Blessed John Paul II

In January 1979 my wife and I visited Rome.   Inevitably, one highlight  was to be attendance at the Pope’s weekly General Audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall - a huge building that can hold over 6,000 people.   Like any other theatre it has a stage at one end and the usual procedure is for the Pope to enter from one side and take his place on the centre-stage throne.   To get the best seats you must  arrive hours before His Holiness: alas, we didn’t and found ourselves at the very back of the hall with the stage almost out of sight in the far distance.   Then there was a sudden commotion and the great door on which I was leaning swung open - and there was the Pope!   Because he was “new to the job” (he had only been elected three months before) he had decided on a whim to break with protocol and enter the Hall through the back door - and thus I was the first person he saw: he made straight for me and shook my hand!   I am not one of his flock but it was a very moving - yet puzzling - encounter.   Although it was the Pope’s face I was looking at, I had the feeling that the eyes looking at me were those of Jesus Himself - and He was pleading.   Pleading?   Later I saw it as a “let me out!” cry: here He was, trapped in all the ceremonial of the Church of Rome when He wanted to be out among His people.   Oh, well: we Anglicans are not the only Christians to have funny notions from time to time.   I still cherish that moment.