Our People

First Anniversary of the Death of Pope John Paul II

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
2/4/2006

A year ago, it was a Saturday, we heard the news, after some weeks of seriously declining health, that our beloved Pope had died. He was the only Pope many young people had ever known. He had been pope since 1978. He had served longer than all but two popes in history. Personally, he was the pope of my priestly life. He was my inspiration. Thus, he was for so many, particularly young people.

The young pope, only 58 years old (and that is young!) showed extraordinary vitality and great vision. He saw himself as the foremost missionary of the Church and made 100 trips outside Italy, logging up 800,000 travel miles. He made himself available to the world.

He played a major role in world events, particularly in the collapse of the Soviet empire, instigated by the Solidarity movement in Poland. He engaged in the great issues of our time and tirelessly promoted the dignity of every human person.

He made a major contribution to the understanding of marriage as a true Christian vocation, and broke new ground in the understanding of human sexuality in his “theology of the body”. He bravely promoted a “Culture of Life’ in the midst of what he identified as a prevailing culture of death reflected in many of the ills in contemporary, especially Western societies.

He developed a profound reflection on the place of Catholic thought in the contemporary preoccupation with science and reason in the two great encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor (1993) and Fides et Ratio (1998). He recognized that Western culture had divorced human thought from the enlightenment offered by the Christian faith.

Of the vast array of his contribution not only to the Catholic Church but indeed to the world of his time, one of his special interests was young people. He had a remarkable ability to relate to the youth of the world. In no other place was this in clearer evidence than in the World Youth Days.

What began as a gathering with young people in Rome on Palm Sunday 1986 has grown to become the singularly biggest gathering of young people from across the globe. World Youth Days have become an extraordinary phenomena.

The Pope had a clear sense that young people wanted to embrace faith in Jesus Christ. He had extraordinary confidence in the youth of the world to become ambassadors of a “civilization of love”, fashioned out of an embracing of a personal relationship with Christ.

In 1996, reflecting on the World Youth Days, he said: “The principal objective of the Days is to make the person of Jesus Christ the centre of the faith and life of every young person so that he may be their constant point of reference and also the inspiration of every initiative”.

He knew that young people were searching for the meaning and purpose of their lives and that the only source of final satisfaction of this search is the person of Jesus Christ. And the young people responded. They flocked in their hundreds of thousands to be with him. He became their father, their inspiration and their trusted guide. It is true to speak of a new generation of young people in the Church who are the spiritual sons and daughters of JPII.

Tonight, the Church focuses its gaze on the events of the passion and death of the Lord commemorated in Holy Week: “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”. We are preparing for the most sacred time in our Christian year.

We pause this evening and remember with love and thanksgiving Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II.

And I know he would want us to fix our gaze on Jesus and give our hearts in trusting surrender to him who is the only Way, the source of Truth and the fullness of Life.