The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  78. Ibid., 98–99.

  79. Ibid., 116.

  80. Ibid., 121.

  81. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 3, 2.

  82. Ibid., 18.

  83. See ibid., 26.

  For a more thorough discussion of Salvifici Doloris, see George Weigel, The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 112–26.

  84. Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, 2nd ed., trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P., Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), pp. 217–18.

  85. Author’s conversation with Archbishop Celestino Migliore, May 21, 2003.

  86. See John L. Allen, Jr., “The Word from Rome,” National Catholic Reporter, January 2, 2004.

  The papaya story was floated in the Times of London on March 13, 2003, by its Rome correspondent, Richard Owen—throughout the pontificate, a notably unreliable source of serious information and analysis. [See Richard Owen, “Papaya Gives the Pope Some Extra Zest,” The Times, March 13, 2003.]

  87. John Paul II, Homily for the XXV Anniversary of the Pontificate, 16 October 2003 [emphasis in original].

  88. Memorandum to the author from Sister Mary Nirmala, M.C., June 27, 2008.

  In this same memorandum, Sister Nirmala recounted a remarkable story about Mother Teresa and John Paul II:

  I remember meeting Holy Father around 10th Sept. 1989, after Mass in his private chapel in the Vatican. I had just arrived from Calcutta where Mother was very sick in the hospital. I was praying desperately to Jesus and Our Lady for Mother’s recovery. On the 8th Sept., the birthday of Our Lady, I was assured by Jesus during Holy Communion in the church of Mt. St. Mary of Bandra in Bombay that Our Lady will do everything possible to make Mother alright. Then on the 9th Sept. at St. Peter’s Basilica I was telling St. Peter what Jesus had assured me, but in case by mistake Mother would come to the gate of heaven, please to send her back to earth to continue working for the Church, as he had done at the beginning of our Society when in her delirium [from another illness] Mother found herself at the gate of heaven, telling her that there were no slums in heaven. And I felt strongly that St. Peter would hear my prayer.

  Now that I was right in front of the Holy Father who was the present Peter, I told Holy Father that Mother was sick. I asked for his prayer for Mother and also asked him to tell Mother not to go to heaven yet, but continue working for the Church on earth. For I knew that Mother would obey Holy Father.

  Around 14th or 15th Sept. when I was in New York I got the news that Mother’s condition had become worse and it was a question of life and death.

  Soon after I was told that Holy Father was informed and Holy Father had sent [a] message to Mother assuring her of his prayer for her recovery and telling her that the Church and the world needed her witness.

  … Mother responded to his message and recovered and lived for eight years more fighting with a few more acute medical conditions. [Ibid.]

  89. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 30, 1997.

  90. John Paul II, Homily for the Beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 19 October 2003 [emphases in original].

  The master of pontifical liturgical ceremonies, Bishop Piero Marini, inserted into the beatification liturgy a ritual of Hindu origin known as ārati, featuring burning materials soaked in ghee, during which a song of praise to God was sung in Tamil. The appearance of what seemed to be smudge pots at a papal liturgy in Rome was a puzzlement to many.

  91. Nagy had been the chaplain to university scientists in Kraków for many years. His nomination as cardinal, John Paul later wrote, was in part “a way of showing my appreciation for Polish science.” [John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way! (New York: Warner Books, 2004), p. 88.]

  Špidlík was an expert in Eastern Christianity who had preached the papal Lenten retreat in 1995 and had been responsible for conceiving one of John Paul II’s most dramatic artistic innovations in the Vatican, the redecoration of the Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Apostolic Palace with frescoes and mosaics in a modern Byzantine style. The funds for the redecoration came from the purse given John Paul by the College of Cardinals in 1996 on the golden jubilee of his priestly ordination. The redecorated chapel, striking in itself but even more so in its location within a building dominated by Renaissance art, was rededicated by John Paul II on November 14, 1999. See La Capella “Redemptoris Mater” del Papa Giovanni Paolo II (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1999); and Sandro Magister, “Spidlik and Caffarra, an Odd Couple Sprung from the Pope’s Mind,” Chiesa, May 1, 2004.

  92. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 15, 2003.

  93. Author’s conversation with Archbishop James M. Harvey, December 15, 2003.

  94. David Brooks, “Bigger Than the Nobel,” New York Times, October 11, 2003.

  95. See Sandro Magister, “Vatican Intrigues: ‘The Passion,’ the Pope, and the Phantom Review,” Chiesa, February 6, 2004.

  96. “Break Dancers Perform for the Pope,” The Age (online edition), January 26, 2004; “Pope Greets Dance Crew at Holy Mass-ive,” Daily Mirror, January 27, 2004.

  97. “Pope’s Surprise Visit to Contemplative Nuns at Vatican: Carmelites Were Having Dinner When Doorbell Rang,” ZENIT News Service, March 2, 2004.

  98. “Pope Resumes Meetings with Roman Parishes,” ZENIT News Service, March 1, 2004.

  99. John Paul II, Angelus, 14 March 2004.

  100. John Paul II, Homily for Palm Sunday, 4 April 2004.

  101. Cited in L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], April 14, 2004, p. 4.

  102. Cited in ibid., p. 6.

  103. Cited in ibid., p. 7 [emphasis in original].

  104. Karol Wojtyła, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” in Wojtyła, Person and Community, pp. 187–95.

  105. See Gaudium et Spes [Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World], 24.

  106. The book’s title came from the fourteenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, from the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus rouses his sleeping disciples to go with him to meet his fate.

  107. John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way!, pp. vii–viii.

  108. The American edition of Alzatevi, andiamo! mistranslated this as a “canoeing” excursion, an error that would have caused both the Pope and his fellow kayakers to grimace.

  109. Ibid., pp. 9–11.

  110. Ibid., p. 30.

  111. Ibid., pp. 189–90.

  112. Ibid., pp. 164–66.

  There was nothing surprising or unconventional in John Paul’s suggestions to his brother bishops about the proper exercise of their office, with perhaps one notable exception: his counsel that a bishop should take particular concern to “establish personal contacts with the academic world and its leading figures … not only within his own Catholic academic institutions, but … with the whole university world: reading, meeting others, discussing, informing himself about their activities” [ibid., p. 89]. That such contacts were not habitual among many bishops was obvious to anyone familiar with the Catholic Church; that they ought to be was the settled conviction of the man who, before becoming a world-changing pope, had been one of the Church’s most effective and successful diocesan bishops.

  113. Ibid., pp. 49–50.

  114. John Paul II, Address to the Honorable George W. Bush, 4 June 2004.

  115. See John L. Allen, Jr., “The Word from Rome,” National Catholic Reporter, June 4, 2004.

  116. “Swiss Marvel at John Paul II’s ‘Magic’ with Youth,” ZENIT News Service, June 7, 2004.

  117. John Paul II, Homily at Almend Esplanade in Bern, 6 June 2004 [emphases in original].

  118. E-mail to the author from Michael Sherwin, O.P., June 10, 2004.

  119. On Veritatis Splendor and its reception, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 686–95 and notes.

  120. “Pope Hails Reagan’s ‘Commitment to the Cause of Freedom,’ ” ZENIT News Service, June 8, 2004.<
br />
  121. “Message of the Holy Father for Transferral of Relics,” L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], December 1, 2004, p. 3.

  122. John Paul II, “Farewell Address to Citizens of Introd, 17 July [2004],” L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], July 21, 2004, p. 12.

  123. Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, November 13, 2008.

  124. The details of the Pope’s visit to Lourdes are taken from Austen Ivereigh, “Pope in Lourdes Speaks of ‘the End of My Pilgrimage,’ ” The Tablet, August 21, 2004, p. 25.

  125. Ibid.

  126. Cited in John L. Allen, Jr., “The Word from Rome,” National Catholic Reporter, August 20, 2004.

  127. Cited in Ivereigh, “Pope in Lourdes.”

  128. Allen, “The Word from Rome,” National Catholic Reporter, August 20, 2004.

  129. Cited in ibid.

  130. Ibid.

  131. There was an element of historical curiosity in the Kazanskaya housed in the papal chapel at Castel Gandolfo: one wall of the chapel is covered by a fresco, commissioned by Pope Pius XI, of the 1920 “Miracle on the Vistula,” in which Polish arms defeated the Red Army and thrust Bolshevism back into Russia. John Paul II was not a man to think in ironic terms, but others could not help thinking that the irony was further compounded by the fact that the icon was being returned to the man once known to the KGB as DROZDOV.

  132. “Icon of Kazan Is Symbol of Christian Unity, Says Pope,” ZENIT News Service, August 29, 2004.

  133. The full text of Cardinal Kasper’s remarks may be found in L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], September 1, 2004, p. 2.

  134. “ ‘Historical’ Return of Icon of Kazan to Orthodox Church,” ZENIT News Service, August 29, 2004.

  135. John Paul II, Address on the Opening of the Year of the Eucharist, 17 October 2004.

  136. John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine, 28.

  137. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 15, 2004.

  Chapter Nine

  1. Author’s interview with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, March 15, 2008.

  2. Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, November 13, 2008.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Author’s interview with Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, December 9, 2006.

  5. Author’s conversation with Stanisław Rybicki, Danuta Rybicka, Maria Rybicka, Karol Tarnowski, Danuta Ciesielska, Piotr Malecki, and Teresa Malecka, November 8, 2008.

  6. Author’s interview with Cardinal Camillo Ruini, November 19, 2008.

  7. E-mail to the author from the Very Rev. Joseph Augustine DiNoia, O.P., February 23, 2005.

  8. On the original idea behind the founding of Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen [IWM], see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 466–67.

  Over time, IWM became far more a reflection of the main currents of European intellectual life than the challenge to those currents that John Paul II imagined it would be at the outset.

  9. John Paul II, Memory and Identity: Personal Reflections (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005).

  10. Ibid., pp. 91–92.

  11. Ibid., p. 104.

  12. Ibid., p. 108.

  13. Ibid., p. 151.

  14. Ibid., p. 155.

  15. Author’s interview with Rocco Buttiglione, January 21, 1997.

  16. John Paul II, Memory and Identity, p. 125.

  17. Richard John Neuhaus, “The New Europes,” First Things (October 2005); Richard John Neuhaus, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 30.

  18. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 248.

  19. Ibid., p. 253; author’s interview with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, March 15, 2008.

  20. Cited in Renato Buzzonetti, “The Days of Suffering and Hope,” in Stanisław Dziwisz, Czesław Drazek, S.J., Renato Buzzonetti, and Angelo Comastri, Let Me Go to the Father’s House: John Paul II’s Strength in Weakness (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), pp. 68–69.

  21. Cited in John L. Allen, Jr., “The Word from Rome,” National Catholic Reporter, February 11, 2005. Allen’s fact-based, calm, and measured reporting during the media firestorm of John Paul’s last illness confirmed many in the judgment that Allen was the best Anglophone Vatican reporter ever.

  22. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 253; Bruce Johnston, “Pope Sweeps Back to Vatican ‘Impatient to Work Again,’ ” Daily Telegraph, February 11, 2005.

  23. L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], February 16, 2005, p. 1.

  24. Lustiger had been one of the boldest of John Paul’s episcopal appointments: a son of Polish-Jewish parents and convert to Catholicism as archbishop of Paris was not something any other pope would have considered possible. (See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 388–90.) Archbishop Vingt-Trois’s unusual surname [“Twenty-Three”] derived from the fact that he was a foundling: asked, as a child, what surname he wished to take, he simply took the last two digits of the number of his case. (Author’s interview with Archbishop André Vingt-Trois, December 9, 2006.)

  25. John Paul II, “A Life Given to Christ at the Service of the Church,” L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], February 23, 2005, p. 1.

  26. See Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, pp. 253–54.

  27. Ibid., p. 254.

  28. February 27 was another moment of drama:

  Reporters, producers, and news personalities started arriving one after the other, some manifestly disgruntled to have been pulled away from the glittering red carpets of the Oscars to the damp, muddy knoll outside the Gemelli.

  Ominous weather and bleak predictions were the backdrop for Sunday morning’s broadcasts. As the television presenters schooled their features into a properly concerned expression and prepared to somberly announce that the Pope would miss the Angelus for the first time in 26 years, sunlight appeared for the first time in days.

  And with the sun came the Pope. Weak, hand at his throat, he appeared at his window and blessed all those gathered below.

  The visible shock of the assembled journalists was worth a thousand words. Seasoned journalists, world-weary and jaded, suddenly found themselves slack-jawed in utter amazement.

  One television producer, unable to conceal her admiration, shook her head and exclaimed aloud, “This guy’s a [expletive] superhero! Mike Tyson, eat your heart out!” [Elizabeth Lev, “Wowing the World-weary … A Pope Appears—and Jaws Drop,” ZENIT News Service, March 3, 2005.]

  29. Author’s interview with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, March 15, 2008.

  30. “John Paul II Keeping Busy at the Hospital,” ZENIT News Service, March 3, 2005.

  31. “Pope Gives Impromptu Blessing from Hospital Window,” Catholic News Agency, March 9, 2005.

  32. See L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], March 16, 2005, p. 3.

  33. Cited in ibid., p. 1.

  34. Author’s interview with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, March 15, 2008.

  35. Author’s conversation with Hanna Suchocka, March 9, 2005; Raymond J. de Souza, “To His Last Breath, a Public Pontiff,” National Post, February 26, 2005; author’s conversation with Piotr Malecki, March 27, 2005.

  36. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 255.

  37. Ibid., pp. 255–56.

  38. Ibid., p. 256.

  39. Dziwisz et al., Let Me Go the Father’s House, pp. 72–73.

  40. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 256.

  41. Cited in Camillo Ruini, Alla Sequela di Cristo: Giovanni Paolo II, il Servo dei Servi di Dio (Siena: Edizione Cantagalli, 2007), p. 36 [author’s translation].

  42. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, 257–58.

  43. Ibid., pp. 258–59; Dziwisz et al., Let Me Go to the Father’s House, pp. 74–75. According to “Vatican norms,” Buzzonetti let the electrocardiogram run for twenty minutes after the heartbeat stopped, to verify the Pope’s death [Buzzonetti, “The Days of Suffering and Hope,” p. 75].

  44. Author’s interview with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, March 15, 2008.

  45. Cit
ed in L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], p. 5.

  46. Charles Krauthammer, “Pope John Paul II,” Washington Post, April 3, 2005.

  47. “Pope John Paul II, Keeper of the Flock for a Quarter of a Century,” New York Times, April 3, 2005.

  48. Cited in Mark Steyn, “Why Progressive Westerners Never Understood John Paul II,” Daily Telegraph, April 5, 2005.

  49. Polly Toynbee, “Not in My Name,” The Guardian, April 8, 2005. The refreshing note in Ms. Toynbee’s screed was the deprecatory remark about Lenin, such remarks not being a staple at her newspaper.

  50. Carroll was cited in Virginia Heffernan, “Pope John Paul Appraised as Pope, Not Rock Star,” New York Times, April 5, 2005; Marco Politi, “A Man Ill at Ease in His Own Century,” The Tablet, April 9, 2005.

  51. Thomas Cahill, “The Price of Infallibility,” New York Times, April 5, 2005.

  52. “Pope John Paul II,” Washington Post, April 3, 2005.

  53. Daily Telegraph, April 4, 2005.

  54. “The Very Modern Papacy of John Paul II,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2005.

  55. True to form, French secularists protested the decision by French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to lower flags to half-mast in tribute to John Paul II, with one socialist senator saying that “the French Republic should not descend to such a level.” [“French Secular Politicians Criticize Flag Tribute to Pope,” Wall Street Journal Online, April 4, 2005.]

  56. Virtually all cardinals of the Catholic Church are ordained bishops, save for some of those elderly theologians whom popes have honored in recent decades. The three “orders” of cardinals reflect the days long past when the cardinals were in fact the active clergy of Rome and its surrounding areas, but the titles “cardinal bishop,” “cardinal priest,” and “cardinal deacon” are honorific today. The “cardinal bishops” are the titular bishops of the seven “suburbicarian” dioceses surrounding Rome, which are in fact governed by auxiliary bishops: Ostia, Velletri-Segni, Porto and Santa Rufina, Frascati (Tusculum), Palestrina, Albano, and Sabina; there are only six cardinal bishops, however, for the dean of the College of Cardinals is cardinal bishop of Ostia as well as of his previous suburbicarian diocese. The “cardinal priests,” who are usually residential archbishops or bishops from around the world, are titular pastors of Roman parishes, as are the “cardinal deacons,” who are generally members of the Roman Curia or elderly theologians. All cardinals receive a “title,” which is the name of the Roman church of which they are titular pastor, at the time of the appointment; the cardinal bishops give up these titles when named to the suburbicarian sees.