Lessons in Hope

by George Weigel

  Although the Pope looked somewhat better than I expected, the conversation was difficult as his hearing had gotten worse. So everything I said was translated into Polish by Archbishop Ryłko, which seemed easier for John Paul to hear. We spoke as usual of mutual friends in Kraków, with a little banter about my having becoming “Środowisko honoris causa”; as always, the Pope perked up when the discussion turned to his favorite trekking sites in the Tatras. There was considerable satisfaction expressed over President Bush’s reelection, which, like others in Rome, John Paul and Ryłko seemed to read through the prism of Rocco Buttiglione’s recent trials.

  Rocco had been nominated as justice minister of the European Community but was rejected on obviously anti-Catholic grounds, the false charge being that he, an orthodox Catholic, could not justly administer human rights laws with respect to homosexual persons. It was a vicious canard but it killed the nomination, and my dinner companions seemed to find in Bush’s reelection evidence that the United States was not as Christophobic (to borrow Jewish legal scholar Joseph Weiler’s neologism) as Europe. It was also clear from this part of the conversation that the key people in the pontificate knew that a President John Kerry—a pro–Roe v. Wade Catholic—would be bad news for the Church in America.

  The Pope asked again about a Chinese edition of Witness to Hope, which I reassured him was in the works, as was a Ukrainian edition. We talked a bit about Gwyneth and Rob’s wedding, the Kraków summer seminar’s longevity (which John Paul much appreciated), and my next book, The Cube and the Cathedral. I’d brought a spiral-bound copy of the page proofs for John Paul, who seemed very pleased with the dedication: Amicis Crocoviensibus Meis in Corde Europae (To My Cracovian Friends in the Heart of Europe)—both for the content and the Latin, a language he loved and whose demise he regretted.

  At 8:40 p.m. the Pope declared dinner finished; it was almost like the old days, with him slapping the arms of the chair and getting up following grace after meals—except that he could no longer get up. I walked around to his side of the table, went down on one knee for his blessing, and said, of the rest of his story, “Holy Father, I promise you that, if you don’t bury me, I’ll finish what I started.” We looked into each other’s eyes; I kissed his ring (for the first time, I think); and then we parted, for what turned out to be the last time.

  FOURTEENTH STATION

  ROME, MARCH–APRIL 2005

  IN EARLY 2005, WITH THE ABLE ASSISTANCE OF MY COLLEAGUE Carrie Gress, I completed work on a three-hundred-page briefing book for NBC News to guide coverage of the death of the Pope and the election of his successor: biographical details on John Paul II, the ritual of a papal wake and funeral, explanations of conclave procedures, vignettes from previous conclaves, a glossary, and a profile of each member of the College of Cardinals. With a platform position secured on the lawn of the Pontifical Urban University above St. Peter’s Square, things seemed to be in order for what all involved in NBC’s planning knew was coming sooner rather than later.

  The last act of the drama began on February 1, 2005. I was driving to Annapolis to lecture at the US Naval Academy when my cell phone rang. It was Phil Alongi, head of NBC News Specials in New York, calling with a rumor that John Paul II had just been taken to the hospital. I pulled over to the side of US Route 50 and called Archbishop Harvey, who confirmed that the Pope had been taken to the Policlinico Gemelli but had no other details. My Naval Academy talk was interrupted several times by calls from 30 Rockefeller Plaza, relaying one rumor after another; I finally said I would be out-of-pocket for the next forty-five minutes until I finished my lecture and answered questions.

  My commitment to the midshipmen completed, I was driving back home when Phil called again and asked me to go to the NBC bureau in northwest Washington. I stayed there until close to midnight before going home for a few hours of sleep and then returning to the bureau in the morning, staying until late that evening. By February 3 it was clear that the Pope was not in imminent danger of death and things calmed down for a few weeks as the Pope returned to the Vatican. Then the entire media circus repeated itself on February 24–25, when John Paul was taken back to the Gemelli for a tracheotomy, returning to the Vatican on Sunday, March 13.

  A week after the Pope’s second trip to the hospital, I flew to Rome to help finalize NBC’s preparations for the funeral Mass and the conclave to follow—and to test out the apartment near the Vatican I would use during those days, which was kindly offered to me by Mother Mary Quentin Sheridan, whose Alma Mercy sisters were given it by a benefactor, John Ambrose. On the evening I arrived I was to have dinner with Archbishop Harvey, but rather than meeting as usual at the Sant’Anna Gate to the Vatican he said he’d meet me at the apartment, four blocks away on the Borgo Pio. When I came downstairs to meet him, I understood why: he had a large shopping bag for me, and therein lay a tale.

  Cardinal Jan Schotte had died on January 10 without leaving a will. There were many personal effects to sort out and, as usual, the problem landed in Archbishop Dziwisz’s lap. Dziwisz, in turn, told Archbishop Harvey to see to it. While figuring out what to do with some furniture and thousands of books, Harvey made a fortuitous discovery. It seemed that the late cardinal, while stationed in Washington in the 1960s, had developed a taste for bourbon—and there were three prime examples of Kentucky’s finest left in the deceased’s apartment. Harvey, knowing my taste for bourbon and my friendship with Schotte, figured that I might as well be the intestate eminence’s beneficiary in the matter of these goods, which he was delivering into my care. I received them gratefully and stashed them in out-of-the-way corners of the apartment, thinking they might prove handy in the not-too-distant future and not wanting to subject other guests to temptation in the interim.

  It was the fourth week of Lent, so on Tuesday I joined the station church pilgrims from the North American College at San Lorenzo in Damaso, the proto-Vatican where St. Jerome helped Pope St. Damasus I compile the first Roman martyrologies—a fitting place to ponder the life of the martyr-confessor struggling for breath and speech in the Policlinico Gemelli. On Wednesday, the stational Mass was at St. Paul Outside the Walls. There, I had a brief talk with the Polish ambassador to the Holy See, Hanna Suchocka, who said of the Pope, “This is his Via Crucis and the press doesn’t understand that.” But my NBC colleagues did, and their seriousness of purpose reflected that understanding. Our personnel preparations were completed by my introducing the senior producers to various Roman friends whose commentary I thought would enhance our coverage. I also discussed conclave possibilities with several colleagues in the Roman media and had a long session in the Borgo Pio apartment with Cardinal George Pell, pondering the epic pontificate that was manifestly drawing to a close and the post–John Paul II future.

  In the early afternoon of March 9 I was walking up to the Sant’Anna Gate and a lunch meeting with Monsignor Peter Wells of the Secretariat of State when I ran into Archbishop Ryłko. We spoke briefly of the Pope’s condition and then he asked, “Does Stanislao know you’re in Rome?”—meaning Archbishop Dziwisz. I said no, I hadn’t called as I didn’t want to add to the confusion at the hospital, which the press had turned into a bedlam. Ryłko suggested that, if I wanted to visit the Pope in the Gemelli, I should just call Dziwisz. I thought a moment and said, “Thank you, but I think not. It would just be another burden. Tell the Holy Father and Archbishop Dziwisz that I’m thinking of them and praying for them.”

  John Paul and I had had a good last meeting on December 15. There was no need to say anything more. We were united in a solidarity that didn’t require immediate physical presence.

  I flew back to Washington on March 13 and two days later had lunch with Mike Gerson and Pete Wehner in the White House mess; these two senior aides to President Bush were great admirers of John Paul II and wanted to know what was actually going on, as they were helping prepare the statements the president would make when John Paul died. The Pope returned to the Vatican and the death watch continued, even as
he underwent physical therapy to prepare himself for giving his blessing, aloud, from the papal apartment window on Easter Sunday. Good Friday, March 25, produced the iconic photograph of John Paul II’s last days: the Pope, watching the traditional Via Crucis at the Roman Coliseum on a TV set in his chapel, shot from behind while embracing a large crucifix. I spent several hours the next morning explaining to various segments of the Today program that, no, the shot wasn’t framed that way because the Pope looked too awful; the shot embodied what he had been saying for over twenty-six years, which was not “Look at me” but “Look at Jesus Christ.” Throughout the morning, Katie Couric could not have been more sympathetic in posing the question and letting me answer it in something more than a sound bite.

  On Easter Sunday, I called Piotr and Teresa Malecki in Kraków and asked what they thought of the drama playing itself out in Rome, where the Pope had been unable to speak that morning yet blessed the crowd again and again, silently. Piotr had known Karol Wojtyła since 1948, when a young priest befriended a nine-year-old boy who’d lost both parents during the war; he thought for a moment and said, “I think they’re finally beginning to understand him.”

  Shortly after that conversation the thought came to me—“He’s going to die on Divine Mercy Sunday.” There was no rational reason for this; I had no special knowledge of the medical situation. But I was suddenly certain that the drama would end, as it should, on the day John Paul II gave the entire Church as a way of healing the wounds of the twentieth century and as a reminder of what was essential for a nobler human future.

  With the Pope sinking, I spent most of the late afternoon and evening of March 31 at the NBC studio. About 11 p.m., 30 Rock called and said I should go home, as a mobile studio was being sent to my house. By the time I got to North Bethesda, the crew was setting up in my living room; I showed them where the refrigerator, the pantry, and the bar were, invited them to help themselves, and said that I was going to bed for four hours.

  On Friday morning I did various Today show “hits” from my living room. At 10:30, Phil Alongi called to say they were bringing me to New York by car and that I should be ready to leave in an hour. Joan had thoughtfully packed my bags a week earlier, thinking that I was going to have to move quickly when the time came, and after Carrie Gress brought some materials I needed from my office, I left for New York and went straight to work on arrival, talking with science correspondent Robert Bozell about the way this was going to end medically (on which I had been briefed by my brother, a physician), making various appearances on MSNBC, and getting to the hotel on Central Park South close to midnight.

  At 3:15 a.m. on April 2 my mobile rang; it was an overnight producer at NBC, saying that Joaquín Navarro-Valls would be holding a press conference at 11 a.m. Rome time, and would I please be ready to leave at 4:15 for a remote studio—even 30 Rock was closed at that hour—in case any commentary was required. None was, so I went back to the hotel, had breakfast, and returned to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, bags in hand. After various MSNBC appearances, I was feeling the need for sustenance and asked Elena Nachmanoff, who was in charge of my NBC contract, if she could find a corned beef on rye for me. She came through handsomely, and after inhaling half a massive sandwich from the Carnegie Deli I went to Phil Alongi’s office, hoping to take a nap on his couch.

  No sooner had my head hit the cushion that substituted for a pillow than another producer came in, told me John Paul would die shortly, and hustled me down to the set of NBC Nightly News, where Brian Williams was in the anchor chair. Brian and I had worked well together before and he expressed his sympathy for my personal loss before we began the broadcast. When the news came through that John Paul II had died at 2:37 our time, we went into an hour and a half of live coverage, talking with eminent personalities around the world after Brian asked me for some personal reflections. I said that while I, like millions of others, felt a little orphaned by John Paul’s death, I was also powerfully struck by its providential timing, just as the Church began to celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, which was so prominent a theme in John Paul’s life and pontificate. It was a life of incredible drama, I continued, beyond the imagination of any Hollywood scriptwriter. Yet there was a common thread in it—his rock-solid confidence in God’s guidance of his life. That confidence, I concluded, made him the freest man in the world.

  One striking comment on our broadcast came from Henry Kissinger. Over the previous weeks, I had said in several interviews that I thought the Pope embodied the human drama of the second half of the twentieth century in a singular way, as Winston Churchill had for the first; Kissinger went me one better and said that it would be hard to imagine anyone with a greater impact on the entire twentieth century than John Paul II. Zbigniew Brzezinski took a different tack, suggesting that Karol Wojtyła’s life spoke to a global yearning for spiritual truth at a moment when much of Western culture was feeding the world stones.

  I felt drained when I walked back into the control room after the special report concluded. Several producers and technicians embraced me and thanked me, one saying, “We know what that cost you.” I asked for a fifteen-minute break to call my family, and did so from the 50th Street entrance to 30 Rock. It was the one time I choked up.

  Brian, his producer, and I were leaving that night for Rome via London, so I went to a 6 p.m. memorial Mass that was hastily organized at nearby St. Patrick’s Cathedral before being put into an NBC car and sent out to John F. Kennedy Airport in a driving rainstorm. On the way, Fr. Scott Newman called from Greenville, South Carolina, and said, “I’ve just had the most remarkable three hours of my priesthood.” Fr. Newman had left our television coverage to go to St. Mary’s Church and hear regularly scheduled Saturday afternoon confessions. Six people who hadn’t been to confession in decades were so moved by John Paul’s death that they came to church to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As Fr. Newman said, “It’s only been four hours since he died and the grace is already pouring out.”

  Jogging through Heathrow to catch our connecting flight to Rome, I scooped up whatever newspapers and magazines I could to get the immediate reactions and was touched to see Billy Graham describing John Paul as “unquestionably the most influential voice for morality and peace in the world over the past one hundred years.” (The next day, I ran into Dr. Graham’s daughter coming down from the Today set; we talked briefly about the providential coincidence of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła having given permission for Billy Graham to preach in St. Anne’s Collegiate Church in Kraków, just before he left for the conclave that would elect him pope.)

  When we got to Rome, I was driven by NBC car to the Borgo Pio apartment, chatting with the driver about the extraordinary crowds already beginning to arrive. One of the Mercy sisters met me, got me into the apartment, and gave me the keys; I’d just started to unpack when my Italian mobile rang and it was Joe Alicastro, calling from our “studio” and “newsroom” on the top floor of the great parcheggio built inside the Janiculum for the Great Jubilee of 2000. “Welcome to Rome,” he said. “Get up here right away. We need you.” Slightly stunned, I said, “Joe, remind me, we’re doing television, right?” “Of course we’re doing television,” he replied. “Are you nuts?” To which I said, “No, but I look like hell, so could I shower and shave before coming over?” The kindly Joe agreed.

  After taping a segment for Monday’s Today program, I had a late dinner with Phil Alongi and others on the NBC team at Da Roberto, a block from my quarters. After dinner, I did justice to Jan Schotte’s bourbon and went to bed, looking forward to my first decent night’s sleep in four days. It was warm, so I opened the windows in the apartment’s front bedroom, thinking I’d get a nice breeze in the back bedroom, where I was sleeping.

  That was not a good idea. I went to bed about 12:30 a.m. and fell asleep at 1:00. Five and a half hours later, I was wide awake, thanks to a racket coming through the open front windows. I jumped out of bed and stormed through the apartment to the front bedroom windows. Then my jaw
dropped. The entire Borgo Pio was a solid mass of humanity, from the Vatican down to the Castel Sant’Angelo, and from one side of the street to another; thousands of people were anticipating where the queues would form to view John Paul II’s body, which would be taken from the Apostolic Palace to St. Peter’s that evening. The doors to the apartment building opened toward the street, and I wondered just how I was going to get out—or if I was going to be able to get out.

  That speculation was interrupted by a phone call from Archbishop Harvey. I’d called him the night before: I wanted to pay my respects to John Paul; given NBC obligations, I didn’t have time to wait in a long line; what could he do? As usual, Harvey knew exactly what to do, and when he called Monday morning he said that one of his staff, Monsignor Alfred Xuereb, would meet me at the Sant’Anna Gate at 10 a.m. and I would be taken to the Sala Clementina, where the late Pope was temporarily lying in repose on a catafalque.

  I somehow got out of the building and worked my way through the dense crowd to the Sant’Anna Gate, marveling at the courtesy of those I asked to let me pass—another example of what Fr. Newman called the “grace pouring out.” Msgr. Xuereb and I found each other and I was taken into the Apostolic Palace and put at the front of the queue outside the Sala Clementina. When the door to the audience hall opened, I walked to the foot of the bier, said a brief prayer, and then looked at the man whose life had so changed my own.