NEW YORK ENCOUNTER/ “Karol, you put on a great show!”

A panel at the New York Encounter offered three eyewitness accounts of the life of Karol Wojtyla, actor and playwright, priest and pope. The panelists included Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Ireland and filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi. Each recalled John Paul II as a conscious and free actor on the world stage and his recognition of art as an indispensable form of communicating the truth of God’s love.

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete recalled first meeting a Polish bishop who had come to New York to petition the diocese for a national Polish parish church. On their first meeting, Wojtyla, who was eating cornflakes for breakfast, impressed Albacete with the “weight of his humanity.” The bishop was asking Albacete, the physicist, about the best language in which to communicate love. Wojtyla was convinced it was poetry and theater, and Albacete agreed that this was more effective with young ladies than physics equations. They would have that discussion on other occasions after Wojtyla became pope, and Albacete told him he was not surprised that his philosophical work was named “The Acting Person.”

At the John Paul II Institute in Washington DC, Albacete taught a course on the social doctrine found in the Pope’s dramatic works. In his play The Radiation of Fatherhood, Adam complains about having been given a heart and prefers loneliness. In fact, Wojtyla states: “When loneliness intersects love, the fruit is suffering.” Albacete concluded of Pope John Paul II, the saint: “He suffered.”

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Ireland recalled being a young cleric at the Vatican when Pope Paul VI died on a summer evening when almost everyone was out of town on vacation and St. Peter’s Square was empty. Pope John Paul I was elected, taking the name of the two popes who had brought Vatican II. After his sudden death, all were shocked to hear of the election of the new Polish pope. However, throughout this pontificate, John Paul II “captured hearts, spoke to hearts, challenged hearts.” The archbishop recalled the way the pope prayed on the plane until the moment when he was summoned, when he pocketed his rosary and immediately got out to greet the people. The pope changed the world not as a politician or military strategist, but simply as a bishop. He was the first pope to visit Roman parishes every Sunday afternoon. He was known to be very free and those who worked with him were never sure quite what his reaction might be to a new question. He surprised people by initiating the interfaith World Day of Prayer at Assisi.