Defender of the Faith

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Believers lived the final chapter of John Paul II's papacy in simultaneous frustration at his decreasing ability to exert church leadership and admiration for his courage in the face of age, medical setbacks and Parkinson's syndrome. U.S. Catholics were confused and perturbed after priestly sexual abuse--and its enabling by at least some bishops--became a searing national issue in 2002. At the Pope's directives, the U.S. bishops' conference proposed a variety of get-tough measures, which were subsequently watered down in Rome. Observers wondered whether that was the most egregious example of papal preference for church authority over lay concerns or simply a function of his growing inability to stand up to his own bureaucracy. Similarly, some thought a younger John Paul would have more forcefully addressed the Sept. 11 attacks and his opposition to the allied invasion of Iraq. A few wished aloud that he would set an example for an age when medical intervention increasingly prolongs life but not vitality and become the first Pope in 590 years to retire.

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Instead, he was another kind of example. Once proud and private, John Paul showed a youth-obsessed world that illness and old age are not badges of shame. From a wheelchair, he gave audience after audience and celebrated Mass after public Mass, one of which was witnessed, with some awe, by Beverly Firmin of Augusta, Ga. "I was up close enough where I could see the drool just coming down," Firmin said, "... and I thought, 'How sad.' Then I thought, 'Really, how beautiful.' What a strong man it takes to let people see you in that condition."

LEGACY

Having appointed all but three of the 117 Cardinals who will choose his successor, John Paul, by sheer longevity, has assured that the church will deviate little immediately from his doctrinal course. He would have understood this as part of God's design. In his memoir Gift and Mystery, he makes a telling observation regarding the period in the 1940s when he attended a secret and illegal school for priests. "I could have been arrested any day and taken away to a concentration camp," he wrote later. "Sometimes I would ask myself: so many young people of my own age are losing their lives, why not me? Today I know that it was not mere chance." The trust that he was God's instrument, that he was not roughly predestined but specifically preserved to find his place at the turn of the millennium, lay behind his every act. In his evangelization, he was so terribly urgent; in his doctrine, so unbending; for the children, so utterly hopeful. He was unconscious of self. He was so full of energy and reluctant to acknowledge when he was spent. He was so Christlike in his sense of fate. He was so Pauline in his quest. He was so dedicated to his mission, so certain that this was God's plan and himself a part of it. He believed always that nothing less than salvation was at stake. •