Bishop describes 'enormous impact' of John Paul II

In this issue of The Evangelist, we in the Diocese of Albany join with people throughout the world in commemorating and celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's historical pontificate.

I remember well being glued to the TV on that fall day in 1978 when the dean of the College of Cardinals stood on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica and proclaimed, in an age-old formula, "Annuntio vobis magnum guadium, habemus papam: Karol Wojtyla."

For me, like so many others viewing and listening throughout the world, the name did not register immediately. Only when the commentator repeated the name and stated that the new pope was the Archbishop of Krakow in Poland did I realize the monumental significance of having the first non-Italian pope in centuries.

Even this break with tradition, however, did not prepare us for the enormous impact this 58-year-old successor of the Apostle Peter would have upon our Church and the entire globe. Today, there is probably no public figure in the universe that is more well known, loved and revered than Pope John Paul II.

Reflecting on the pontiff's 25 years of apostolic service, the third longest in the history of the papacy, there are many images of this sterling spiritual leader which come to mind:

EVANGELIST

John Paul II is the most traveled pope in history, logging in some 572 days on the road, which works out to one year and seven months. He has visited 129 countries, celebrating the Eucharist and meeting with people in a myriad of settings: cathedrals, stadiums, parks, piazzas and racetracks.

His message is always focused on one central theme: Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, the light of the nations, the same "yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrew 13:8).

In becoming a traveling pope, John Paul has noted his conviction that "the popes must not consider themselves solely as the successors of Peter, but also as the heirs of Paul, who, as we well know, never stopped moving, was always on the road."

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TEACHER

In addition to the thousands of homilies; allocutions to various clergy, religious, lay and ecumenical or interfaith groups; ad limina addresses; papal audiences; and Angelus talks, Pope John Paul has authored 14 major encyclicals which Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, suggests can be organized around four major themes:

* Reflections on the Triune life of God: "Redemptor Hominis," "Dives in Misericordia" and "Dominum et Vivificantem";

* Social encyclicals: "Laborem Exercens," "Sollicitudo Rei Socialis" and "Centesimus Annus";

* Ecclesiological themes: "Slavorum Apostoli," "Ut Unum Sint," "Redemptoris Missio," "Redemptoris Mater" and "Ecclesia de Eucharistia";

* Doctrinal texts: "Veritatis Splendor," "Evangelium Vitae" and "Fides et Ratio."

The key to all of Pope John Paul's thoughts, Cardinal Ratzinger opined, is the idea that Christ is the key to the human mystery, and that the study of anthropology and of Christology may never be separated. In Pope John Paul's own words, "The human person must be the center of every philosophical or theological reflection. The church is at the service of the human person."

John Paul's teaching role has also been reflected in his oversight of the revised Code of Canon Law (1983) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), and in the development of formational guidelines for priests, deacons, religious and those exercising the ever expanding lay apostolate.

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DIPLOMAT AND ADVOCATE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Throughout his pontificate, John Paul has met constantly with world leaders and been an unrelenting apostle of peace. For the past quarter century, he has been the foremost exponent of human rights in the world, insisting that these rights rest not on human laws but on the transcendental nature and destiny of every human being.

His firm commitment to foster human solidarity undoubtedly has been influenced by his own personal experience as a young man under the tyranny of Nazi-occupied Poland. As President George W. Bush said last spring during his visit to Poland, "Karol Wojtyla saw the swastika flag flying over the rampart of Wawel Castle. He shared the suffering of his people and was put into forced labor. From this priest's perspective and faith came a vision: that every human person must be treated with dignity, because every person is known and loved by God."

That unswerving conviction has led the Holy Father to advocate vigorously for peace with justice in the Mideast, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Nicaragua, East Timor and other troubled spots. John Paul has continually emphasized -- as evidenced by his peace gatherings with leaders of world religions at Assisi -- that "humanity is called to mobilize its best energies so that love will prevail over hatred, peace over war, truth over lies and forgiveness over revenge."

But nowhere have the Pope's efforts been more successful than in Eastern Europe, through his resistance to communism and his support of the Solidarity movement in his native Poland. Commenting on the fall of the Soviet Empire with hardly a shot fired, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear who was responsible: "Nothing that happened in Eastern Europe would have happened without the Polish Pope."

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DEFENDER OF LIFE

Pope John Paul II has spent his entire pontificate boldly proclaiming the inviolability of human life. In 1979, during his pastoral visit to the United States, standing on the mall in Washington, D.C., amidst the symbols of U.S. institutional power, he called upon all Americans "to stand up for life."

Throughout his reign, he has never hesitated to declare the right to life in the presence of heads of state, power brokers, and the arbiters of national and international social policy.

"The Gospel of Life," the Pope's 1995 encyclical, is filled with uncompromising language about the culture of death which poses "an immense threat to life; not only to the life of individuals, but also to that of civilization itself." Hence, John Paul has reminded us constantly that "human life is sacred at every stage and in every situation; it is an indivisible good."

To stand with God is to stand for life, and, therefore, to stand against whatever destroys life: abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, or all of those ills which undermine respect for life, such as racism, sexism, ageism, terrorism, xenophobia and homophobia.

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PROMOTER OF ECUMENISM AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

John Paul II has labored tirelessly to remedy the scandal of Christian disunity. His high profile meetings with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and other spiritual heads of various Christian denominations are but the public face of our Holy Father's commitment to bring to fulfillment that oneness among his followers for which Jesus prayed so fervently on the night before He suffered and died.

Under the Pope's leadership, there have been numerous ecumenical dialogues with our sister churches, perhaps the most notable being the one with the Lutheran community, which resulted in the resolution of the theological misunderstanding concerning justification that launched the Protestant Reformation. Less successful have been the Pope's repeated initiatives to bring about a greater rapport with the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

In his remarkable encyclical, "Ut Unum Sint" ("That All May Be One"), Pope John Paul took the unprecedented step of inviting ecumenical dialogue about the nature, scope and exercise of the Petrine ministry, considered by some to be the greatest obstacle to Christian unity.

Undoubtedly born of his World War II experience of the Holocaust and his personal friendships in boyhood, the Pope has done more than anyone else to heal the animosity between Christians and Jews, and, specifically, between the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism.

He became the first pope to visit the Jewish synagogue in Rome, calling the Jewish people "our elder brothers." In 1993, he gave formal Vatican recognition to the State of Israel, and launched both a study of the Church's role in the Holocaust and the development of guidelines designed to incorporate into the Church's catechetical texts teaching about that shameful tragedy and the anti-Semitism that contributed to it.

The Pope's commitment to improved relations between the Church and Judaism was epitomized by two scenes during his pilgrimage to Israel in 2000:

* The first was that of the frail pontiff bent in silent prayer at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Obviously moved and pained by this vivid reminder of the unspeakable Shoah, the Pope would say later, "No one can ever forget or ignore what happened. No one can dismiss its scale." Rather, the Pope noted, the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jews was a tragedy that "burned itself into our souls."

* The second scene is that of the pontiff standing before the Western Wall and placing his trembling hand upon that 2,000-year-old structure, as Jews have done for centuries. In accord with Jewish practice, he left a prayer written on a piece of paper in a crevice between the stones. The prayer was one he had recited earlier that month in the Vatican, asking God's forgiveness for Christians who have "caused these children of yours to suffer."

Rabbi Michael Melchior, a member of the Israeli Cabinet who welcomed the Pope to the Wall, stated that the visit confirmed the commitment of the Catholic Church "to end an era of hatred, humiliation and persecution of the Jewish people."

It should be noted that Pope John Paul has been vigorous as well in his outreach to Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims. In particular, he has gone to great lengths to assure the Islamic community of the Church's great respect for their religious history, traditions and spirituality, and to state that the political problems in the Mideast and other world hot spots where Muslims predominate in society are not rooted in the desire of Christians to proselytize or to destroy the Islamic faith.

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SAINT MAKER

Pope John Paul has canonized almost 500 people, as many as all other popes combined. Cardinal Jose Saravia Martins, prefect emeritus of the Vatican's Congregation for Saints, offered three reasons for John Paul's saint-making proclivity:

1. his desire to remind the faithful of the universal call to holiness;

2. to present local churches with models of holiness from their own cultures, and

3. to promote the "ecumenism of holiness." The common experience of martyrdom in the twentieth century, for example, can be a powerful force in bringing Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers together.

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COLLABORATING WITH BISHOPS

I can attest personally to the Pope's fraternal solicitude toward his brother bishops. As bishops from throughout the world make their ad limina visits to the Holy See every five years, John Paul devotes great time and attention to every bishop, meeting with each personally for 20 to 30 minutes, concelebrating the Eucharist with them in his private chapel, inviting them in groups of five to eight to dine with him (breaking the tradition that popes eat alone), and giving each group of bishops a fraternal address on some dimension of the Church's life.

Those personal encounters are a source of great inspiration and affirmation. What is amazing to me is that with more than 3,000 bishops worldwide, our Holy Father is able to make each feel very unique, important and special, whether he be an auxiliary bishop in some small Third World country or the cardinal archbishop of the largest diocese in the world.

This solidarity and collaboration between the Bishop of Rome and bishops throughout the world is reflected tangibly in the bi-annual world Synods of Bishops and various regional synods, where the Pope takes an active role in addressing the pastoral, cultural, administrative and spiritual concerns of the members of the Episcopal College.

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MAN OF HOLINESS AND PRAYER

Hanging in my room in the rectory of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany is a striking photograph of the newly elected Pope John Paul II, kneeling in prayer.

He looks young, strong and robust, in sharp contrast to the frail and infirm man of today on whom an assassination attempt, the burdens of office, and the ravages of age and illness have taken a severe toll.

What remains the same, however, is the sense of inner peace and serenity John Paul radiates. He is a man who devotes quality time each day to prayer. I've observed him at the prie-dieux in his private chapel, engaged in deep meditation, undeterred by the concelebrants and others who gather to offer the Eucharist with him.

So many of his homilies and addresses are sprinkled with references to the centrality of prayer in the Christian life and to the importance of meditating upon Christ's life, especially the role the cross played in His salvific journey among us.

Certainly, Pope John Paul has known the cross, from the horrors of World War II to the neurological disease that imprisons his body today. But he keeps forging on with an indomitable spirit that is rooted in his own prayerful spirituality and his desire to teach by example how to bear the mystery of the cross in one's life.

So as we celebrate Pope John Paul II's 25 years of magnificent ministry as the "servant of the servants of God," I hope we will be grateful for the depth and breadth of his extraordinary pontificate, to pray for him and the awesome challenges he faces, and to be uplifted and inspired by his life and the indelible legacy he has given and will continue to bequeath our Church.

(10/16/03)