Pope John Paul II

[Guest guest]

Millions Worldwide Mourn Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, who helped topple communism in Europe and left a deeply

conservative stamp on the church that he led for 26 years, PASSED AWAY on

Saturday night in his Vatican apartment, ending a long public struggle against

debilitating illness. He was 84.

"We all feel like orphans this evening," Undersecretary of State

Archbishop Leonardo Sandri told the crowd of 70,000

that gathered in St. Peter's Square below the pope's still-lighted apartment

windows

He Gave Energy and Spirit to City in Its Hour of Need

ew York had gone from Fun City to Done City by the late 1970's. What the arson

fires had not incinerated, the blackout and looting had all but finished off,

turning parts of Brooklyn and the South Bronx into moonscapes. Times Square had

yet to open its Disney Store. And it seemed like almost everyone who could was

moving to suburban havens. But for a few days in October 1979, Pope John Paul

II came to this pariah of a city and lent it a touch of grace, strength and

humor. His vibrant, athletic presence was a reassuring contrast as he sped from

the Battery to the Bronx, encouraging the poor and admonishing the powerful.

Mayor Edward I. Koch saw that papal visit as a nod of confidence for a city

that had been written off.

"We were the outcasts, we were on the edge of bankruptcy, people were laughing

at us," Mr. Koch said recently. "And he took us in his arms."

Small wonder that Mr. Koch - who had actually asked if he could ride in the

papal motorcade (no, said Cardinal Terence Cooke) - stayed as close as he

could, vowing to shadow the pontiff by car, foot or helicopter.

"I was at the airport when he arrived, and it was pouring rain," Mr. Koch

recalled of the visit. "Just as he got out of the plane, the sun came out.

Suddenly, one of the cops there yelled, 'That's the kind of guy you want to

make a golf date with!' "

Though Pope Paul VI was the first pope to visit New York, John Paul II's visits

in 1979 and 1995 left a mark on this city, which he called "the capital of the

world." The phrase was more than a rhetorical flourish, since the dizzying

diversity of nationalities and faiths in the five boroughs - and their

relations with him - were a microcosm of what awaited him in his trips as a

global pope.

He knew how to use the city as symbol and backdrop: at the Battery, with the

Statue of Liberty in the distance, he offered solace to the immigrant. He

visited Harlem and the South Bronx, where he implored New Yorkers to "not leave

the Lazarus of the 20th century standing at the door."

It was here that he encouraged Spanish-speaking Catholics to embrace their

language as a link to their faith, anticipating the shift that would sweep the

third world, where Catholicism was reinvigorated.

It was here, the country's financial capital, that he pushed the fortunate to

give the poor far more than the crumbs that tumbled off their tables.

And perhaps his most indelible urban moment relied on the natural beauty of

Central Park in 1995, where tens of thousands of people heard him celebrate

Mass in a cathedral of nature, where the trees were sturdier than any marble

pillar and the heavens soared more majestically than any vaulted ceiling.

These moments - and their symbolism - were hardly happy coincidences, but

rather, a reflection of his faith in this city and country.

"He was in many ways better informed about America and more sympathetic to

America certainly than any pope in history," said the Rev. Richard John

Neuhaus, a conservative Catholic and the editor of the journal First Things.

"Never has there been a pontificate as expressly sympathetic to the American

experiment, the vitality of America, the role America plays."

Of course, that world view had been promoted by the church before John Paul II,

but he, particularly for Latinos, reshaped it dramatically.

John Paul, when he came to New York in 1979, had this message for the city's

Latino Catholics: Embrace your language. Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, a professor at

Brooklyn College, said it was a watershed that encouraged a departure from

assimilation for the wave of third world Catholics that would soon move here.

Mr. Stevens-Arroyo said, "At the Mass at Yankee Stadium, he comes out in Spanish

and says something along the lines of: 'Our beloved brothers and sisters of the

Spanish language, you have preserved your culture for centuries. Keep on

going,' Here is the Holy Father in the United States, at a papal Mass, saying

hold on to your Spanish language because that is how you hold on to your

Catholic faith."

MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE.

A small episode as it appeared in New York on the 2nd April 2005.

NIMANO FAKIR-DUBAI.3.04.05

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