April 07, 2005, 5:01 p.m.
Paying Respects to “Papa Wojtyla”
The reaction in Rome.

by Kishore Jayabalan

Vatican City — Rome is truly caput mundi this week.

I left the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace three months ago, escaping the ancient bureaucracy of the Roman Curia — full of Eminences, Excellencies, and Monsignors — to become the director of the Istituto Acton and its four young employees.

Over this time everyone in Rome, both inside and outside of the Vatican, knew that John Paul II’s time as Vicar of Christ was coming to an end. No one, however, wanted to talk too much about it, much less try to imagine what these days would be like in the Eternal City.

How are the Romans reacting to losing their bishop of nearly 27 years? How should they? With the news late last Thursday night that the pope had received the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, a noticeable depression settled in. I made several phone calls to friends who’d know more, all of whom were answering their cell phones well past midnight. Very few had any specific information on the pope’s condition, other than that he was gravely ill.

As more information about the septic shock and heart failure became available on Friday, people started making their way to Piazza San Pietro. They gathered under the windows of the papal apartments as they had many times before — in the past, to hear his Sunday Angelus, Mary’s “Yes” to the Angel of the Lord; this time to pay homage to and pray for Papa Wojtyla. Reverent silence was maintained all night and through most of Saturday, when the young made their voices heard, clapping and singing in unison to the pope as they had during World Youth Days for the past 20 years. The director of the Holy See Press Office noted that the pope struggled to tell the young people, “I have searched for you. You have come to me and I thank you.”

Further away, priests, nuns, and laypeople prayed rosaries, lit candles, or simply bowed their heads. The occasional Italian could be seen smoking a cigarette, the smoke wafting above the reverent crowd. When the bells of Saint Peter’s rang to announce the Pope’s death, everyone and everything stopped and prayed for the soul of the Holy Father. I was with a friend from Boston who was telling me about how she’d survived a year of chemotherapy and had to give thanks and pay respect; she had to make it to Rome, and she did.

Almost every season in Italy is a political season. Regional elections were held Sunday and Monday, and from what I could tell, the Left was quick to exploit the moment. Candidates’ faces are usually plastered wherever there’s a flat vertical space, some faces showing unbounded optimism, some with a come-hither, porn-star look. By Saturday morning, the “Democrats of the Left” had put up the pope’s face with the words “Good Man” written at the top, alongside a Papal quote criticizing politicians who govern “egoistically.” It must have been effective: The leftists won eleven of the 13 regions.

In spite of this overt politicization, the vast majority of Italians have behaved in an exemplary way. During the Jubilee Year of 2000, the Roman authorities knew they would have to deal with tremendous crowds, especially for the World Youth Day in August, which saw 2 million people gather for the Papal Mass outside of the city. This time around, it is estimated that a similar number of people will arrive in the next few days. Both the auto and pedestrian traffic to St. Peter’s passes directly beneath the windows of the Acton office, and so far everything has been moving along at a reasonable pace. As St. Peter himself must have known, the Italians have always been good at improvisation.\

As someone who has done many interviews for the English-language press over the last few days, I should also say that the Italian press understands the pope and his teachings much better than the Anglosphere seems to. On the BBC, CNN, and even Fox, the questions are always about the problems of the Church, women priests, and, of course, sex. Thank goodness I can also speak of my Baptism, Confirmation, and First Communion with Pope John Paul II in 1996 — that helps turn the conversation in a better direction. The Italians speak of their personal memories of Karol Wojtyla: the pope’s visiting the parishes of his diocese, meeting children, joking with Vatican officials, or giving a rare interview, usually early in his pontificate. It’s a much more human and a much more accurate picture of the man.

There are, no doubt, many challenges for the Church. My own experience is that Catholic social doctrine is much too little-known, and even when it is purported to be valued, it usually is interpreted a leftist way, as a “counter” to the Church’s position on marriage and family issues, which tend to the right. Most journalists try to identify John Paul II as a progressive or a conservative, labeling him as the political world sees things. When I appeared on CNN earlier in the week, my interviewer, Richard Quest, kept trying to get me to say that Pope John Paul II was a “capitalist” or a “free-trader.” Certainly, any fair reading of the ground-breaking Centesimus Annus recognizes “the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector,” all governed by moral law and acceptance of the truth. And for the Church, this truth is always about Jesus Christ, even when we are unaware of it.

This is the real story behind the moving scenes we are seeing in Rome.

— Kishore Jayabalan is director of the Istituto Acton (the Rome office of the Acton Institute).