The Journal

Issue date: 4/14/05 Section: News

Media Credit: KRT CAMPUS PHOTO Pope John Paul II participates in a mass at the Basilica of the Annunciation.

As a man who visited over 120 countries, including locales with limited Catholic communities, Pope John Paul II's desire for unity was one of his greatest goals, said a former Webster professor of the pope's passing April 2.

"He didn't just go to big cities with large Catholic populations," said former Webster University instructor and Sister of Loretto Barbara Ann Barbato. "He went to places like cornfields in Iowa, or Denver, which has a very small Catholic population."

Millions of people, including many world leaders, gathered in Rome to celebrate the life of Pope John Paul II. He was born Karol Wojtyla and was pope since 1978, longer than any other before him.

Thomas Finan, the interim director for the Center of International Education, agreed that the pope's effort to build bridges with smaller countries and other religions had an impact on people's feelings about him.

"For the first time in more than 1,000 years, members of the Greek Orthodox church attended a pope's funeral," Finan said. "There were Muslims there. He went to them when he was alive and that meant an awful lot to them. That didn't happen until him."

One of the most important things to the pope was the youth of the church, Finan said.

When the pope visited St. Louis in 1999, a youth rally was held at the Kiel Center in his honor.

Sophomore Diana Garbs, an advertising major, saw the pope on two occasions with her Catholic youth group. She first saw him when he came to St. Louis in 1999, then again when he came to World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002.

"It was absolutely crazy," Garbs said. "He was also very funny. He was presented with a hockey stick and he took it and did a slap shot movement."

She thinks that his loss will be especially significant for the youth of the church.

Barbato said he was a man of great integrity and faith, but she attributes some of Pope John Paul II's popularity to the technology available to him.

"There was no such thing as CNN before him," Barbato said. "He was in the theater when he was younger and he knew how to get his message across and what to do with the media. He lived in a time when distance and time were destroyed. That wasn't so for anyone else."

Continued...

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