Lessons in Hope

by George Weigel

  With three books in my briefcase, I walked from the college down to Trastevere and the Palazzo San Calisto, where Ryłko had his office, on the evening of September 24. We left on the dot of 6 p.m., but the Roman traffic was even more purgatorial than usual. We were due at 7:40, and at 7:42 we careened through the back entrance to Castel Gandolfo, near the papal farm with its lovely cows. As we wove our way toward the papal villa, a Vatican policeman stopped us so a car could pass. It was the Pope, returning from his evening swim in the pool he had built after Conclave II in 1978 (telling the critics who were carping about the cost that he had to get exercise and in any event the pool was cheaper than another conclave). So we were on Wojtyła Standard Time, and all was in order.

  There was another guest that evening, Father Stanisław Nagy, a Polish theologian and old friend of John Paul II; alas, I had only three books, all pre-autographed—one for the subject, one for Dziwisz, and one for Msgr. Mokrzycki. Fr. Nagy couldn’t have been more understanding, and as we walked into the dining room I showed Mokrzycki his copy, saying that he could use it for his English textbook and that Sister Emilia would be pleased.

  John Paul said grace, we all sat down, and then the thought occurred: what do you say to a subject on handing him his biography? “This is your life” didn’t seem right. So I took the book out of my briefcase, walked around the table, and handed it to John Paul while saying something completely anodyne like, “Well, here it is.” He simply looked at it and said, “My God… my God…”

  Dziwisz described our meal with enthusiasm as a “good country dinner” and informed me that the eggs came from the papal chickens, of which there were four hundred, who lived in harmony with twenty-six cows. As we ate, the papal secretary turned on the portable TV set in the dining room so we could watch the verdict in the trial of Giulio Andreotti, the old Christian Democratic warhorse with whom the resurgent Italian left was settling scores. The motivations in the prosecution were well understood in what was the only discussion of Italian politics I ever heard at the papal board.

  After that little drama played itself out, the Pope and his two secretaries started riffling through the book, beginning with the photographs—there was considerable chaffing of young Dziwisz with thick curly hair—and looking up names in the index. I walked back around the table and showed John Paul how the book was organized: the chronology and the thematic vignette that opened each chapter; the analysis of his magisterium and the key documents of the pontificate. Fr. Nagy professed amazement that this could be done in a little over three years, and I said that I had had a lot of help.

  As we were eating some wonderful local peaches for dolce, the Pope asked if I knew that he had mentioned kremowki, his favorite dessert, when he was in Wadowice a few months earlier. I assured him that, thanks to his efforts, the entire world knew about kremowki.

  Nagy wanted to know about the different reactions to the Pope in the United States and in Europe; I mentioned that I had seen the encyclical Evangelium Vitae on sale at a supermarket checkout counter, which I doubt would have happened in Europe. Dziwisz wanted to know if the book explored the Pope’s poetry; I said that it did, and that Marek Skwarnicki and Anna Karoń-Ostrowska (who had done her doctorate on Wojtyła’s poem “Radiation of Fatherhood”) had been very helpful in explaining it to me thematically. John Paul smiled broadly at the names—he had a special affection for Anna—and then Dziwisz went off on one of his riffs about my ability to pronounce Polish names (which I always found a little odd, in that pronunciation strikes me as the easiest part of Polish, the real challenges being the Slavic-based vocabulary and the complex grammar).

  When the peaches were done, Dziwisz brought in official documents for John Paul to sign—mostly parchments to heads of state acknowledging his acceptance of their ambassadors’ letters of credence. The Pope signed with a large Montblanc Meisterstück; as one document after another was laid before him, a weary John Paul looked over the table with a raised eyebrow, smiled at me, shrugged, and said, “Povero Papa!” (Poor Pope!)

  After the documents were finished, we said grace after meals, and as we began to leave the dining room, the Pope drew me into a big hug… and just, well, held on, for what seemed like two minutes, pressing my head firmly into the side of his face. When he finally let me go, Dziwisz murmured, “C’era un grande lavoro” (This was a great effort), to which Ryłko added, “Un lavoro d’amore” (A labor of love). The Pope, for his part, didn’t seem to want our meeting to end. He turned back after he had started to leave the room, gave me another long hug, asked to be remembered to Joan and the children, and then said, “Now the next time you come we must have a real talk.”

  John Paul went off to the chapel while Dziwisz and Ryłko walked me through the modest offices near the dining room. There, Dziwisz showed me some funny photos of the Pope receiving U2’s Bono earlier that day, playfully grabbing the singer’s trademark sunglasses and putting them on. “I have the negatives,” the ever-vigilant secretary noted. We then went to the chapel, with its frescoes of Polish scenes, which Dziwisz and Ryłko knew I wanted to see again. The Pope was finishing his postdinner prayer; I heard one small groan. While we were kneeling there, I noticed something new: a stunning Russian crowned icon resting beneath the altar, just where John Paul, kneeling at his priedieu, would see it. After the Pope left, Dziwisz picked up the icon so that I could examine it closely. It had been given to the Pope, he said, “so that he can take it to Moscow.” That priceless icon—the famous Kazanskaya, one of the great models of Marian iconography in Russian Orthodox art—would appear at a different papal table three and a half months later.

  On our way to Bishop Ryłko’s car, Bishop Dziwisz gave me another Polish bear hug and pronounced himself “completely happy” with what had happened over the past three and half years. It was an easier drive back to Rome than on the way out. Ryłko spoke with some amazement of the Andreotti trial, wondering how Italy could run so long “with all this chaos”: a good question, to which I don’t think either of us ever found an answer.

  ON THE ROAD

  THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND EUROPE, OCTOBER 1999–JANUARY 2000

  PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE HAD TAUGHT ME THAT ENGAGING THE argument surrounding a book was almost as important as writing it. But nothing had prepared me for the whirlwind in which I now found myself. Between late September and Christmas 1999 alone, I gave 46 lectures on Witness to Hope, usually accompanied by book signings, and 117 print, radio, and TV interviews. As I said to Bishop Dziwisz in a letter of November 21, “This is the ‘New Evangelization’ in a very concentrated form.” My Catholic audiences were, in the main, interested in seeing their pope “from inside,” while the tendency in media interviews, in both North America and Europe, was to focus on John Paul II’s public impact, although I tried to link the Pope’s role in world politics to his evangelical and moral leadership.

  I prepared two standard talks for presenting John Paul and the book to lecture-and-signing audiences: one, drawn from the book’s epilogue, summarized the chief accomplishments of the pontificate thus far; the other focused on what I called the “souls” of John Paul II—his Polish soul, his Carmelite soul, his Marian soul, and so forth. The latter presentation seemed to intrigue people more, as it got “inside” the Pope in a fresh way and, despite his obvious uniqueness, made him more accessible.

  The Paris press conference for the presentation of Witness to Hope was scheduled for 10 a.m. on October 29 and I had arrived in the City of Light four hours earlier; so I did the presser, as well as five interviews and a lecture, on adrenaline. The striking thing about the press conference was the questions raised about John Paul’s Theology of the Body, which gave me the opportunity to say a few things about the self-induced demographic winter into which Europe was descending. There was something wrong, I suggested, when an entire continent, richer, healthier, and more secure than ever before, was refusing to produce the human future in its most elemental sense—the next generation. John Paul II’s
analysis of the contraceptive mentality and its effect on culture was worth considering, I said, not least in a country that prided itself on its talent in the arts of amour.

  The next afternoon I flew to Rome, where I met my agent, Loretta Barrett, her sister Irene, and my publisher, Diane Reverand, for dinner at my favorite Roman trattoria, Armando’s, just off the Borgo Pio near the Vatican. Armando, his brother Berardo, and Armando’s daughter Orietta had become friends over the years, and I wanted to give them a copy of Witness to Hope as a small token of thanks for many kindnesses.

  At noon on November 2, the Barretts, Diane Reverand, Leonardo Mondadori and his daughter, and I met for a half hour with John Paul II. After I introduced the others to the Pope, John Paul turned to me with a big smile and said, “I am on page two hundred forty!” There was some talk of families and mutual acquaintances, and then Diane presented the Pope with a handsome leather-bound edition of Witness to Hope. Leonardo gave him a copy of the Italian edition, and we talked a bit about future language editions. On the way out, Bishop Dziwisz pulled me aside and asked me how things were going. “So far, so good,” I said, and while there were doubtless attacks to come, I was pleased with the enthusiasm with which so many people had received Witness to Hope and by their evident esteem and affection for its subject. I got the usual bear hug and the standard Stanislavian admonition: “Coraggio!” (Courage!)

  The weeks following my November 4 return to Washington were a blur: two trips to the West Coast for book lectures, signings, and interviews, sandwiched around a quick return to the East Coast for my parents’ golden wedding anniversary. I spent Thanksgiving 1999 in Madrid; there was no turkey but rather dinner with the king and queen’s son-in-law, who represented the royal family after the queen, who wanted to attend the book presentation, was told by the royal handlers that it would set a bad precedent—proof positive that all court bureaucracies, civil or ecclesiastical, are much the same. The Spanish presentation was well handled by the book’s Spanish editor, Deborah Blackman; interest in Biografía de Juan Pablo II: Testigo de Esperanza was further stimulated by Joaquín Navarro-Valls’s coming to Madrid for the event.

  Joan, Gwyneth, Monica, Stephen, and I flew to Rome on December 22 to begin the Great Jubilee of 2000 with John Paul as he opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s before Christmas Midnight Mass. The pyrotechnic cope the Pope wore for the occasion got everyone’s attention, but the surprises of that Christmastide were not over. On the evening of St. Stephen’s Day we were having dinner with friends when one of them said, out of nowhere, “Have you seen what the Cuban embassy to the Vatican is faxing around town?” I had to reply in the negative, as I wasn’t on the Cubans’ fax distribution list. So my friend left the table and brought back a copy of the fax, which he proceeded to translate with some glee.

  One of Fidel Castro’s people in Madrid had gotten the Spanish edition of Witness to Hope and had gone immediately to the section of the book on the 1998 papal pilgrimage to Cuba, which he sent back to Havana. Fidel took great offense at what I had written, and in a multihour harangue to foreign journalists, El Jefe devoted several minutes to denouncing the book and its Yanqui author in colorful language. The Cuban embassy to the Holy See was faxing a protest around to everyone on its list, with the presidential denunciation appended. I was, of course, delighted, and one of my Cuban relatives back in Baltimore had a grand time translating the denunciation in full.

  On December 29, the family and I redeployed to Castelgandolfo, the town. Earlier that year, it occurred to me that it might be fun to begin the Great Jubilee in Rome with some of the graduates of the Centesimus Annus seminar. I expected that perhaps two dozen would attend; in the event, well over a hundred did, so we took over the University of Dallas Rome campus in Due Santi, just below the town of Castelgandolfo. The seminar graduates stayed there and our reunion events were held in the campus auditorium, while the faculty was housed up the hill at the Hotel Bucci, overlooking Lake Albano.

  It all worked very well: until New Year’s Eve, that is. Monsignor David Malloy, who worked for Bishop Harvey in the Prefecture of the Papal Household, had procured tickets to the annual New Year’s Eve Te Deum in St. Peter’s for everyone in our group, so we took three buses into Rome and parked them at the North American College. I told everyone that they were on their own after the Te Deum but should be back at the college, ready to return to Due Santi, at 1 a.m. That would give people time to see the Pope bring in the calendrical new year, celebrate a bit, and get back up the Janiculum to the buses.

  After the Te Deum—during which one of our company’s children, held out into the basilica’s aisle, received a papal smooch that made the papers—and a leisurely dinner at Armando’s, my family and a few faculty colleagues ventured out into the New Year’s Eve maelstrom and made our way to St. Peter’s Square for the countdown to 2000—and who knew what, the end of the world perhaps, as computers went awry.

  The countdown ended, the Pope wished everyone a good new year from the window of the papal apartment, and our group worked its way in threes and fours back up to NAC and the buses. But while the Y2K bug turned out to be another example of media-driven hysteria, Something Very Bad was in store for some of us.

  One of our drivers had enjoyed his dinner too well (or so we surmised) and was AWOL. But with a bit of squeezing, we managed to fit everyone into the remaining two buses, whose drivers were on hand. In the biblical manner, though, one was wise and the other foolish. The wise driver took a back route through Trastevere, away from the now-riotous city center, and arrived at the University of Dallas campus at a reasonable hour, about 2:30 a.m. or so. The foolish driver took the standard route—or tried to—and got us utterly gridlocked in a carnival of craziness: Romans were abandoning their cars in the streets, there was no traffic control, and we went through Rome at something less than a snail’s pace.

  We said the rosary. We practiced the Polish Christmas carol the seminar graduates would sing to John Paul II a few days later. We tried “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” We said another rosary. The bus was completely packed; I was sitting in the doorway, and someone finally dubbed us the “Bus of Martyrs.” We got to Due Santi and Castelgandolfo at 5 a.m. I immediately canceled the 9 a.m. lecture scheduled for that morning and had two fingers’ worth of scotch, nobly saved for me by Fr. Richard Neuhaus and our friend and colleague Jody Bottum: the first and only time in my life I had a drink before the sun was over the yardarm.

  Before the reunion gathered in Rome, I wrote Bishop Dziwisz, asking him for the favor of a ten-minute meeting with John Paul for our group. Ten minutes only, I swore: we’ll gather in the Sala Clementina, the seminar graduates will sing a Polish Christmas carol, the Pope will give his blessing—that’s all. On that basis Dziwisz agreed, and the audience was set for January 3 at noon.

  My Polish colleagues and I prepared sheets with the Christmas carol Wśród Nocnej Ciszy (The Silence of the Night) in phonetically rendered Polish and all seemed ready. Everyone got into the Vatican without difficulty and we arranged ourselves in the Sala Clementina as a kind of chorus facing the Pope’s chair. A few minutes after noon, in came John Paul II and Bishop Dziwisz, accompanied by a Swiss Guard or two. Fr. Maciej Zięba and I greeted the Pope, the group sang the carol—not too badly, with the pontiff singing along—and then John Paul said, “I want to meet them all.” Thinking of my promise of “ten minutes, period,” I didn’t dare look at Dziwisz but stationed myself to one side of John Paul; Fr. Zięba stood at his other side, and we introduced about 150 people to the beaming Pope, who had a blessing and a rosary for everyone. Dziwisz, far from being out of sorts, saw what a good time John Paul was having and asked Zięba, “Can the faculty come to lunch tomorrow?”

  When the last person had been introduced and the last rosary bestowed, there was a group photo, later to appear in L’Osservatore Romano—and on his way out, John Paul said to me, “I’m on page four hundred [and something]!”

  At 1:15 p.m. on January 4,
Mike and Karen Novak, Fr. Neuhaus, Fr. Zięba, Joan, and I rendezvoused at the Bronze Doors and were taken up to the papal apartment for lunch; Bishop Ryłko joined us. The apartment was overflowing with Christmas decorations, including a huge crèche that filled one end of the main hallway. In the dining room, Dziwisz sat me next to him at one end of the table, so that he and I could talk sotto voce about how Witness to Hope was being received; when I mentioned a cranky review by Archbishop Rembert Weakland, Dziwisz said not to worry, “il suo tempo è passato” (his time is over). As dolce was being finished, the papal secretary turned to me and quietly asked, “Do you think the ladies would like to see the icon?” I said that I thought everyone would, so off he went to the chapel and returned with the Kazanskaya. “Explain what it is,” he whispered. “If I did, everyone would get too nervous,” I replied. So without explanation, we simply passed the priceless icon of Our Lady of Kazan down the table, one set of hands to another, as if we were examining a Christmas present or an ornate box of chocolates. John Paul repeated what he had said at Castel Gandolfo in September: he had told Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksii II that he wanted to return this jewel of Russian Orthodox art and devotion to Moscow, in person. (The old KGB man Aleksii wasn’t having any of that, alas.) Later, when I explained the icon, its provenance, and its significance to my friends, they were stunned, both by the history and by the fact that we had passed it down the table so casually.

  At the end of the meal, Bishop Dziwisz distributed the usual gifts, with Neuhaus and Zięba getting pectoral crosses left over from the recent Synod for Europe; handing the crosses, made for bishops, to the two priests, Dziwisz wisecracked, “You will have to wait for the chains.”

  WISDOM PERSONIFIED