In1978, Europe was in turmoil from terrorist threats and social upheaval. The church had just begin to implement the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and its atmosphere reflected some of the chaos of the world around it. After the death of Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, the “smiling pope” had received a warm welcome as a breath of fresh air. A month later, he died. Onto that stage stepped Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who now begins the 25th year of his pontificate.

Passionist Father Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, told Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin that John Paul II’s quarter-century on the Petrine throne may have permanently changed the way the world sees the papacy.

The Catholic New World: What was the situation and what were the expectations when John Paul II was elected?

Father Donald Senior: In the church, there was a lot of polarization, there was a lot of conflict. The German bishops particularly, who had a very important voice in the conclave, were very concerned about political and social chaos in Europe and its reverberations in the church, so I think there was a looking for someone who would be decisive, strong, attend to these problems and be able to play a role both within and without the church. That was the starting point I think.

He was novel in many ways. For one thing, he’s Polish, and he was vigorous. He was a skier. He just radiated vigor. People just didn’t know what was going to happen with a Polish pope, because we never had one. I remember reading at the time that when Pope John Paul II came out on the balcony to give his traditional blessing, he was taking his crook, his bishop’s staff, and waving it to the crowd, and the commentator said this was never done, and he was different already in the way that he was operating.

TCNW: Twenty-four years later, what impact has he had?

FDS: When I think of the pope’s overall impact, there’s a difference between the internal church affairs and his mission as the head of Christianity. In a way, I think the pope represents many Christian bodies as sort of the moral voice of Christianity on an international scale, and represents the values of justice and respect for human culture. Certainly in Poland and Eastern Europe he truly was a significant moral force in hastening the breakup of the communist empire.

I think his travels are going to be one of the signatures of his pontificate. Part of their impact has been to highlight the various cultures—he’s given a lot of attention to Africa, a lot of attention to Latin America, to Asia and the Philippines and so on. There’s also kind of a building up of the image of the papacy, in a way, making the office in the view of some too dominant, but I feel the basic impact has been in effect to draw attention to the vitality and diversity of the Christian communities and cultures and national cultures, ethnic cultures throughout the world. He’s gone to Cuba, he’s gone to places that the Western powers are not so happy that he’s gone to. He goes anyway, and he speaks sometimes subtly but usually strongly to the local governments about human rights and the cultural values in those places.

I think he’s had an incredibly strong impact. I don’t know who else is like that on the world scene, who else has the stature to do that without having a very specific political agenda representing one interest over another. There’s no other role like this.

TCNW: Does the length of his papacy give it more impact?

FDS: The advantage is that he’s been able to have an impact over time, and all these things have become a clear pattern for the Petrine office. It would be hard to imagine a successor that wouldn’t have to travel. Maybe he won’t travel as much as John Paul. There may be a lot of administrative stuff. People don’t think of the pope as a great administrator; it’s not where his interests are. So there may be a lot of housework to do within the Vatican set-up. But I still think it’s going to be expected that the new pope will come and talk to the UN, or come for some important event in the life of the local church. That was never there before.

I remember when Paul VI went to Jerusalem overnight, and that was unheard of. Pius XII left the Vatican once to visit Rome when it was bombed, and otherwise he never left the Vatican, and that was what was expected.

TCNW: What about his work in the area of interfaith relations?

FDS: He’s going to be noted for is symbolic actions that support interfaith dialogue—going to the (Western) wall in Jerusalem, going to the mosque in Damascus, giving a pectoral cross to the archbishop of Canterbury, his reception of the Orthodox, and his reaching out to the Orthodox, with limited success. But he keeps trying.

The church’s doctrine about all this is still in formulation and there’s conflict right and left, but his actions are out in front of the theology. You can say, “What’s the religious value in this?,” but then he goes and prays at a Jewish shrine, or he goes and prays at a mosque. Those actions are very important.

His sense of the global respect for human culture and moral values and his way of using the Petrine office to model interfaith dialogue—those things I think provide a counterweight to the kind of more dominating force that our own country and certain economic interests have vis-a-vis these cultures.

TCNW: Has he been able to unify the church in the same way?

FDS: It’s not that he’s played a divisive role, but the estimations of his role are divided. I think his goal was or is to make the church more cohesive, that the church would have more of a doctrinal and disciplinary cohesion. That goes back to the origin we talked about before, that because of cultural forces and so on that the church was becoming more fragmented and losing its coherence in some areas. There were doctrinal and moral issues that were divisive, and still are. I think the pope emphasized—and this comes out of his Petrine role—finding unity and coherence, and I think he emphasized doctrinal discipline, especially on some key issues. People’s reactions on this are divided. But the pope’s views are bound to be more traditional in most areas. That’s kind of the role of the hierarchy, to be conserving. So you have a division of the house on the effectiveness of it, on how much unity we have, was it at the expense of too much uniformity. Those kinds of questions are going on.

I think one of the salutary things is the pope’s emphasis on the Catholic identity: What does it mean to be a Catholic university? What does it mean to be a priest? What does it mean to be a lay person in relationship to other roles? What is the Catholic teaching on marriage and medical ethics? I think underlying all these issues is the question of the Catholic character of our belief and our practice and trying to find greater cohesion and unity on those. Whenever you press that kind of an agenda, then you get reactions.

If you don’t press it, then you could become nothing.

TCNW: Has having such a strong pope affected the idea of collegiality among bishops?

FDS: This is the flip side of having such a powerful and charismatic figure as pope. Even the visits to the local churches—the people can start to sort of see the pope as the super-bishop, and every parish reports to the pope. That’s the caricature, at least.

I think there’s been much more of an assertion of the Vatican’s role in certain disciplinary things, as we’re seeing now. That, I suspect, is an area where there will be a kind of swinging of the pendulum with the next papacy. The pope, because of his charismatic power and because his agenda has been more cohesion and conformity, some of the byproduct of that has been a lessening of the authority of the local or the regional episcopates and the national episcopates. It seems we haven’t advanced there; the collegiality is less apparent, let’s say.

TCNW: He was formed during World War II, which can be seen as a cataclysmic battle between good and evil. Now the conflict isn’t as clearly defined. How does that change his strategy?

FDS: People have often pointed to his own formation in a setting where the cohesion of the church was crucial. It had to be cohesive to survive, and it was working against a very aggressive counterforce in the ideology and actions of the communist regime, and so the church spoke with one voice and the church was a community of resistance.

That is much more complicated for the church in the United States, where your counterforces are more subtle, more diffuse, more insidious. Your strategy on how to deal with that, on knowing what you’re dealing with—it’s much more difficult. There, they do you the favor of telling you who you are by their attacks, Here, everything is like a warm embrace, and you don’t know if you’re embracing something that’s going to destroy your soul or not.

TCNW: What about his outreach to young people and to the elderly and infirm?

FDS: He is a charismatic figure. He comes up out of a theatrical background, and he has as part of his makeup a certain dramatic flair and a way of connecting with large groups of people. I don’t think it’s calculated; it’s part of his personality. There’s a public presence to him. He has real sympathy and empathy with young people, and they respond to him. There’s a real emotional resonance there, which has stayed with him all his life. Even as he’s so infirm and sick, they connect with him. He is concerned about the young and he speaks to them with respect and he appeals to their idealism. He appeals also to their Catholic identity, He invites them to express their Catholic faith.

As for the elderly, it’s probably been true of the popes generally that if they see someone in a wheelchair at an audience or something, they’ll go over. It’s a sense of compassion and a sense of the Gospel, of Jesus reaching out to those who are sick. I think for the current pope, his own experience is very important. He’s been wounded, and he’s had broken hips and legs and whatever. He’s had a lot of health problems, even with his vigor, and now he’s this icon of disability. He doesn’t hide it.

I was with him for a morning in April as part of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and it was very painful to watch him at Mass and even afterwards. For him to get up out of a chair or sit back down, it takes him a long time and he’s obviously in a lot of pain and discomfort. But he was not passive in the midst of this.

TCNW: Does that send a message about human dignity?

FDS: I think so. And I’ve heard that he might be a few months from being in a wheelchair, which would speak volumes to people. It’s been interesting with this debate about his retirement. He was certainly mentally sharp when we were with him. You could say, retirement from that kind of a role because you’re physically infirm, well, there’s a certain validity to it. But there’s also a lot of validity to saying, well, don’t retire because of it. It’s not like a job—it’s a role. It’s like retiring from being a parent or grandparent. There’s something that’s being said there about respect and reverence and doing what you can do.

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