His humanity set him apart

There was something about the man. A wisdom that revealed itself in an all-knowing smile. A gentleness that emerged in the way he touched people. An acceptance that was manifested in the way he died.

I’m talking about Pope John Paul II.

I stopped being a member of the Catholic Church when I became old enough to think for myself, but the old man who charmed us all was beyond sectarianism. When John Paul died, people the world over cried. They were Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and atheists.

They recognized that his passing left an emptiness on the planet he once occupied with a leader’s grace and a pilgrim’s sense of wonder. By the very nature of who he was, he embraced us all. My sister Emily called him JP2. He was Emily’s pope.

Very few radiate an aura that separates them from the crowd. John Paul was one and so was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. When they spoke, you listened. When they walked, you followed. The auras of great people are almost detectable. They radiate halos.

John Paul’s long career in the papacy was laced with acts of kindness, which is yet another reason why his final breath was a sigh heard around the globe. He visited the home of a dying child in Mexico, hugged a poor woman in Poland and forgave the man who tried to kill him in Rome.

For all of his secular stature, he was still somehow one of us, emerging from a boyhood of sports, poetry and classical music with an instinct for compassion.

Born Karol Wojtyla in the small Polish town of Wadowice, his best friend was Jewish in a nation that tilted toward anti-Semitism. He stood above hatred even as a boy, and later, as head of the Roman Catholic Church, established diplomatic relations with Israel and asked Judaism’s forgiveness for Christian participation in the Holocaust.

By referring to Jews as “our elder brothers,” John Paul established a moral compass for others to follow.

You get to know a person pretty well when he’s been around for almost 30 years. I knew that John Paul was no fool. As Karol Wojtyla he earned two doctorates before assuming his Catholic duties in Krakow.

He spoke eight languages and still managed to remember which one he was supposed to be using whenever he hit the road as the most traveled pope in the Vatican’s 2,000-year history. I’m impressed by that kind of talent. I speak a little Spanish, not much French and a word or two in Italian, and can’t keep in mind where I am and what idiom is required when we visit Europe.

An element of intelligence is a sense of humor, and I’m told that the pope displayed a spirit of whimsy on many occasions, not the least of them while entertaining a group of young visitors from Canada. He amused them by circling the room twirling his cane, Charlie Chaplin style.

On another occasion, he dispersed a crowd of loving adherents by pointing out, “It’s time for everyone to eat lunch, even the pope.”

One stood in awe of his position while understanding his humanity. We connected with him, and he with us. He touched us.

Sometime during my preteens, I decided that all the ritual and pageantry of the church was a lot of nonsense and said goodbye to all that. I understood the need for something to get a guy through the night, and I’m not knocking those who believe in bowing and kneeling in supplication to an unseen god. We all need blankets of security in a world where both traditions and values are under attack.

I’m more humanist than deist, but I think we’re all going for the same thing, more or less. Peace, a nice dinner and strength enough to make it to the horizon.

I don’t have to kneel to know that there’s work to be done in our world communities. I try my best to stay at it and to keep my values in sight.

I don’t care what church John Paul belonged to or what method he used to spread the word of human decency. He was a good man, and I’d have liked to have sat down with him in a quiet place, where he could wear whatever he wore around the palace when he took off the cloak and the crown.

I would have said to him that despite whatever disagreements one might have with the church, he embraced the world with style and civility. From Guam to Switzerland, and from the Middle East to Guatemala, we knew that in ways difficult to describe, we were all his children. And we mourn a father’s loss.

You earned your halo down here, JP2. Requiescat in pace.