St. Augustine's Church

Limerick, Co. Limerick

Limerick Leader: Features, Saturday, April 9, 2005

Voices: Limerick People Have Their Say

Should the city erect a plaque to mark the Pope's visit?

Following the death of Pope John Paul II last weekend, Alan Jacques looks back at the energetic pontiff's 26 year Papacy and asks the people on the street whether a commemorative plaque should be erected at Greenpark to mark his historic visit to Limerick in 1979.

The charismatic Pope John Paul II who led the worlds' one billion Catholics for the past 26 years, has passed away at the age of 84 leaving an enormous void in the church that will be tough to fill.

The voyager pope who helped conquer communism and transformed the papacy with charisma and vigour died on Saturday night last after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease that became a lesson to the world in humble suffering. His death brought an end to the Roman Catholic Church's third-longest Papacy—after Pious IX and Saint Peter—a reign that was at once energetic, charismatic and polarising.

Pope John Paul was recognised as not only a religious leader, but also a world leader and the news of his bereavement evoked an outpouring of emotion throughout the world. In Rome the throng of 60,000 at St. Peter's Square momentarily stood in stunned silence, then, following an Italian custom that signifies hope at a time of death, the mourners broke into sustained applause. In the Pope's native Poland, people fell to their knees and wept as the news reached them. While in Paris, mourners packed special midnight services and church bells sounded in Cuba.

World leaders also hurried to pay tribute to the much-loved pontiff. President Bush hailed John Paul "a champion of human freedom," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he felt privileged to have met the Pope and Lech Walesa, who led Poland's Solidarity movement to power after a decade of struggle, said the Polish-born John Paul inspired the drive to end communism in Eastern Europe. "Without him, there would be no end of communism or at least, it would have happened much later; and the end would have been bloody," Walesa said.

In 1978, at the age of 58, the College of Cardinals elected Karol Joseph Wojtyla to lead the Roman Catholic Church. He was the first non-Italian chosen as Pope in 456 years and the youngest in the twentieth century.

The Polish pontiff was the most travelled Pope in the 2,000 year history of the church visiting 129 counties outside Italy, and he spoke eight languages. His personal mission as Pope, the chief leader and teacher of the Catholics, was to implement the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, emphasising the universal call to holiness and the Church's role in the modern world.

He travelled a distance far greater than that travelled by all other popes combined. His pastoral trips were seen as an outward sign of the efforts at global bridge-building between nations and between religions that were central to his pontificate.

The late Holy Father successfully encouraged the largely peaceful revolts against Soviet rule in his native Poland and across Eastern Europe. He created more saints than any of his predecessors and issued numerous encyclicals and other teaching documents, a total of nearly 100,000 pages. John Paul also attacked what he considered moral relativism inside and outside the church and stamped out leftist movements in the church that operated under the rubric of liberation theology. He held a rigid line against contraception, abortion, cloning and same-sex marriage.

He barred the ordination of women as priests and defended celibacy in the priesthood.

His athletic grace and humour captivated Rome and his global audiences. His command of television spread his teachings far beyond even the huge crowds he attracted on his travels, which included five trips to the United States.