October 12, 2003

The year 1978 is remembered as “The Year of the Three Popes.” When the white smoke went up and the name Karol Wojtyla was announced, there was a stunned silence. I happened to be in St. Patrick’s Cathedral at the time and no one there had yet heard the news. A reporter rushed in with the name hastily printed on a note pad and asked me how to pronounce it. I had no idea, but did an interview broadcast nationally in which I assumed the new pope was African. We only knew that to most people he was unknown. Soon John Paul II appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s and said “Do not be afraid.”

It was easy to assume that he was speaking of the passing world scene. The experience of these twenty-five years, which mark the third-longest reign in papal history, has taught that the Pope was referring to the tremendous events about to unfold. Looking back on the social upheaval since then, not least of which was the collapse of the Communist empire, totally unpredicted by so many wiseacres who had mocked those who understood the spiritual implications of truly evil social systems, we better appreciate the prophetic tone of the new Pope’s words.

After a long and dramatic reign, it is convenient to identify the papacy with one man. I suppose fifteen hundred years ago the Romans thought that way about Gregory I. Surely the late nineteenth century seemed inseparable from Pius IX. For many moderns, Pius XII was “The Pope” and the impact of the brief reign of John XXIII moved many to ask if anyone could follow him. I know a man who has lived through thirteen papal reigns. We also have parishioners active in our catechetical programs who, like many seminarians now, remember no other pope. But the old Roman saying, tinged with cynicism and touched with hope, goes: “One Pope dies, make another.” That is, after all, the Petrine succession as our Lord willed it to St. Peter on the shore of Galilee. And as it is the Divine Will, it is not a legacy but a living presence. Vain is the presumption which thinks, contrary to sound theology, that every papal election is the direct inspiration of God. But every election is provided by God and there are times when He most powerfully does intervene. God always keeps his promise that the Gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church.

The next pope, whenever he appears on the world stage, will have to address the many perplexities which have agitated the Church in our generation. In all things, he will continue the succession of the Pope from a Far Country, glorianter regnante, who said “Do Not Be Afraid” because Christ said it first when he rose from the dead.

Fr. George W. Rutler