Pope John Paul II

There has been a huge outpouring of emotion and tributes to the recently deceased Pope, and I think all of it has been richly deserved. He was an amazing man who lived an incredible life and had a lot of influence. I had the privilege of being able to see Pope John Paul II on one of his U.S. visits.

In the Fall of 1987, the Pope came to Phoenix. My dad, a pastor, was able to secure a couple of hard-to-get tickets from the priest in the town we lived in (Fountain Hills, AZ). The tickets were for the mass scheduled in the stadium that is home to Arizona State University. Now, the actual name of this place is Sun Devil Stadium. But on this day, the tickets called it Arizona State University Stadium and some conveniently placed Papal banners obliterated references to "Sun Devil" inside the stadium.

Now, I am a Christian and I'm sure there are many that would be aghast at the thought of attending a Papal mass. Yeah, there were some Christian protesters outside the stadium, although I'm not sure exactly what it was they were protesting (and there were only a handful, quite the fringe group).

There was certainly a buzz as we waited for the Pope to appear, then wild cheers as the familiar "Popemobile" made it's entrance and circled around the stadium, which was at capacity and then some. What followed was what I guess is a typical Papal mass. At times, I had no idea what was happening as people recited back things and stood up. No matter, I wasn't there to judge anything, I was there to see the Pope. When he took the stage to deliver his message, it was amazing how quiet it was. There had to be close to 80,000 people in the stadium, and it was dead silent. His message, well, it seemed rather evangelical to me (sorry Catholic bashers). It was all taken from scripture I was familiar with and I saw no contradictions to anything I had been taught. Then, we took communion. Yes, I took Catholic communion that was administered by a priest. It all sounded the same (this is Jesus' body, etc.). The only difference is instead of having the wafer inserted into my mouth by the priest, I, like many others, just had the wafer placed in my hand. Logistically, it was pretty amazing how they administered communion to so many in such a short time span.

Then there was the music. I was expecting some sort of monotonous Gregorian chants the whole time. But no, the music was all quite contemporary. Not as in rock and roll, but songs that were recently written. One of them, "On Eagles Wings" is one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. Although I doubt Christian circles would pick up on it because of it's origins (although 15 years later I finally did hear it performed, in my church no less). All the music was wonderful. The only weird part of the evening was an introduction by Erma Bombeck, the humorist/columnist. I don't know, kind of like a Billy Graham convention with an introduction by Dave Barry.

All in all, an extraordinary evening that I still remember 18 years later. It really made me think differently of the Catholic church. Yes, they've gotten some things wrong, but they've also gotten some things right. But I'm not going to worry about sorting them all out during this lifetime.