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Religion

Prayers for the pontiff

People who came to get blessings from Pope John Paul II instead find themselves leaving him their best wishes for health.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published February 3, 2005

ROME - Valerie Pajak of Pittsburgh was among the more unusual figures in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, wearing a strapless wedding gown topped by a black leather jacket.

Wednesdays are the days Pope John Paul traditionally holds audiences with the public, a time when Pajak and other brides can receive a papal blessing provided they come in their wedding finery.

"I wasn't going to bring this dress across the Atlantic and not get a picture," said Pajak, an executive with a biotech company.

Alas, she and her new husband discovered, the 84-year-old pope had been hospitalized early that morning with complications from influenza.

"We were sad and it was disappointing, but everybody gets sick," said Pajak. "Besides, how many brides can say they got to wear their wedding dress two times?"

It was a clear, beautiful day, though a cold wind cut to the bone. Silver ornaments sparkled on the Vatican Christmas tree, still standing weeks after the holiday beside a life-size manger scene.

With reports indicating the pontiff was in stable condition, the atmosphere in St. Peter's Square was a mix of concern and normality. Art students sketched the curving Colonnade, tourists posed by the Obelisk and the souvenir stand did its usual business in papal trinkets, including pill boxes and bottle openers with John Paul's likeness.

The throngs in St. Peter's were by no means huge - there probably were more journalists at Gemelli Polyclinic, where the pope is being treated. But a surprising number had personal recollections of the best-traveled pontiff in history.

Shortly after he became pope in 1978, John Paul visited Des Moines, Iowa. Patti Sampers remembers it well - Catholic schools let students off for the day and hundreds of thousands of people came from all over the Midwest to watch the pope say Mass.

"He shook my hand," Sampers recalls. "It was something I would never forget because his hand was so warm, so soft, such an incredible feeling."

On Wednesday, she was at St. Peter's Square with her sister, brother and their parents, Don and Eunice Main. Mrs. Main, seated in a wheelchair, is the same age as the pope and, like him, has Parkinson's disease.

"I don't see how he can do all that he does," she said. "It must be very difficult."

Barbara and Sylvio Pelligrino, vacationing from the Calabria district of Italy with their 2-year-old daughter, became worried when they saw the pope at his last public appearance, on Sunday.

"It was very hard for him to talk," Mrs. Pelligrino said. "He stopped and had to take a very deep breath. I did not understand anything he said."

Many visitors to the square noted that John Paul - the third-longest serving pope despite a history of health problems - has had an enormous influence on his era.

Ivan Fabbri, a mechanical engineer from southern Italy, said he doesn't agree with the pope's stands against abortion, contraception and homosexuality. But he admires John Paul for something few might remember - that the pope acknowledged his predecessors were wrong for condemning Galileo's "heretical" claim that the the sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe.

"I don't agree with him on everything, but he has done some great things," Fabbri said. He was visiting the square to pray for both the pope and a friend who underwent surgery Wednesday.

Bishop George Lungo of Zambia lauded John Paul for reaching out to Catholics in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the church is enjoying its strongest growth.

Should the next pope be from the Third World, as some have suggested?

"I'm not particular about where he comes from so long as he has a good heart like the Holy Father," Lungo replied.

As the setting sun bathed St. Peter's in a golden light, the bishop, along with dozens of nuns, priest and seminarians, hurried to a special Mass. It commemorates the day the infant Jesus, born a Jew, was presented to members of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

It is a tradition for Pope John Paul to conduct the annual Mass, where members of every Catholic religious order can "renew their vows of chastity and obedience," Benjamin Greene, a seminarian from Idaho, stopped to explain.

Then, he too, hurried off - but not before saying:

"If you get a chance, please pray for the Holy Father."

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 3, 2005, 01:08:13]