I remember, it had to be 1979, one of my literature
professors was bemoaning the lack of genuine heroes in our age, of accomplished
people with unsullied reputations, and he asked any of us to name
someone—politician, movie star, athlete, artist, writer—worthy of unequivocal
admiration. I said, rather off-handedly, because I didn’t really pay that much
attention to either popular culture or the Vatican, “What about the Pope?” My professor
deflated slightly, as if my answer were both surprising, annoying even, and a
little unfair, like, “well, of course the Pope.” Then I said, “no, I don’t mean
the Pope as Pope, I mean the guy himself. I mean, I hear he was a writer, an
artist, an intellectual, you know, kind of a Renaissance guy.” I couldn’t
remember his name exactly, Karol Wotyła, and certainly wouldn’t have been able
to pronounce it correctly even if I had known how to spell it (Vo-TEE-wa). And
this was before, I think, the assassination attempt, and before he became the
Pope and the saint we’ve come to understand him to have been. (Over the years I
would come to doubt his infallibility on any number of points, and I read he
wasn’t a particularly able administrator, but I never found reason to doubt his
faith or his integrity as a thinking, feeling human being.)
My authorities, Polish writers, among them Miłosz
and Andrzej Stasiuk, confirm that my early, uneducated guess, was about as
right as I’ve ever guessed on any exam question, ever. Miłosz’s poem, “Ode for
the Eightieth Birthday of Pope John Paul II,” fairly rings, peals in
affirmation, “Your portrait in our homes every day remind[s] us/How much one
man can accomplish and how sainthood works.” (710) Pretty unequivocal. And this
last month, on the Planty surrounding
the town square, a photographic exhibit of the Pope’s last years, particularly
his visits to Poland, almost haunts the heart of this city. The words from
Stasiuk’s Fado perfectly describe the
impact of this collection, on me anyway:
In this idiotic world where old age has become
outlawed, where sickness and weakness border on the criminal, where anyone who
lacks the strength to produce and consume becomes an outcast, where failure and
destitution are acceptable only in television reports from distant lands, he
had the courage to die with millions watching; he had the courage to show his
wasted body, his face constricted with suffering, his dragging feet, his death
throes. This was his last lesson at a time when he could no longer speak. (140)
He showed us how to die. I was talking about him
with Monika and wondering aloud how he could have been so powerful, so
effective a presence. She stopped me and said, “Josh, he was an actor.”
An act none of us could have followed. Peace be with you, Benedict.
