April 05, 2005, 4:42 p.m.
A Farewell
Pope John Paul II.

A lot of people — roughly speaking, everybody — saw the pope alive once at least on television. It is estimated that tens of millions of people laid eyes on him in the flesh. All of us have our own memories of one such encounter. The keenest in my own was his appearance ten years ago in Colorado. Why Colorado? One doesn't ask, and never really pondered the question; but there he was, and the wonder of it was the crowd that surrounded him, viewing him say the Mass. The wonder of it to this viewer, watching it 2,000 miles away, was the expression on the faces of the 10,000 people the cameras skated about, giving close-ups of hundreds of them. They were young people, late in their teens, early in their twenties. And they were finding the scene — finding the pope — riveting. They were overcome into a true and resonant silence.

How did this come about?

Well of course, what makes people famous is fame, and John Paul had been at the central part of the international stage a dozen years. He did not command an air force or any bark larger than that commanded by the Founder when he stilled the storm, and drew up the fishes. Where did this old Pole get that magic?

No doubt many who watched him that day in Colorado thought themselves viewing the successor of Christ himself, though the pope's title is as simple as "Bishop of Rome." But probably the majority thought him, simply — a singular figure, as they stared and stared, and remained quiet for the hour.

The phenomenon was not only in Colorado, as everyone who ever served as witness knows. He had such an effect on men and women of all races, of all ages, though it was in particular his impact on young people that arrested attention. And then there was the cloud hovering dreadfully close, the Parkinson's disease that finally made even simple speech problematic.

I watched him in Havana at relatively close quarters, being civil, even benign, to the unworthiest of hosts. I saw John Paul cope with the problem, and transfigure the scene. There were, in the estimate of journalists present, one million people in the Plaza de la Revolucíon. The auspices were memorable at several levels, beginning with the invitation itself. But on that Sunday, a sign had been hung at one end of the famous plaza, a mere hundred yards from where Castro sat detachedly in front of the altar. It was the size of a tennis court and read, "JESUCRISTO EN TI CONFIO," as concentrated a repudiation of Castro and his works as four words could manage.

There being no way to shield the host from that resplendent defiance, one wondered what protection would be furnished against nature. Happily there was cloud cover, which shielded the crowd from the sun, as also a brisk wind that mitigated the ambient heat generated by one million fellow creatures, every one of them, it seemed, at elbow-length from the next.

We heard then the quaky voice of the pope. Not very expressive, but the Spanish he spoke was well turned and clearly enunciated. In a matter of seconds he communicated his penetrating, transcendent warmth. Intending to see better, I walked to a television set. His face was mostly hangdog in expressionlessness. We saw the result of his affliction and his age, and his gunshot wound. The pope had traveled at that point to more than eighty countries. Observers were dumbfounded by the 16-hour-a-day schedules he regularly imposed on himself.

There was the stoop, and the listless face — the hangdog look, I called it. But then intermittently the great light within flashed, and one saw the most radiant face on the public scene, a presence so commanding as to have arrested a generation of humankind, who wondered whether the Lord Himself had a hand in shaping the special charisma of this servant of the servants of God, as the pope styled himself, his death leaving a most awful void, and a disconsolate world.

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