Pope John Paul II ~~
Tuesday, April 5th, 2005I just wanna give tribute to this great man!!
In memoriam~~
Remembering Pope John Paul II…
His childhood: “After (my mother’s) death, and later, the death of my older brother, I was left alone with my father, a deeply religious man. Day after day, I was able to observe the austere way in which he lives. By profession he was a soldier, and after my mother’s death, his life became one of constant prayer. … His example was in a way my very first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary.”
— From his 1996 memoirs, Gift and Mystery
World War II: “My priestly vocation took definitive shape at the time of the Second World War, during the Nazi occupation. Was this a mere coincidence, or was there a more profound connection between what was developing within me and external historical events? It is hard to answer such a question. Certainly, in God’s plan, nothing happens by chance.”
— From Pope John Paul II: A Tribute, 1999
The Pontiff’s thoughts on:
Practicing diplomacy: “The only strain I find is that here I am constantly switching languages. I may be reading a document in Italian, then I receive people in German, then more papers in French and English, or an audience in these languages. I suppose I will get used to it.”
— From Pope John Paul II: A Tribute, 1999
Sexual abuse by priests: “People need to know that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young. … The abuse which has caused this crisis is by every standard wrong and rightly considered a crime by society. It is also an appalling sin in the eyes of God.”
— Remarks to U.S. cardinals
A Remembrance of John Paul
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY - I was on a plane, unshaven, bedraggled, wearing a creased safari jacket still damp from a monsoon in the Seychelles.
So I thought I should apologize to Pope John Paul II before joining him for dinner, duly explaining that these were my "working clothes."
"And these are my working clothes," he responded with a smile, clutching his white robe to make his point.
It was a remarkable moment, a pope joking and about to sit down to dinner with a journalist, whereas his predecessors had been held in such regal awe they were carried around on portable thrones.
From the Oct. 16, 1978, evening the name of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was announced as the new pope, prompting many among the throngs in St. Peter’s Square to shout "chi e?," (who?), it was clear this would be a different papacy.
The 50 reporters who traveled with John Paul on his foreign pilgrimages got an especially close — and different — look at the Polish prelate.
We were beside him as he shuffled to the music of African bands in the Congo, as he winced when security guards roughly pushed back adoring faithful on his first trip home to Poland, when he was rushed to his plane after scuffles broke out between students in East Timor and Indonesian security forces. He sat with his eyes closed and prayed.
Until his health began declining about a decade ago, he walked up and down the aisles of the plane answering questions in about a half-dozen languages, prompting bishops I knew to complain we had better access to him.
His last full-fledged airborne news conference came en route to Havana in 1998.
A year later, flying to India, he came back to greet the press and take one question. He didn’t hesitate when asked his opinion of Pope Pius XII at a time when criticism was building over his possible beatification. "He was a great pope," John Paul said.
Back to that airborne dinner: John Paul was extremely weary after a long pilgrimage to New Zealand and Australia in 1986, but he asked a reporter and the Australian ambassador to the Holy See who were aboard the Qantas jetliner to join him.
He wanted to hear how we thought he did.
He seemed a little short with the ambassador, starting with the choice of wine when the envoy suggested a red and John Paul said he preferred a white, which he sipped while picking at his lobster salad.
After that it was downhill for the envoy. When he insisted Australians were more English than American in style, John Paul cut him off and snapped: "American."
It was on one of those trips that I learned just how powerful his private secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, a fellow Pole, had become. The pope had dodged a question on a new wave of strikes against the communist government in Poland when turbulence cut off the news conference.
Later, Dziwisz called several reporters up to the pope’s cabin and, whispering in our ears, suggested we ask the same question again.
Clearly some political calculations had been made in the interval, for this time, John Paul came out with a ringing defense of the right of workers to strike.
Like a politician on the stump, John Paul endured outlandish gifts and gestures — a Mexican sombrero topping off his white robes, a coral necklace placed around his neck by Yasser Arafat as he sat at the Palestinian leader’s headquarters during a 2000 pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
During the Australian visit, he was handed a koala — one of the memorable photographs recording his 104 foreign trips. If he felt his dignity had been damaged he didn’t say, but handed off the animal as quickly as he could.
The pope seemed as shocked as his bodyguards when the president of Yemen visited the Vatican in November, opened up a fancy leather case — and presented John Paul with a traditional curved sword.
April 11 issue - George H.W. Bush, Former American President
‘I always sensed his spiritual power.’
When it came time for Desert Storm, I got a lovely, heartfelt telegram from him, pleading for a peaceful way to settle the differences with Iraq. At bottom, I had to respectfully disagree with his view—I believed, and I told him, that we had to use force to end the brutalities being inflicted on Kuwait, but he spoke with great heart and great hope.
Salah Kuftaro, Head of the Islamic Foundation In Damascus
‘He [spoke] with the enthusiasm of a young man.’
Despite his old age and poor health, the pope had a strong spirit. It was difficult for him to speak, but when he did, it was with the enthusiasm of a young man … I didn’t feel like we were strangers … The pope is a citizen of the world.
Maciej Zieba, Head of the Dominican Order in Poland
‘When he prayed, it was physical.’
In the morning, he prayed for the entire world. He looked at the map of the world and with his eyes traveled all across it, praying country by country.
This was in his apartment. Then in the chapel he prayed for all the members of the Curia around him, looking at sheets of paper with their names and photos as he did so, going from one to the other. The first two or three hours of his day were all prayers.
John Paul II wrote a few years ago:
"When the moment of our definitive ‘passage’ comes, grant that we may face it with serenity, without regret for what we shall leave behind. For in meeting You, after having sought You for so long, we shall find once more every authentic good which we have known here on earth, in the company of all who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and hope."
