John Paul II: Pope icon

The world just buried a pope – who was really a lot of other things besides. He was a poet and an essayist. He was a playwright whose most important role was played on the world stage – for one, he helped bring down Eastern European communism; for another, in the Philippines, he directed church officials to support Corazon Aquino, thus ending the decades-long Marcos dictatorship. In Chile, he pressured military ruler Gen. Augusto Pinochet to hold free elections. He was the most traveled and covered pope whose travels took him from the farthest islands in the Pacific to the jungles of Africa, the barrios of Latin America, and the rice fields of Southeast Asia. He was an intellectual and a scholar with degrees in theology and philosophy. He was a linguist who spoke eight languages, including Latin. He was a science buff who established a Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He was a hiking/skiing pope. He was a singing pope, nay, a CD-bestseller pope. He was a pope icon. He was bigger than life.

A lot of people sure have a lot of stories to tell about Pope John Paul II – this writer included. Ours go back to the first pastoral visit of His Holiness to the Philippines in February, 1981. When he stepped out of his plane, he kissed the ground and hogged news headlines around the world. And then this charismatic prince of the church with a boundless zest for life walked straight into the hearts of millions of Filipinos. We followed him to Baclaran Church, where years ago, Cardinal Karol Josef Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland said an unauthorized Mass straight from the airport where he hailed a cab that took him there. A security nightmare, he would stop the papal cortege to go down and touch the people – a mile-long throngs of them lining the streets under the scorching heat of the sun. Instead of partying with the rich, he opted to visit the poor and sick of Tondo in his Pope mobile. He touched them – and changed their lives forever. Where he went, they followed.

And now comes a book that takes us on an intellectual and spiritual journey with Pope John Paul. No, it’s not an academic treatise but rather an informal dialogue, says the jacket cover of John Paul II’s book Memory and Identity – Personal Reflections (198 pp., available at National Book Store). "Each chapter is, as it it were, the answer to a question which many of us carry in our heads or hearts." A lot of them probably in our hearts.

Like this question from a young man, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?"

Christ answers him, "If you wish to enter eternal life, keep the commandments."

The puzzled young man goes on to ask, "Which?"

Then Christ reminds him of the principal commandments of the Decalogue. In Christ’s teaching, all the commandments are summarized in this one great commandment: "Love God above all things and one’s neighbor as oneself."

But as some papal journalists/scholars will tell you, "To understand Pope John Paul II, you must go back to his Polish roots."

Karol Josef Wojtyla, the man who would be pope, traces his roots to Wadowice, an industrial town near Krakow in southern Poland. There he was born on May 18, 1920. His father, Karol Sr. was a noncommisioned officer in the Austro-Hungarian army. His mother, Emilia Kaczorowska, died when he was eight. He had a sister and a brother. Edmund, a medical student, died of scarlet fever. The next child, Olga, died even before Karol was born. In 1941, his father died, a loss mourned deeply by Karol. At 20, Karol was an orphan, losing "all the people I loved and would have loved."

Karol was a student when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, setting the stage for the start of World War II in Europe. He avoided getting drafted by doing war work. Meanwhile, he continued his studies underground and turned to theater to help heal the much bruised Polish soul.

How was Karol called to priesthood?

Karol was inspired by his father to follow the religious life. Extremely close to his father – he was mother, father, brother, friend to him rolled into one – he would sometimes wake up in the night and see his father on his knees praying. He was touched by his father’s unwavering faith and the austere life he led.

Amid the Warsaw uprising in 1944, Karol studied to become a priest. He eluded the Germans who searched his house – they didn’t look in the basement where Karol was praying.

Karol was ordained in 1946 and was sent to Rome where he obtained his doctorate in philosophy. He returned to Poland in 1948 and became a deacon in the village of Niegowic. In 1958, he was named auxiliary bishop of Krakow and in 1964, he became archbishop. In 1967, Pope Paul VI made him a member of the College of Cardinals. In 1978, Pope John Paul I (Cardinal Albino Luciani) died of heart attack after being in office for only 34 days. Karol left Poland to join the other cardinals in Rome to elect a new pope. On Oct. 16, 1978, a new pope was elected: Karol Wojtyla who took the name Pope John Paul II.

At 58, Karol Wojtyla became the youngest pope in 132 years, the first Polish pope, and the first non-Italian pope in four-and-a-half centuries.

And this Polish pope was a true-blue Marian devotee – he turned to the Blessed Mother when he lost his own mother when he was but a kid. In Memory and Identity, he writes, "Mary’s memory is a source of singular importance for knowing Christ, an incomparable source. Mary is not only a witness to the mystery of the Incarnation, in which she knowingly cooperated. She also followed step by step the gradual self-revelation of her Son as He was growing up beside her ... This maternal memory of Mary is particularly important for the divine-human identity of the Church. It could be said that the memory of the new People of God is intimately associated with Mary’s memory, and the celebration of the Eucharist relives events and teachings of Christ learned from the lips of His mother..."

The book also includes an account of what really happened on May 13, 1981, when an assassin’s bullet nearly claimed the life of Pope John Paul II.

The attack raised more questions than meet the eye, like: Did the assassination attempt and the events surrounding it reveal some truth about the papacy, perhaps one previously overlooked? Is it possible to read in them a special message about the Pope’s personal mission?

The Pope’s answer: "(Mehmet Ali) Agca knew how to shoot, and he certainly shot to kill. Yet it was as if someone was guiding and deflecting that bullet.

"Yes, I remember that journey to the hospital. For a short time I remained conscious. I had a sense that I would survive. I was in pain, and this was a reason to be afraid – but I had a strange trust. I said to Father Stanislaw that I had forgiven my assailant. What happened at the hospital, I do not remember.

"I was practically on the other side."

The Pope never really recovered from that attack. In 1983, around Christmastime, Pope John Paul II visited Ali Agca in prison. The Pope came face to face with his attacker, they talked. And the Pope recounts in his book, "In the course of our conversation, it became clear that Ali Agca was still wondering how the attempted assassination could possibly have failed. He had planned it meticulously, attending to every tiny detail. And yet his intended victim had escaped death. How could this have happened?

"The interesting thing was that his perplexity had led him to the religious question. He wanted to know about the secret of Fatima, and what the secret actually was. This was his principal concern; more than anything else, he wanted to know this ..."

Yes, we just lost a pope, a father, a friend. But he lives on in our hearts.