Life Issues Forum
The Ever-Young Pope
by Maureen Kramlich
August 2,
2002
While the aboriginal musician
beat a sacred drum, the popemobile made its way through a crowd of hundreds of
thousands of young pilgrims from 173 countries. I was among them. Tired,
muddied and soaked from spending the night and these early morning hours in
the rain, we (all 800,000 of us) immediately rose to our feet at the sight of
the Pontiff in his pearly white cassock. The sacred drum crescendoed and then
ceased as the Pope approached the altar and then took his place there. The
Mass began. The rain stopped, and the sun shone.
This Mass was the
culmination of a week-long international celebration for young Catholics —
World Youth Day 2002. The events of the week included catechetical sessions,
social service activities, concerts, prayer services, a film festival, Masses,
confession and the Way of the Cross. But certainly the highlight of the week
was the time spent with the Pope: a welcoming ceremony, a prayer vigil and
this closing Mass.
The Pope connects with young people and they with
him. During his homily, he remarked, "You are young, and the Pope is old...."
"No, no, no!" the pilgrims chanted. The Holy Father continued, "82 or 83 years
of life is not the same as 22 or 23. But the Pope still fully identifies with
your hopes and aspirations."
The Holy Father has a way of speaking
right to the hearts of the young. The message, the constant message of his
papacy: "Be not afraid." Continuing his homily, he added, "Although I have
lived through much darkness, under harsh totalitarian regimes, I have seen
enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so
great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the
hearts of the young. You are our hope, the young are our hope."
Immediately pressed into my mind and heart was the realization that standing
before us was a man who survived both the Nazi occupation of Poland and then
its Communist takeover. He was standing before me now, having survived these,
an assassination attempt, and now various ailments to deliver this message of
hope.
One cannot help but be encouraged by this Pope, or more
accurately, swept up by his tremendous witness. We are living under much
darkness today, due to different sorts of totalitarianism than those under
which the Pope grew up: a Supreme Court that has enshrined in the Constitution
the right to destroy unborn and partly-born children; a society on the verge
of creating a slave race of human beings, created by cloning and destroyed for
research; a legal system that sentences some men and women to death. Yet
these, too, will pass.
The Pope sent the pilgrims home with these final
words of his homily: "Do not let that hope die! Stake your lives on it! We
are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the
Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his
Son."
__________________________________
Maureen Kramlich is a
public policy analyst with the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities in the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
__________________________________
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities
United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops
3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 (202)
541-3070