Not just another personality cult

In honor of the canonization of Pope John Paul II, I am posting an article I wrote over a decade ago, after attending World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto. I will forever be grateful to have been in the presence of this extraordinary man, who inspired me, and whose words still hold me up and point me towards Christ. He was, as he was to so many of my generation, my spiritual Papa. 

For an hour I stood by a dirty white plastic guardrail, shifting my weight from foot to foot and waiting for my glimpse of the man in white who almost a million youth had come to see. My head pounded in the bright sun but I didn’t dare leave my spot.

I was there to see Pope John Paul II, the polish Pope. As a young man, he lived through both the Nazi and Communist occupations of Poland, yet he was able to say to us pilgrims at World Youth Day, “I have seen enough evidence to have unshakeable faith that no fear is so great that it can suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young. Never let that hope die. Stake your lives on it.”

My mother likes to tell about the week in 1985 when Pope John Paul II first came to visit Canada. I was four, and all week I was transfixed by the Pope’s image on the television. As long as the Pope was speaking, I was fascinated. But whenever a commentator started talking, or the programming changed, I would complain, “This is boring!”

Finally my mother asked me, “Why do you only like listening to that man?” pointing to the Holy Father.

With childish smugness I replied, “Because he loves me.”

Sixteen years later, I waited to see this man and reflected on what brought so many from all over the world to Toronto for World Youth Day 2002. It would be easy for a casual onlooker to dismiss our gathering as just another personality cult. With my handful of cameras and memorabilia, what made me different from any secular fan? Suddenly I was lifted out of my reverie by the swelling cheers of the crowd to my right. He was coming.

Somehow through my excitement I snapped five pictures, three for me and two on another camera. I noticed with wonder that a girl across from me was crying, and then felt answering tears on my own face. The pope smiled at us, an awkward, crooked slant, and waved a blessing as he passed, and then he was gone.

And then he was back again; seated on the stage in Downsview Park, his lectern across his lap, telling me why I was there with the answer I had somehow forgotten.

“My dear young friends. The Pope loves you.”

With all of the unsatisfied longings and confusion of our still open hearts, the youth love him in return. What sort of celebrity is this man twisted over by his frailties, this 82-year-old Parkinson’s patient? No celebrity at all, but a saint. The genuine article in the midst of all the faint imitations of love the world has tried to sell my generation and every generation before.

The Pope loves us. Yet, if the message ended there, it would be no message at all. The Pope loves us, and answers the longings of our hearts by directing us towards the One who loves perfectly:

“Dear Friends, spontaneously in your hearts, in the enthusiasm of your young years you know the answer, and you are saying it through your presence here this evening: Christ alone is the cornerstone on which it is possible solidly to build one’s existence. Only Christ – known, contemplated and loved – is the faithful friend who never lets us down, who becomes our traveling companion, and whose words warm our hearts.”

My week in Toronto for World Youth Day was one of the most incredible of my life. I met people from all corners of the world, sang at bus stops and in subway cars with Italians, Poles, and fellow Canadians. I waited in long lines of smiling people, and was part of the largest crowd I have ever witnessed. I attended seminars and concerts, prayed before the Blessed Sacrament, received my Lord in the Eucharist at a papal Mass, and made my confession among pilgrims and priests speaking a dozen languages. I witnessed Toronto, my provincial capital, taken by storm by hundreds of thousands of reverent and cheerful youth; and everyday Torontonians, caught up in the spirit, become, overnight, the most hospitable and friendly people on the face of the earth.

I am back at Ave Maria College now. I have a bracelet from Guatemala, a key chain from Korea, and a button from La Crosse, Wisconsin. I have a World Youth Day t-shirt and sixteen pages of notes in my journal. And I have the Holy Father’s words on my heart, a message not only for us youth, but also for the whole world.

“Never let the hope die. Stake your life on it.”

The Pope loves you.

This article appeared in the Teen Life section of Catholic Exchange on August 5, 2002.