery of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. The priest and bishop who could sometimes be found prostrate on the floor of a chapel, his arms extended in imitation of the crucified Christ, died as he had lived—embracing Christ crucified—in the sure conviction that death was the threshold of eternal life. These were things he had taught for decades. His last and perhaps most powerful lesson was the lesson he taught with his silent suffering and his holy death—his last encyclical.

  A CHEERFUL MAN

  By January 2005, Joaquín Navarro-Valls had been the press spokesman of the Holy See for twenty years, a friend and confidant of the Pope who occasionally used him on informal diplomatic missions. Some measure of John Paul’s confidence in the Spaniard who had begun his professional life as a psychiatrist before switching to journalism can be found in the Pope’s response to Navarro on the three occasions when the papal portavoce asked to be relieved of his duties. Each time, John Paul would say to those in the meeting, “This is a very important question Dr. Navarro has put on the table. We must reflect on it carefully. Come back in five years and tell me what you think.”2

  Navarro experienced the last years of John Paul II, and believed the Pope experienced them, as a time of “great peace.” There were frustrations, to be sure; there were questions, as always; there was the dark night of the summer of 2003. But having completed the Great Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II was a man fundamentally at peace—un’uomo allegro, Navarro said, a cheerful man. This was not the cheerfulness of a child, the spokesman noted. It was the cheerfulness or serenity that came from a conscious Christian decision to live that way: a decision rooted in the conviction that the end of the story, for John Paul himself and for the world, is a happy one, “because of the infinite mercy of God.” That was why the humor and the laughter remained intact until the end, even when the laughter could not be expressed physically.

  John Paul’s serenity at the end of his life also grew from the intersection of his philosophical realism and his faith, Navarro believed. Like others trapped in a body that would no longer obey them, the Pope might have thought, “It would be nice if I weren’t sick, if I could move more easily.” But that was not his situation, and it was false to pretend or wish otherwise. Therefore what seems to be an obstacle or a stumbling block must in fact, and in the light of faith, be an opportunity—to live out what he had taught the Church in Novo Millennio Ineunte, that the completion of the Great Jubilee was both end and beginning. In the light of that conviction, coupled with his determination to promote cultures that cherished life under all circumstances, the Pope believed his physical deterioration should not be hidden. Some found it embarrassing when John Paul drooled a bit in public because of his inability to control his facial muscles; the Pope, for his part, was determined to live his mission to the end, even at the cost of embarrassment. Thus when, in the last years, the Vatican television producers asked Navarro whether they should arrange the camera angles to avoid showing John Paul’s trembling hand, Navarro, knowing the Pope’s mind, said they should simply use their best professional judgment and not worry if the world saw the effects of John Paul’s Parkinson’s disease.3

  Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger’s experience of the last years of John Paul II was similar to Navarro’s. As he understood the Pope’s mind, the question never was “Do I stay or do I go?” The Nunc dimittis of the Great Jubilee, as written in John Paul’s Testament, was a thanksgiving, not a request for a leave of absence and not a valedictory. No, the question for John Paul, Lustiger believed, was “How do I fulfill God’s will?” As John Paul knew, the disciple could not ask for anything else than to share the Master’s passion—and in doing so, to summon from the world’s sometimes cold heart the warmth of compassion for all those who suffer. John Paul II had lived “at the heart of humanity’s problems” for a quarter century, Lustiger recalled—longer than any other major figure of his time. The way in which he bore that burden through his own pain and fatigue, the cardinal suggested, revealed a “deeper way” to relate to the world’s pain than was possible in the days of John Paul Superstar, important as the great events of that part of his pontificate had been. And since no one in the world was immune from suffering, the serenity with which he bore his share of the common human lot was, for the world, a “great testimony to the universal relevance of Christ’s message.” For the Church, it was yet another invitation to
embrace the “everyday sanctity” that had been the key to John Paul II’s pastoral program.4

  He stayed close to his friends as long as possible, continuing the pastoral strategy of accompaniment he had pioneered as a young university chaplain in Kraków. His Środowisko—the network of lay friends that had begun forming in 1948 at St. Florian’s—remained a significant part of his life. In August 2000, amidst all the other activity of the holy year, three generations of Środowisko came to Castel Gandolfo for a visit. The children of Father Wojtyła’s original young charges brought a kayak into the papal villa’s courtyard, and thus the reunion was dubbed “Dry Kayaks at Castel Gandolfo.” The original plan was to meet for a half hour. In the event, the reunion lasted three hours. Stanisław Dziwisz tried to get the Pope to bed, but when Danuta Rybicka asked the Pope, “Whom would you like to meet, Wujek?” John Paul replied, “All of them.” Dziwisz said, “But Holy Father, they need to sleep”; the Pope waved him away. So everyone received a personal greeting and at the end they sang the song that had once closed each day on a kayaking trip. Dziwisz then said, “Thank you, and good night.” At which point John Paul replied, “I have to say good night to everyone”—and did so, with more than one hundred people. As Mrs. Rybicka remembered, when the Pope finally shuffled off into the villa, the third generation of Środowisko, the small grandchildren of the original hikers and kayakers, followed him in a straggly line, “like the Good Shepherd and the sheep.” Four years later, John Paul was still saying, “That was beautiful,” while the director of Castel Gandolfo told the Poles that he’d never seen anything like it in his decades of service at the papal summer residence.