On a gently bouncing plane, 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, Pope John Paul II slowly shuffled down the aisle, out of his personal cabin toward several dozen reporters in the back.
It took a few minutes, in part because the pontiff stopped to greet every member of the flight crew but mostly because movement was so painfully difficult.
It was 1998, and already Parkinson’s disease had transformed his appearance. His back was hunched and his once-expressive face was locked into a florid mask.
His condition was bad enough that we did not expect him to speak to us before we landed.
So his surprise appearance–combined with the anticipation of this historic journey to Cuba, the tedium of a long flight and the possibility that reporters are not the most patient people to begin with–created a scene.
Cameras and microphones on long booms clacked against one another as journalists jousted for position. Reporters craned for a better look, standing on seats and hanging at angles from open luggage compartments.
He was hardly past the bulkhead when reporters began yelling questions over the noise of the plane, in Italian, in English, in Spanish, in German, in French, in Portuguese.
He began to answer, in Italian, in English, in Spanish, in German, in French, in Portuguese. He dusted off the silly questions with lightning quips. He answered the serious ones without hesitation, in full, precise paragraphs.
It took me an hour or so, with translation help from my colleagues, to understand what he had said. It took me four more days to understand what he had done: In those 20 chaotic minutes, he had laid out for us his program for Cuba, his plan for reaching a people who had lost touch with their Roman Catholic history.
I covered the pope during his last decade, when his physical decline was so evident and his thoughts so much more hidden. First the gestures of vitality and physical strength were taken from him, then the words.
As he broke off from speeches, froze in grimaces or put his face in his hands, observers wondered aloud how much he was in touch with his surroundings.
But up close there were signs, flashes of the clear and focused mind inside.
In 1999 two dozen Chicagoans, led by Cardinal Francis George and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Iakovos, were received in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace for a private audience with the pope.
For the pontiff, it was one of many such audiences that day. And though the Chicagoans were lovely people, the pope would have had no automatic reason to distinguish them from hundreds of other people he met every day.
He delivered a short speech and then began to greet the pilgrims individually, a handshake, an acknowledgement and a rosary for each. Whatever he thought of the event was not evident on his face. He did not look physically comfortable.
But then Bishop Timothy Lyne, an auxiliary bishop from Chicago and a contemporary of John Paul II’s, mentioned a mutual friend, the late auxiliary Bishop Alfred Abramowicz.
Abramowicz, a Chicagoan, had helped raise money for the Catholic Church in Poland long before John Paul II became pope and he had traveled with the pope to Poland in 1983. He was a countryman and kindred spirit.
At the sound of his name, a cloud seemed to lift from the pope’s face, and a glint of joy flashed in his eye, a new animation that carried through the rest of the audience.
Often it was those eyes that gave him away, when the rest of his body failed him.
During one portion of a mass in Mexico in 1999, children were bringing forward gifts for the pope. That was a regular feature of his trips abroad, one that he enjoyed.
Even more than old friends, it was children who seemed to break through the pope’s mask, to bring him alive. This day had been a long one, though, and he was tired.
When one small girl bounded up to him, he embraced her and then held on, and then continued to hold on longer than anybody expected.
It wasn’t clear whether he was holding onto her for support, or trying to talk to her, or simply clinging to a child who was full of life, until he let go and we could see tears running down his cheeks.
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skloehn@tribune.com
