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ST. PETERSBURG - Pope John Paul II has evolved on the job to become a world leader "unafraid of taking on large ideologies," but what Bishop Robert Lynch remembers best from his own dealings with the pontiff was his boss' "personal holiness."
"He would pray every chance he got," Lynch said. At morning Mass, "you're ushered in. He would be kneeling there and he wouldn't even know that you're there. And you'd hear these sounds come from inside of him, almost like voices, like there was a deep level of mysticism that was in communication with God. It was scary the first time that I heard it. The second, third and fourth time, you said, "This man is deeply in transcendental prayer.' "
Before being named leader of Tampa Bay's 384,000 Roman Catholics, Lynch helped organize four of the pope's visits to the United States. They dined and attended meetings together several times a year.
Lynch made those comments in late 2003, as John Paul's 25th anniversary as pope approached. In an interview at the time, the St. Petersburg bishop talked about John Paul's personality and his legacy. Lynch, who was general secretary of the United States Catholic Conference and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops for six years, had been a priest for a little more than a year when he first met John Paul in the summer of 1979.
"He was 58, young, vigorous, a skier, a hiker, ramrod-straight, incredibly milky white complexion . . . and already, however, beginning to suffer a little bit of hearing loss," Lynch said.
The pope knew what he wanted and was "unafraid of mixing it up with people," Lynch said. As evidenced by his travels, he tirelessly sought opportunities to influence large numbers of people.
And then, Lynch said, there was his sense of humor.
"In the 1987 trip, we were going to Universal Studios in Los Angeles, where the pope would meet the media, movie directors, movie producers, movie stars, television people.
"In planning the trip, the late Lew Wasserman, he said to me, "We have this ride here where we part the Red Sea in two. Would the Holy Father take the ride?'
"I said, "I don't think so.'
"And he said, "Would you at least ask him?'
"And Father (Roberto) Tucci, now Cardinal Tucci, and I said, "Yes, we'll ask him.' "
Back in Rome, dining with the pope, they brought up Wasserman's suggestion.
The pope, Lynch said, "puts down his knife and fork and he looks up and smiles and says, "It's already been done. Moses did it better.' "
Among John Paul's contributions to the Catholic Church and the world in general, Lynch said, he has "brought the papacy to the people." The pope was no longer "a mysterious figure off in a foreign land."
Lynch said John Paul became "a moral voice in the geopolitical sphere" who took on "communism in his native land of Poland, for example, or the Marcos family, or what he would probably say was the unbridled capitalism in the United States."
His pronouncements have evoked criticism, Lynch acknowledged, but the pope solidified the church's positions for the world's 1-billion Catholics.
"John Paul II has made it almost impossible for his successor or successors" to change the church's teachings about women's ordination and celibacy, the bishop said.
Lynch praised the pope's commitment to ecumenism, pointing to his efforts to build a relationship between Catholics and Jews.
"He did something that I think everybody thought would take a lot longer, which was the acknowledgement of the right of Israel to exist. And everybody said that would never happen until Jerusalem became an international city," Lynch said.
The issue of Catholic-Jewish relations will be among those the next pope will have to address, Lynch said, and American Catholics will expect the new leader to take on clergy sexual misconduct and the shortage of priests.
"I think that there will be a need for next pope to give we American bishops some guidance on the limits of accountability and transparency and other things that Americans are more and more demanding," he said. "I think that we as a church need to let our leadership know in Rome that the expectations and needs of Americans for a long time have been very high: a priest every day, every Sunday, not on a circuit once every four weeks; baptisms every Sunday and all of that."