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The Pope John Paul: The hope for all |
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July 17, 2000
[EDITOR'S NOTE - As he nears retirement after a distinguished career of 48 years with the AP, Special Correspondent Hugh Mulligan has revisited the scenes of some of the major overseas stories he covered. In this report from Rome he reflects on a pope he covered on and off from the beginning.] --- By HUGH A. MULLIGAN AP Special Correspondent
ROME (AP) - In bright sunshine, hunched over on his throne before the sparkling, newly scrubbed facade of St. Peter's basilica, Pope John Paul II charmed yet another multitude of Jubilee Year pilgrims thronging the historic square for his weekly general audience. Banners held aloft that sultry Wednesday morning identified pilgrim bands from Ecuador, Mozambique, Romania, Peru, Australia, Brazil and the Philippines, all delighted to hear the pope address them in their own language. Most groups proclaimed their togetherness with team-colored sun hats, baseball caps and Boy Scout-style neckerchiefs, which transformed the square into a glittering moveable mosaic and made it easier for the tour guides to shepherd them around town behind a raised umbrella or prayer book. In the encircling arms of Bernini's 284 magnificent Doric columns, starkly interspersed with metal detectors to ward off would-be assassins, I felt I was seeing the longest papacy of the 20th century come full-circle. Above John Paul loomed the central loggia, the balcony from which on Oct. 16, 1978, Cardinal Pericle Felici proclaimed to a hushed, even larger crowd: "Habemus Papam" - we have a pope. Continuing in Latin, he intoned the first name, "Carolum," then paused dramatically before adding: "Cardinalem Wojtyla." Who? Who? The question hung in the air like the last whiff of white smoke drifting over Michelangelo's dome. Everyone in the square seemed to be asking it, especially we journalists gathered near the obelisk that Caligula plundered from Heliopolis. Only five weeks earlier, we had witnessed the election of John Paul I, the cardinal from Venice who died in his sleep of a heart attack after just a month in office. Now the cardinals of the world had once again been summoned to Rome, and had cast secret ballots in the Sistine Chapel to select one of their number to be the new pope. Frantically, as a full moon rose over the Tiber, we pored over L'Osservatore Romano's two-page pullout of pictures of the 112 cardinals. "Confalionieri!" some cried, supposing the choice to be the Vatican's most senior cardinal, first name Carlo. "No! No! Polacco!" came an explosion of corrective cries. The College of Cardinals, on the eighth ballot after three days of voting, had elected a Pole, the first non-Italian in 455 years to occupy the Chair of Peter. Ruggedly handsome, looking younger than his 58 years, Karol Wojtyla appeared on the balcony in a new white cassock, hastily chosen from the three sizes provided by Gammarelli, the Vatican tailors, and sent out his blessing "urbi et orbi" - to city and world. With that now so familiar smile breaking across his ruddy face, he introduced himself in Italian NOT as the pope but as "the new bishop of Rome, called from a distant country." He begged indulgence for his accent: "I do not know whether I can explain myself in your - our - Italian language. So if I make a mistake, you will correct me..." At first the city did not embrace this poetry-writing, ski-loving, polyglot Slav. "The Romans complained for a while; they didn't like the quality of his Italian," said Father Paul Robichaud, pastor of Santa Susanna, the American church in Rome. "But over the years his accent got better. Now even the most apathetic and anticlerical among the citizenry realize he has done more for this city than many a pope or politician." As for the world in general, it has had to get used to a pontiff who, in an age of spin-doctoring and government-by-opinion poll, takes firm stands on divisive issues. Even at 80, John Paul II remains very much the Vatican boss, unbendingly opposed to married clergy, homosexuality, contraception, divorce, priests in politics and women in the priesthood. He is also hostile to the excesses of capitalism and economic injustices like mass unemployment and child labor, and champions debt relief for poor countries. For his Sunday blessing from the window, the Roman faithful dress up the kids and push baby carriages into the square: the square from which John Paul set out in 1979 on a momentous journey to Poland that shook the foundations of Communism; the same crowded square where two years later he was wounded by an assassin's bullets. Many credit John Paul, and the millennium jubilee he proclaimed, with cleaning up their city. The worldwide celebration of 2,000 years of Christianity focused on pilgrimages and special events in Rome, led to the scrubbing away of much of the grime and graffiti, and gave rise to some 700 new construction and renovation projects. Certainly Rome had changed since I last saw it a decade ago: an airport train, a modern railroad terminal, a multilevel parking garage and tour bus terminal beneath the Janiculum hill. Marcus Aurelius was back on a copy of his horse in front of Michelangelo's city hall. The forum of the Caesars and hundreds of other ancient monuments and fountains had turned from grungy gray to gleaming white, and sometimes green and red, as marble's true colors emerged from beneath decades of pollution. Brand new trams and recently painted old ones clanged along Largo Argentina, and orange and blue "J" (for jubilee) buses rode at a neat clip through narrow, cobblestone streets. Traffic flowed so smoothly that our guide on a tour bus had to rush her spiel in both English and Italian, and tripped up as we raced past the Protestant cemetery: "That's where the famous poets Kelley and Sheats are buried." St. Peter's Basilica now has an electrostatic system to chase away the pigeons whose forebears Pope Leo XIII used to shoot from his bedroom window. With all the renovations and restorations, Rome retains its clamorous fascination. It is still a city of cats and Fiats, of whining Vespas and vesper bells clanging from ocher-colored campaniles, of robed friars and brazen pickpockets, of soccer fans honking their horns at midnight, and enormous espresso machines that rumble and hiss and steam as if splitting the atom, only to deliver an eyedropper of dark, strong coffee. Progress of any kind is noteworthy in the Eternal City, where the present is always at odds with the past. Whenever a backhoe digs in, fragments of a Hadrian palazzo or a water jug from Nero's reign are likely to turn up. Then the archaeologists and preservationists dig in. Work on the Vatican garage was delayed for months when diggers excavated mosaic chips from a second century villa. "This pope has helped Rome discover a new pride in itself," said Father Robichaud, "but much credit also is due to his friend Mayor (Francesco) Rutelli. He originally planned the cleanup when Rome bid for another summer Olympics. After that fell through, the Jubilee Year suddenly became the incentive." Others tell you his impact on Rome in his nearly 22 years' residence goes deeper than just sandblasting the dirty faces of angels and saints. The media invariably focus on John Paul II's 92 globe-hopping trips outside Italy, complained Msgr. Charles Burns, a witty Glaswegian who has labored 43 years in the Vatican archives. "What they overlook is that he has visited nearly 300 of Rome's 383 parishes and had each pastor in for lunch to discuss parish problems. They also forget the many trips he has taken within Italy to almost every diocese." At lunch, the monsignor raised a cool glass of Frascati in the direction of the Apostolic Palace and asked: "What other pope took seriously his duties as Bishop of Rome? Most sat on their organs of repose and never bothered with the parishes. No wonder the Romans now regard this outsider from Poland as one of their own." "This pope," Burns continued, "has hit it off very well with the politicians. His friendship with Mayor Rutelli, who was quite radical and has moved from the far left toward the center, is more than just window dressing." He cites, too, the pontiff's relationship with Sandro Pertini, the late Italian president: "Very radical, very Socialist. They had irreconcilable differences, but they had lunch together several times. When the pope was gunned down in the square, Pertini spent the night at the hospital, thinking his friend would die." On one occasion, John Paul II and the president boarded a helicopter to spend the day at a glacier high in the Italian Alps. Pertini admired the view, while the pope, for the first time in his life, skied in July. Adds Msgr. Roger Roensch, director of the Bishops' Office for U.S. Visitors to the Vatican: "Almost every other pope in this century was trained in the Vatican diplomatic service. Yet this pastoral pope from Krakow has accomplished wonders as a bridge-builder, a consensus-maker." John Paul II's close relationship with the current Italian government brought about the pardon he sought in the Jubilee Year of forgiveness for Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who tried to kill him. Politics aside and "getting back to our own turf," Msgr. Timothy Dolan, rector of the North American College, credits this pope with "re-evangelizing" Rome. "I was here as a student from 1972 to 1976. We were afraid to go out dressed as seminarians because anticlerical sentiment in the city was so strong. "When I came back six years ago, I was surprised how overtly Catholic Rome could be. It's almost redundant to say Rome is Catholic, but I noticed more vitality in the parishes, a greater respect for priests and nuns in the streets. Churches seemed more full, more alive and visible. People who know the reasons for this better than I attribute it all to the pope." On Sunday, as in former times, I went to brunch at a favorite trattoria with longtime friends among the Rome-based correspondents, or "Vaticanisti." There were 14 at table, including an octogenarian Jesuit, a septuagenarian actress, and a consultant to the United Nations. They spoke sadly of the pope's declining health, the increasingly slurred speech, the trembling hands. And then, the eternal Roman question: Who next would wear the shoes of the fisherman? Names of various "papabili," papal prospects among the College of Cardinals, were offered for approval or scorn. Could it be Carlo Maria Martini, the archbishop of Milan? Or Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Cardinal of Paris who is a Jewish convert? Perhaps Miguel Obando Bravo from Nicaragua? Francis Arinze, the Nigerian cardinal? Pierre Eyt of Bordeaux? Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna? Maybe Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano? The last two times we played this guessing game, before the 1978 conclaves that elected two John Pauls, no non-Italians were picked as front-runners by these veteran Vatican handicappers. Now the relatively few Italian nominations gave evidence of how the pope from Poland has internationalized the church. Still, for all the concern for the pope's health, no one at our table suggested retirement. The Jesuit believed the pope was still determined to go to Russia, and maybe China. Only then, he said, might John Paul intone "Nunc Demittis" - now let thy servant depart - the Latin phrase from the prayer of Simeon, the aged temple priest in Luke's gospel who, holding the Christ child in his arms, pronounced himself now ready to die.
On the Net: www.vatican.va
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