12 Apr 2005 |
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 By Crispin Oduobuk Group Literary Editor of the Trust papers, Abuja, Nigeria Across the rewritable gap of history, say a hundred or even fifty years from now, it is anybody?s guess how the late Pope John Paul II would be seen, especially in the West. The fairly reliable BBC News, in an obituary published at its website, paid glowing tribute to a man who is certain to remain one of the most talked about in modern times. ?Throughout his reign,? the obituary concluded, ?his work to maintain the dignity of mankind against what he saw as the dangers of modern life, together with his personal magnetism, made Pope John Paul II one of the most remarkable men of his times.?Indeed, there is no glossing over the simple fact that Pope John Paul II was an outstanding individual. And perhaps few things reflect the phenomenal nature of John Paul II as the sheer number of people who witnessed his burial. Hundreds of thousands of people were at St Peter?s Square in the Vatican for his funeral which was held last Friday April 8th 2005. Equally striking, about two billion people, roughly one-third of humanity, are estimated to have watched the event on television. The Canadian Press reports that Philadelphia Cardinal, Justin Rigali, who?d worked at the Vatican for years and had attended three other papal funerals said, ?This is the fourth funeral for a pope that I personally participated in. I think this exceeds everything. This is the most extraordinary thing that ever happened.? Extraordinary, no doubt, but what would tomorrow make of a man so distinctly apart as Pope John Paul II? Would there be a peculiar twist in the tale as time goes on? It is an issue worth exploring even if there?s no way of knowing for sure what the future portends. For even today, despite the fact that there is a universal out-pouring of emotion at the passing of the Holy Father of the Roman Catholic Church, there is enough on the ground to point to the probability that a time may come when history may not embrace the late pope whose conservatism in an age of unprecedented change was as strong perhaps only as his pacifism. Yet all this is relative. History, as it is well known, depends on who writes it. And in a world where many are learning they had better write their own stories themselves, pluralism is likely to deepen. And then it may be a case of ?our pope? against ?their pope? when it is really the same person both sides are talking about. Ironically, such a divide would be made somewhat easy by the fact that the late Pope John Paul II, who was born Karol Wojtyla in Poland on May 18, 1920, did not easily lend himself to stereotyping. Yes, he was a traditionalist who would rather keep the church and state poles apart. But he was also a dogged fighter for the rights and freedoms of oppressed peoples. Indeed, this explains why in the Arab world, Pope John Paul II is being remembered with some fondness and emotion primarily because he stood up for the rights of Palestinians. His opposition to the Iraqi war also got him high marks in the region as did his move towards encouraging purposeful discourse between Islam and Christianity. It was partly in pursuit of this policy of peaceful interfaith engagement that Nigeria?s Vatican-based Cardinal Francis Arinze is said to have helped arrange the pope?s first-ever visit to a mosque in 2000. Significantly, the mosque, located in Damascus, Syria, is said to contain the gravesite of the forerunner of Jesus Christ, John the Baptist. As always, Christianity and Islam seem to interlock at junctures many would never have imagined.Exploring ways of using this primordial link to develop better understanding between the two faiths is one area that should never be a matter of contention whenever the late pope?s life story is retold. However such brilliant triumphs are?in the opinion of some Westerners?dimmed by issues that may well pose major problems to the Catholic Church following the pope?s death.These matters are neither straightforward nor particularly complicated. Yet they resonate with a peculiarity that does not stray too far from some of the challenges that historians would face when analysing the life of the late Bishop of Rome. The late Pope John Paul II was almost instinctively pro-life in virtually every circumstance. But it?s a moot point whether his hard stance against the use of condoms even within marriage has not caused considerable damage, especially in places like Africa, Asia and Latin America where his word was highly revered by adherents of the Catholic faith who make up quite a large number of the population of these areas. In the West, some, without leaving the Church, openly broke ranks with the pope on this and other issues.A foremost example, Frances Kissling, who is President of Catholics for a Free Choice in the USA, has not allowed the pope?s death to temper her criticism of him. While world leaders have been pouring encomiums on Pope John Paul II as they are wont to on any other leader who passes away, Kissling is still spitting fire, indicating that it would take quite some work to heal the rift in at least the Western arm of the Church. Just hours after the pope?s death, Kissling wrote, ?this papacy was a profound disappointment for those who believe that Christ's message of liberation, human freedom and more democracy should apply not just to the world, but to the church itself. In the light of the pope?s personal embrace of suffering, it is hard to reconcile his seeming lack of compassion for those in the church who have suffered so much at the hands of his administration: for married priests, for women who have lost their lives and fertility and health in botched abortions, for women who cannot feed the children they have, for theologians who struggle with many aspects of church teaching, for those who minister to people with AIDS, for gay Catholics who long to be welcomed at the altar, for those sexually abused by priests, for women who are called to ordination?. The list is almost endless.?Rather uncharitably, Kissling took what may well be regarded as a below-the-belt dig at the late pope by reopening the damaging issue of sexual abuse of boys and young men by priests, lamenting that the pope who met with so many from around the world, ?refused to meet with a single victim of clerical sexual abuse.?Perhaps thinking slightly better of her criticisms, she added, ?These blind spots, where charity, compassion and justice are concerned, were not overshadowed by his public commitment to the transformation of unjust systems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, nor by his episodic and selective commitments to human rights throughout the world.?Yet not even Kissling can be totally blind to the towering greatness of Pope John Paul II, for, in recognition of his stellar role, she wrote: ?Like many Catholics, I have found Pope John Paul II?s last year or so of public suffering more profoundly moving than any other aspect of his papacy. The example of humility in one who is powerful, one whose power has partly been his charisma and communication skills, has triggered a spiritual reflection on the meaning of my own life. For the pope to remain in public when that power had largely left him and to allow the world to see him struggle physically while maintaining both dignity and passion was a great gift.? Nothing the likes of Kissling would say can undo the excitement with which much of the world welcomed the late Pope John Paul II. In Africa for instance, the late Pope John Paul II had a presence that belied the fact that he lived an ocean away from the continent. When he visited Nigeria in 1998, this writer remembers standing in the middle of a surging crowd, seven-deep in places, lining the road from Area 10 all the way down to Area 1 in Abuja. And they were huge crowds in other parts of the city too. The striking thing, as the pope?s motorcade literally strolled down Festival Road as it was then called, was that Nigerians of every tribe and faith were waving wildly and cheering on the smiling pontiff in his glass-encased pope-mobile.This scene was replayed in virtually all the countries the late pope visited in his extensive travels. Such was his ability to unite and ignite people that, without much overt propaganda, people now generally accept Pope John Paul II as the man in a white robe who was a major catalyst of the events that ultimately led to the collapse of communism. In John Paul II & The Fall of Communism, Jane Barnes and Helen Whitney write ??the revolution launched by John Paul's return to Poland is one that conjures roads lined with weeping pilgrims, meadows of peaceful souls singing hymns, and most of all, of people swaying forward as one?reaching for the extraordinary man in white as he is borne through their midst. ?What is the greatest, most unexpected event of the 20th century?? James Carroll asked in his interview with us. ?Isn?t it that the Soviet Empire was brought down non-violently? Isn?t John Paul II?s story part of it?? Again and again, people told us that it was. ?John Paul II?s 1979 trip was the fulcrum of revolution which led to the collapse of Communism. Timothy Garton Ash put it this way, ?Without the Pope, no Solidarity. Without Solidarity, no Gorbachev. Without Gorbachev, no fall of Communism.? (In fact, Gorbachev himself gave the Kremlin?s long-term enemy this due, ?It would have been impossible without the Pope.?) It was not just the Pope's hagiographers who told us that his first pilgrimage was the turning point. Sceptics who felt Wojtyla was never a part of the resistance said everything changed as John Paul II brought his message across country to the Poles. And revolutionaries, jealous of their own, also look to the trip as the beginning of the end of Soviet rule. ?It took time; it took the Pope's support from Rome?some of it financial; it took several more trips in 1983 and 1987. But the flame was lit. It would smoulder and flicker before it burned from one end of Poland to the other. Millions of people spread the revolution, but it began with the Pope's trip home in 1979. As General Jaruzelski [former head of the Polish Communist Party] said, ?That was the detonator?.? That ?detonator?, in a manner of speaking, was no ordinary man by whatever measure. In 1942, while a world war raged on and his native Poland was under the boot of the Nazis, he began training in an underground seminary to become a priest, a move that would have cost him his life had the occupying powers discovered it. Ordained in 1946, he was surprisingly elected pope in 1978. In 1981 he survived an assassination attempt that nonetheless left his body in pain almost continuously until his death. Indeed, even his passing away was no easy feat. As the Italian newspaper La Republica reports, the late pope?s personal physician, Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, recounted that John Paul II ?passed away slowly, with pain and suffering which he endured with great human dignity. The Holy Father could not utter a single word before passing away.? And yet despite his great suffering, his dignity was not compromised in any way. He left this world a fulfilled man who had carved a clear mark on the record stone of human existence.This, then, is one way the great man would be remembered. And regardless of how it pans out across the unknowable time span of history, there are many who would wish that the future be kind to Pope John Paul II, no matter his faults as a human being, for none who breathes can claim to be without blame Oduobuk is the Group Literary Editor of the Trust papers |
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