Sede Vacante

There is no question that Karol Wojtyla — the second pope to take the name John Paul, the recently deceased Vicar of Christ, the most recent Roman Pontiff — was a great man. The impact of his life will be felt long after he is gone. The length of his stride will likely not soon be matched by his successors. A radical choice for pope in 1978, he revolutionized the role of the Bishop of Rome, putting the "universal" back in the Catholic Church through his evangelical voyages and media savvy.

I can’t claim to have a unique perspective on John Paul II. Like everyone my age, he’s the only pope I’ve ever known. I grew up in John Paul II’s world. His clear benevolence and joyful embrace of his position is, no doubt, a large part of what attracted me back to my faith in the late 1990s.

There have been many great popes, but to three only has posterity awarded the title of the Great: St. Leo I, St. Gregory I, and St. Nicholas I. My prediction is that within a hundred years from now, he will no longer be reffered to as "John Paul the second" but instead by "John Paul the Great."

John Paul II’s legacy was mostly one of great advancement and change. As a bishop, Karol Wojtyla was one of the great reformers who helped drive through the changes of Vatican II. As the pontiff, John Paul II set out a new form of Catholicism which made Vatican II manifest. If the goal of Vatican II was, as it has been claimed, to air out the Church and let some more light in, it was John Paul II who opened the windows to do so.

Under his papacy, John Paul II oversaw the final implementations of the Novus Ordo Mass, including revisions to the Vatican II-approved English-language liturgy. Under this pope, Church architecture was changed from the standard designs of old, and encouraged to seek out new forms for a new era. Some of the new churches may be a tad grotesque, but the freedom which made them possible certainly is not.

Traveling widely, John Paul II truly embraced the pontiff’s role as a universal shepherd of the Catholic faithful, making the pope manifestly real to Catholics everywhere. No longer was the pope just an old man occasionally seen in a photograph from Rome. John Paul II’s humble disposition gave him a great appeal among the young, and even among non-Catholics; certainly he is one of the main reasons that conversions to Catholicism in the United States have been at record levels for the last few years.

The papacy is now a dynamic, moving institution. John Paul II has made it so. Even in his infirmity, he travelled. Even in his dying days, he wheeled himself to his window to bless the crowds. Of all the pope’s titles, to John Paul II “Servant of the Servants of God” was the most precious. Like any good servant, he came himself to those he sought to serve. He brought them the Gospel, he brought them his warmth. And to many, he brought freedom.

Were it not for John Paul II, the Cold War would have ended quite differently. Whereas Reagan and Thatcher pressed the USSR up against the wall militarily, it was John Paul II who brought to bare the moral weight which finally toppled the Communist system. It is, perhaps, exactly this reason that the God chose him. A faithful, engaging pope able to bring to the world the plight of those oppressed in Soviet Poland undermined the USSR in ways that the threat of tanks and missiles could not. And that’s not even considering his funding of Solidarity and other anti-communist Eastern European movements. The pope rightly identified the evil that was at the core of the Soviet system — the abuse of the dignity of man — and condemned it literally and figuratively.

Many try to paint the pope as a conservative, but if one is using an American lexicon, that term does not apply. John Paul II’s politics were not Republican, nor were they Democrat. His politics were instead consistently Catholic.

Within the next few weeks, new white robes will be sewn. A new miter and ring will be prepared. White smoke will float above the Vatican, and a new pope will emerge. This new pope will emerge into a world changed by his predecessor.

When a new pope is elected, there isn’t time to properly tailor his white robes to his figure before his first appearance before the masses in St. Peter’s Square. Instead, the robes are pinned into place, and folded to hide excess cloth. They don’t look quite right. They don’t quite fit. And in the minds of many, those of us who grew up with his face, were converted by his warmth, were affirmed by his faith, and moved by his compassion, those robes may never fit anyone but Pope John Paul II.