A pope for all people

He was pope for so long that many of us have known no other. Those who do remember prior popes understand just how special this one was.

Certainly there were things to criticize Pope John Paul II for: his passivity when Syrian President Basher Assad used the papal visit to Syria as an opportunity to accuse the Jews of being Christ-killers; his support for the beatification of Pope Pius XII, whose conduct during World War II was less than exemplary.

But there is an extraordinary amount to admire in John Paul II's tenure. It's hard to fathom, but when Karol Wojtyla ascended to the papacy, in 1979, only 13 years had passed since the Church's Nostre Aetate declaration denouncing anti-Semitism and repudiating the ancient charge that "the Jews" had killed Jesus.

The first non-Italian to sit on the papal throne in 455 years, Pope John Paul II demonstrated his principles early on. Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, writes that as a young priest, Wojtyla refused to baptize an orphaned Jewish child who had been adopted by a Catholic family. On his first visit home to Poland after his election as pope, he knelt in prayer at Auschwitz-Birkenau in memory of the Jews killed there.

And in April 1986, he left the Vatican and crossed the Tiber River to visit the Great Synagogue in Rome, becoming the first pope to visit a Jewish house of worship since the apostle Peter, who is considered the first pope. Once there, he embraced Rome's chief rabbi and referred to Jews as Christians'"older brothers."

A proponent of interfaith understanding, John Paul II was also the first pope to enter a mosque, when he visited the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, in 2001. "We Muslims also feel we lost a great friend and supporter in the Vatican," Imam Hassan al-Qazwini, who heads the largest mosque in the United States, told The New York Times upon the 84-year-old pope's death.

In 1993, the pope oversaw the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican, an enormous step forward in Jewish-Catholic relations. And in March 2000, the Pope visited Israel, where he toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and bowed his head in prayer at the Western Wall.

Even those who disagreed with him on many issues respected him. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, acknowledged that the pope and members of the Reform movement differed in their opinions on "gender equality, reproductive rights and the rights of gays and lesbians." But, he said, "we never doubted ... that he was a man of profound principle, courage and vision."

May the next pope be equally committed to what John Paul II so movingly prayed for: a "genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."

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