Defender of the Faith

(5 of 9)

In any case, there can be no doubt as to the attempt's spectacular failure. Four days later, the Pope taped a message to believers; within nine months, he recommenced his travels. He had no doubts about the reason for his recovery. At least since the death of his mother when he was 8, he had experienced an intense mystical spirituality. In his youth, he applied to join the Discalced Carmelites, a monastic order, only to be gently rebuffed by superiors who saw in him another sort of potential. But he had maintained a contemplative practice. (Rocco Buttiglione, a friend and an author, once described the Pontiff's reverie: "The faith is like a strike of lightning, illuminating everything.") His devotion to the Virgin Mary, to whom his personal motto--Totus tuus (All yours)--referred, was lifelong, and he was known to prostrate himself before her statues. Since the shooting occurred on the anniversary of the 1917 apparition of the Virgin near Fatima in Portugal, he was convinced he owed his life to her. He made a pilgrimage of thanks to Fatima, and the near fatal bullet was fitted into a jeweled crown worn by her statue. In 1983, out of the same wellspring of faith, emerged an act of stunning virtue: his forgiveness of Agca in the would-be assassin's jail cell.

Related

Photos

The Path of Pope Benedict XVI

The Pope never lost his mystical side. He added five events in the life of Jesus to the Rosary, raising from 15 to 20 the number of its mysteries. A similar commitment to Christlike example led to his making an astonishing 482 saints over his career. They included good Samaritans and ethnic representatives, but observers noted an uptick in paragons of the austere faith that the world came to realize was his unbending law.

THE DOCTRINAL DISCIPLINARIAN

If one had to arbitrarily assign a tipping point in the American perception of the Pontiff, it might be 1994. The year began with plans for an ambitious tour, including a visit to the U.S. But the trip was postponed for health reasons, and in the interim, the Pope sent a pastoral letter to his bishops. The issue of female ordination, he declared, was an official nonissue. Not only could women not become priests, but there was to be "no more discussion" of the topic. Many laypeople were appalled that in the throes of a priest shortage, the Pope could so conclusively spurn so many willing to help. The Vatican claimed the decision was infallible--an apparent extension of that status beyond its historical boundaries that startled even some of the Pontiff's ardent supporters. That stern patriarch was the Pope, just as much as the genial pilgrim on the plane.

At the time of John Paul's election, Catholicism was still trying to discern how expansively to interpret the modernizing reforms commenced at Vatican II. The Pope pledged that the council's resolutions would guide his agenda, and some Americans hoped he might promote ideas of greater lay autonomy (under the banner of individual conscience) and hierarchical openness (collegiality). He did not. As it turned out, he favored only the "most exact execution" of the council's directives, rebuffing not only traditionalists who derogated it but also those who saw it as a blueprint for church democracy. For all his support of freedom in the outside world, he enforced an ever more stringent conformity within his own.