Beatification Of John Paul II

Pope Would Give Candid Interviews -- at 35,000 Feet

John Paul II is the only pope ever to have engaged in the modern give-and-take press conference, but there was only one place he would do it -- at 35,000 feet, flying between countries.

He would suddenly appear at the head of an aisle and we, the 50 or 60 journalists from around the world at the back end of his plane, would scramble to rearrange ourselves in language groups. He spoke seven or eight languages well and we each wanted our microphones to catch every answer in the language of our audience and readers back home.

We could ask him anything, and did -- about sex and drugs and rock-and-roll, about what it's like to be pope, and about liberation theology, existential philosophy, Spanish cooking -- anything.

He seemed to enjoy these exchanges at close quarters, all standing jammed in, jostling together face to face in the aisles, the predictable questions and the impertinent -- like this, one of my favorites:

I was standing close in with him and a British reporter on my left -- who asked him, sounding just a little imperious, "Holy Father! How, in a world in which hundreds of thousands of children are born into certain squalor and suffering every month, can you possibly be against artificial birth control?!"

The Holy Father, closely watching his questioner's face, answered, "The answer is, as it always was, responsible parenthood."

Not to be outdone, my colleague shot back, "Yes, but what is responsible parenthood?!"

Not to be outdone, John Paul, leaning in a bit, paused for the briefest moment and, looking deep into my colleague's eyes, said in a low and quiet voice: "You know."

Silence. Another beat. And another ... and since there was still no response, he smiled and moved on past us up the aisle to the next language group.

He was making us get to know him as a person -- and that he could handle himself in a scuffle.

Another time on the plane, after 2 or 3 years in many countries following immediately behind him in our press vehicles in motorcades through cheering millions all focused on him, I wondered whether all that adoration and attention made him feel vain, went to his head, so I asked how it affected him:

"I am convinced," he said, "that they ... don't cheering MY-self, but the successor of Peter."

Good answer.

Traditionalist prelates in the Vatican soon complained to me off-the-record that this energetic traveling -- some five trips a year -- wasn't quite the right way to be pope and smacked a bit too much of triumphalism.

So on our next flight, I asked him about that.

"Holy Father," I said, standing at an aisle seat, "some people say that you are traveling too much."

"Yes! I am convinced!" he said, not missing a beat.

"You are?" I said, a little surprised, and then asked if he expected to keep it up.

"We shall see," he pondered, then said again, firmly: "I am convinced that I am traveling too much."

He turned to move on, then turned back and, holding up an index finger for emphasis, added with a smile, "But sometimes it is necessary to do something of what is too much!"

That "too much" makes me think of the first time we rode with him into Warsaw's Victory Square in June 1979 at the opening of his first papal visit back home. The Polish crowds, accustomed to communism, stood awed but hushed – so different from the exuberant throngs who had cheered him through Mexico City five months earlier.

But after his speech, telling his fellow Poles, in effect, it was their God-given right to be free and of the holiness of human rights, he exited that square amid great and joyous jubilation. Ten years later, the Berlin Wall was taken apart, peacefully.

One time on the plane, a young correspondent, astonished that John Paul had learned two new languages since becoming pope, asked him, "What is your secret for learning languages?!"

"You know," said the pope after thinking about it for a moment, "When I set out to learn a new language, I think to myself, 'I'm not going to get all of it -- but I'll get some of it!'"

We all smiled at the wisdom of that.

There were, of course, always the serious necessary questions: How can you fly in to visit this dictator and thus lend him legitimacy? Answer: How can I not fly in to proclaim the gospel of peace and human rights ... and non-violence?

There also were comic moments, like the one at the foot of the stairs on our arrival at a jungle airstrip in deepest Africa near the town of Kisangani with insistently rhythmic music, impossible not to dance to, from a women-and-girls choir and rag-tag brass band that had journalists, band leader and pope all gleefully dancing together as astonished local dignitaries took it all in.

After about 10 years as pope, his forays to the back end of the plane were curtailed as his Parkinson's advanced, but there was one last time we got to ask him directly any question we wanted -- even if no longer 1-on-1.

It was in 1998 on the first ever papal trip to Cuba where the communist Fidel Castro still ruled, seven years after the Soviet Union disbanded. We all gathered in a wide arc around John Paul where he stood up front just inside our press cabin, an aide holding a microphone that amplified his answers over the plane's speaker system.

"Holy Father," I asked from amid my colleagues, "what do you plan to tell the Cuban people about human rights?"

And once again we saw him pause and reach deep for a measured authentic answer -- mellower now, older, slowed by disease and by enormous success: "Ah. You know. You know! You know very well what I am thinking about human rights, and what I can say about human rights -- the same as I spoke before in so many countries, beginning with Mexico and Poland in '79. That is clear. Human rights are fundamental rights at the foundation of all civilization, of all regular social community. I brought this conviction and this engagement for human rights, I brought that all with me from Poland in the confrontation with the Soviet Union and the Soviet system, with communist totalitarian system. And so it is a long history."

Thinking back on all that history now, it reminds me of something my own father told me years ago, before John Paul was elected -- that "the strong man loves the race" -- and I remember how in the course of our work we got to ride along and experience how John Paul, knowing he wouldn't get all of it, got far more than anyone expected when he took the risk, "did something of what is too much," and helped the world change for the better -- peacefully.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/beatification-john-paul-ii-pope-give-candid-interviews/story?id=13493166


U.S. Catholics celebrate, debate John Paul II legacy

RALEIGH, N.C. — When Pope John Paul II moves one step away from sainthood on Sunday, the event will be celebrated in cathedrals, high schools and homes by American Roman Catholics who revere the Polish pontiff like none before him.

Other American Catholics see the occasion as a reminder that the charismatic, globe-trotting pope was a better leader for the world at large than for his own flock.
John Paul II has only been dead for six years, but his 27-year tenure as leader of the church is already being harkened to by believers as a golden age, when Catholicism faced down Soviet Communism and won admirers from all faiths. They see the scheduled beatification in Rome as the obvious way to recognize the man referred to by many as John Paul the Great.

“It’s a huge deal, especially here in the U.S., in this secularized culture that we’re moving towards, what he called the culture of death,” said Justin Braga, 28, of Waltham, Mass. “He was standing up against that. He wanted to maintain the sacredness of things.”

The focus on the first pope to truly harness the global media is a welcome break for many Catholics weary of fights over doctrine and politics, and the still-raw anger generated by the sexual abuse scandals uncovered in the last decade. For some Catholics, John Paul II’s papacy is inseparable from those troubles.

“There are lots of people saying he was a great pope for the world, but not nearly as great a pope for the church,” said Thomas Groome, chairman of the Department of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College. “Many Catholics feel he did not embrace the spirit of renewal and reform heralded by the Second Vatican Council.”

Beatification is the next-to-last step before a Catholic is formally declared a saint, meaning the church teaches that person is definitely in heaven. In order to be beatified, which confers the title “blessed,” a person’s life has to stand up to a thorough investigation, and one miracle has to be attributed to the candidate. There’s normally a five-year waiting period between a candidate’s death and when the process begins, but Pope Benedict XVI waived that for his predecessor.

John Paul II won’t become a saint until he’s canonized, which requires the documentation of another miracle, usually a cure for an illness that medical science can’t explain. A beatified person can be venerated in local churches, but saints can be celebrated anywhere in the world.

John Paul II was himself an enthusiastic promoter of sainthood and beatification. He streamlined the process to make canonization move faster, celebrated canonizations all over the world and named more saints than all the popes in the previous 400 years combined.

“He understood that there’s nothing like a canonization to fire up the faithful,” said Justin Catanoso, a North Carolina journalist and author of “My Cousin the Saint,” about his relative Gaetano Catanoso, who was beatified and named a saint by John Paul II. “It’s just a gorgeous ritual.”

Saints play an important role in the lives of Catholics, who believe they serve not just as models of holiness but as advocates for the faithful. Catholics don’t worship saints, but ask the saints to intercede for them with God.

Barb Verly of Marshall, Minn., began praying for help from John Paul II after her 20-year-old son was diagnosed with brain cancer, which has now been in remission for over a year.

“The day John Paul died, I knew I wasn’t praying for him, the way I pray for other people when they die,” she said. “I knew that I was praying to him, that he was standing there next to Jesus, interceding.”

Verly joined the church in 1971 when she was 20, and she said John Paul ultimately helped make the transition much easier.

“Growing up Protestant, the pope was one of those things that was really hard to understand, but John Paul, he just radiated this love and a deep spiritualness that people responded to,” she said.

His enduring popularity can be partially gauged in the enthusiasm greeting his beatification. Masses are being offered in dioceses across the country, and Catholic book stores are putting out special displays of books and memorabilia tied to the beatification.

At least 30 schools around the U.S. are named for John Paul II, with several of them hosting special Masses, art shows or other programs to coincide with the event in Rome. A delegation of faculty members from Pope John Paul II High School in Hendersonville, Tenn., has already left for Rome, according to Headmaster Faustin Weber.

“I am obviously pleased that our namesake is being beatified and believe, with many others, that his canonization will soon follow,” Weber said.

But the bond between a Polish pope focused on the problems of Eastern Europe under Communist domination and the American public isn’t necessarily a natural one. John Paul II worked to develop that kinship by frequent travel and by turning his attention to young people, a group previously overlooked by many popes and religious leaders.

“So many people have more firsthand experience with him than they did with any other pope,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “He got to the heartland as well as the great metropolises, and I think that touched people.”

The pope visited the U.S. seven times between 1979 and 1999, including stops in places like Des Moines, Denver and Columbia, S.C. along with the more familiar Catholic strongholds. He also created World Youth Day, a pilgrimage that draws hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to locations around the world.

But the last years of his papacy coincided with the sexual abuse crisis that engulfed first the U.S. church, and then Catholics around the world. For believers like those in the group Voice of the Faithful, John Paul II’s legacy includes a failure to deal adequately with not only allegations of sexual abuse by priests, but with bishops who transferred clergymen to new assignments rather than confront the problem head-on.

“At Mass, we ask forgiveness for ‘what I have done and what I have failed to do,’” said Clare Keane of Winchester, Mass., a member of the group. “One thing he failed to do was crack down on known sexual predators.”

For millions of American Catholics, though, the name John Paul II still conjures images of the vast crowds gathered in stadiums for Mass, the fall of the Berlin Wall and a robust defense of traditional church teaching on everything from sexual morality to the Virgin Mary.

“He made Christianity interesting and compelling at a moment when many in the western world imagined that they had ‘outgrown’ the ‘need’ for religious faith,” wrote George Weigel, author of two biographies of John Paul II, in an email from Rome. “He gave new energy to Catholicism in America, at a time of lethargy; and he inspired many American evangelicals with his unapologetic preaching of the Gospel.”

http://www.trivalleycentral.com/articles/2011/04/30/casa_grande_dispatch/national_headlines/doc4dbc690fa8892424759050.txt

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