One Year Later: Remembering Pope John Paul II

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12080643

Perhaps 'Saint John Paul the Great?'
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12083308/
A year after death, former pontiff is on the fast track to sainthood

[Live Vote: What Do You Think About Sainthood for John Paul?]

[Cause for Beatification & Canonisation of John Paul II]

[Tu Es Petrus: Pope John Paul II]

[Remembering a Great]
I had refused to be confirmed in high school, had stopped going to Mass, and considered the Catholic faith one among other undesirable '70s eccentricities of church ladies in Tucson, Arizona. I had as much interest in it as I had in macramé.

Through a bizarre set of circumstances, I transferred into a great books program in San Francisco for college. I tried to fit in as best I could with the hardcore Catholics I was surprised to find there.

In September of that year — 1987 — the pope was visiting San Francisco, and a group of students were going to Geary Avenue to see him pass by. Weird, but whatever — I was trying to fit in. I went along.

There was no good place to stand so I climbed up a small, slender tree to get a better view — and to add some element of interest to the pointless thing we were doing.Then I saw the pope pass by. You've heard the experience described elsewhere. It caught me totally by surprise. How watching a small man behind bullet-proof glass in a moving vehicle could touch me so profoundly I still have a hard time understanding. I remember sitting in the tree after he passed, numb. He had blessed the crowd. It had worked.

My life changed direction after that — slowly, to be sure, but unmistakably. And now, most of my career has been spent, simply, doing what the man I saw from the tree wanted done. I was like Zacchaeus. John Paul had shown me Christ.

On the night the pope died, I asked my wife, April, when she first saw him. It was September, 1987. She was clueless about the Catholic faith, but was brought to an event with the Pope. Her youth group got seats right next to a little stage where an armless singer, Tony Melendez, played a song for the pope. April and her friends were shocked when John Paul jumped off the stage and walked over to embrace him. He changed her life's trajectory, too. After that experience, she chose my school in San Francisco in order to learn more about her faith.

I was startled. Here we were, two West Coasters sitting in the darkness of a cold Connecticut spring night, with the Pope's image flickering on the screen and our six children sleeping upstairs, and all of it — that we met, where we worked, the number of kids — it had all started with him.Then — I kid you not — the new baby started crying upstairs. April stood up. "I'd better go nurse John Paul," she said.
— Tom Hoopes is executive editor of The National Catholic Register and with his wife, April, is editorial co-director of Faith & Family magazine.

['The heart of Jesus': Abbot Marcel reflects on two men of God]

Viva il Papa.

Jean