May Light Perpetual Shine Upon Him

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

I've been realizing in the last few days, as he approached the end of his life, how much Pope John Paul II meant to me.

I'm not Catholic. I disagreed with his staunchly conservative views opposing birth control (including condoms), abortion, women or married men in the priesthood, and an assortment of other things. But I never doubted that he held those views out of sincere and thoughtful consideration and faith.

Certainly his personal history (how cool is it that an actor and poet became pope?) and the charisma he displayed, particularly in the early years of his papacy, were appealing. I'm from Chicago, a city that is not only heavily Catholic, but also contains a Polish community the size of many cities in Poland. When the new pope came to Chicago and celebrated mass in Grant Park, most businesses (including the bookstore chain in whose headquarters I worked at the time) closed, and we all went to Popestock. Likewise, he was greeted as a star in the 130 or so nations of the world he visited.

But I see that charisma for what it is, and that's not the source of my admiration. It has more to do with global issues. He stood firmly against war, against the death penalty, against torture in any form, and didn't let political pressure quiet him. He drew attention to the economic disparities between the very rich nations and the very poor, and pointed out our duty as Christians with respect to that. He was the first pope to set foot in a synagogue and in a mosque. And he had the courage to admit the errors of the Catholic Church--from its condemnation of Galileo to the blind eye it turned to the Holocaust. I honor John Paul II, Karol Wotyla, for all of that.

Most important, though, in recent years here in the U.S., the religious right has tried to hijack the Bible, to turn the Gospel's message of love, charity, and responsibility to care for one's fellow human beings, into a message of control and often hatred. They've given Christians a bad name in this country, and it's been hard against the onslaught of high-profile hate-mongers like Falwell and company to remind people that that is most emphatically not the message of Christianity. But John Paul II had the high profile and the media savvy (as a prolific, best-selling author, as well as a public figure) to be that spokesperson for the true Gospel, the one that condemns violence and commands love. And I think he understood how important that was, and never ceased, even as his health waned.

And for that, I honor him. For that, I miss him.

I pray that the college of cardinals, in choosing his successor, will also know how important that was. A lot of us, Catholics and other Christians, are counting on it.