Peninsula On-line, Qatar
Pope John Paul II: A pillar of the modern world (THE TIMES/ by Richard Owen)
JOHN Paul II had reigned for nearly 27 years, the third longest pontificate
in history, and the initial shock of a Slav Pope has long faded. Many people
can remember no other pontiff, and only those over 40 are likely to recall
the last time a Pope was elected, in 1978. John Paul II was unable to walk
or even speak clearly because of debilitating illness – and suffered all too
visibly from the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and the periodic
consequences of the attempt on his life in 1981.
The abiding impression of his final years is thus of a bent, sick old man
who needed 24-hour medical attention, with the Gemelli hospital becoming
known as `Vatican Three’, after the Vatican itself and Castelgandolfo, the
papal summer retreat. Yet he will be remembered in the long term as a
morally and politically towering figure of the late 20th century, a Pope of
enormous charisma and spiritual power who is already being given the title
`John Paul the Great’.
He has been the prisoner of his Slav origins, a man of his time and also of
his place, a forceful opponent of Marxist-inspired liberation theology in
Latin America. But he has also been more open to the world than any Pope in
history, making more foreign trips than any of his predecessors and
travelling the globe as the Pilgrim Pope to spread the Christian message in
the Third World.
He insisted on visiting Kazakhstan and Armenia immediately after September
11 to reach out to the world of Islam while condemning Muslim terrorists who
`profane the name of God’.
He roundly castigated the Bush Administration over the war in Iraq, arguing
that war was `always a defeat for humanity’, but later supported postwar
reconstruction efforts.
He continued to travel as his illness progressed, making his last journeys
overseas to Slovakia at the beginning of September 2003, and to Lourdes in
August 2004, even though his decline was all too painfully visible. He has
been – against all the odds – planning yet more trips, to Northern Ireland
and his native Poland, and never gave up his dream of visiting Russia.
He opposed the weakening of Christianity through the admixture of other
religions, particularly in the East, yet advocated tolerance in the dialogue
with oriental traditions and fervently sought reconciliation between the
three monotheistic religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
He grew old in office and was invigorated by his contact with young people,
as if transported back to his own youth as a sportsman, skier, footballer,
playwright and actor in prewar Poland. He curbed dissident theologians, yet
loved debate, and had a lively sense of humour.
He presided at pop concerts and put the Vatican on the internet as the first
true Pope of the media age. But he also urged Catholic lawyers not to deal
with divorce cases, and remained opposed to abortion and contraception, as
well as stem-cell research, emphasising that embryos have `the same rights
as those who are born’.
Many in the Church had become impatient for change sensing that, for all his
great historic achievements, John Paul II has held back the tide of change
on sexual and social issues from contraception, divorce and remarriage to
priestly celibacy.
As Father Timothy Radcliffe, the respected former head of the Dominican
Order in Rome, has observed, John Paul II’s strength lay in his passionate
spreading of the Gospel and his obvious spirituality, while his weakness lay
in the fact that he was a product (`as we all are’) of his background – in
the Pope’s case the profoundly conservative traditions of the Polish
Catholic Church. He lived to see first Nazism and then communism defeated by
the human spirit. He has been out of tune with millions of Catholics both in
the West and the Third World who wanted a reformist agenda which addressed
the realities of their own lives.
When the smoke eventually emerges from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel,
the first thing that the crowds in St Peter’s Square and around the world
will therefore want to know is not only the name of the new pontiff but also
the forces – spiritual, geographical, historical, cultural, political –
which have shaped him. Many in the Third World will be hoping not just for
another non-Italian pope but something much more revolutionary: a black
pope, or a Latin American pope.
The events of September 11 and the subsquent war on terror have increased
demands among Third World Catholics for a pope able to tackle the root
causes of the grievances which give rise to protest and terrorism.
Most of the world’s one billion Catholics live in the Third World,
especially Latin America, where the Church has been bedevilled by disputes
over poverty and liberation theology and the challenges of evangelical
Christianity and spirit worship. Many Third World Catholics are suspicious
(to put it mildly) of the curia, the Vatican hierarchy, and want the next
pope to bring a breath of fresh air into the Vatican corridors.
Significantly, non-Italians now predominate in the College of Cardinals,
which will gather shortly to choose one of their own number as pontiff. Yet
Europe has provided Church leadership for cent-uries, and could do so again.
The pressures for change are not confined to the teeming cities of Asia,
Africa or Latin America, where abortion, contraception and married priests
have a reality far removed from the desiccated discussions of the Vatican.
In Europe, too, the demand for change bubbles just beneath the surface. In
the end, the decisive factor may be not geography, but age. Once the
euologies for the pope have died away, the world will want to know not only
the colour of his successor’s skin but also how old he is.
The hopes of many are pinned on the emergence of a younger man qualified by
training, experience and temperament to adapt the doctrines and traditions
of Roman Catholicism to the social realities of the 21st century.
`Wojtyla was the charismatic Polish Pope who helped to bring down communism
and guide the world into the post-Cold War age,’ one Vatican-watcher said.
`Now we need a pope for the new millennium.’
The fact that the Pope reigned for so long will certainly militate against
the more elderly cardinals, some of whom have lived to see their names
dropped from lists of the papabile published in the media. Even though the
hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is dominated by men in their
seventies and eighties, a slow process of generational change is at work in
the Vatican.
Nearly all the present cardinals have been appointed in the 25 years since
John Paul II was elected.
John Paul II himself tipped the balance in favour of a younger candidate,
partly by staying on the throne of St Peter for longer than any 20th-century
pope but also by holding consistories at which he brought new blood into the
College of Cardinals.
The emergence of younger candidates does not preclude the election this time
of one of the older cardinals, perhaps as a stopgap measure, and stopgaps
can sometimes remain in charge longer than expected. There may even be a
feeling that an older man would provide a relatively brief `trans itional’
papacy. If the conclave does lean towards a younger man, it will almost
certainly look not for someone of radical views, but rather for someone who
can unify the far-flung world of Roman Catholicism and the wider world of
Christian belief.
`Young’, in the Vatican context, does not necessarily translate into
`liberal’, as John Paul II’s own reign shows. The ideal candidate may be
someone such as Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, or Angelo Scola, the Patriarch
of Venice, both seen as compromise figures able to bridge the
liberal-conservative divide; one of the several Latin American contenders;
or a black pope such as Francis Arinze of Nigeria.
According to Father Charles Burns, the former head of the Vatican Secret
Archives and author of The Election of a Pope, the cardinal-electors in any
case will be guided in the end not by media speculation, but by practical
considerations, and by prayer.
`They are looking for a man who will be the shepherd of the Church, who will
inspire and guide, and who, as the prayers for a new pope laid down in the
missal clearly state, will be `the visible centre and foundation of our
unity’,’ Father Burns says.