Pope John Paul II will be remembered ultimately as the greatest statesman who ever lived, rather than as a leader confined to the religious context. He harnessed his religious power to achieve secular ends, rather than the other way round. The objectives he achieved with such tremendous effect were not Catholic objectives, though they were in keeping with Christianity. They were humane and political. He is the real architect of the united Europe that we know today. It would not have been possible without him. It was his supremely intelligent machinations that led to the destruction for ever of the Iron Curtain that divided Europe and which held so many millions in intolerable conditions of virtual imprisonment. Sixteen years ago, it would have been a brave person to suggest that the Communist countries – a drab, poor, giant prison seen in our minds in black and white, like an ancient newsreel – would join what was then the European Economic Community. A few months later, we watched enthralled as the world’s television crews showed Berliners breaking down the wall that was so much more than the division of Germany. It was the strongest symbol of all that European Communism stood for, and it was being hacked to pieces. When the former communist bloc countries, including the Pope’s homeland, joined the European Union last year, a piece of history was made that we would never have thought possible. John Paul II made it possible, not because he was a power-monger, but because peace to him was of the essence, and a politically united Europe means that there can be no possibility of war or oppression.
The precise role that the late Pope played in all this has yet to emerge. When the history books are written, they will not take the simplistic view that the Polish pontiff was a source of courage to the Solidarnosc movement that began in the Polish dockyards, starting a political fire behind the Iron Curtain. Encouraging the Poles would not have been enough to bring about such cataclysmic events without a good deal of political manoeuvering, string-pulling and bringing to bear of influence, behind the scenes. That he would have been a master at this is evident from his other related skills. Looking at a stunning photograph of him with the late Diana, Princess of Wales, it came to me just how much they had in common. They were both highly charismatic individuals with photogenic good looks and powerful personalities, who radiated some form of magical aura. When accidents of fate installed them prominently in significant institutions, the qualities that would have made them merely popular in a local context were suddenly magnified to stratospheric proportions. Their magnetism, in a media-dominated world, was stupendous. They drew unquantifiable devotion from millions of people they had never met. They became living icons, symbols of hope. We forget, because public memory is relatively short, then when Diana died, the reaction to her death was very similar, though much, much more restricted because, without an official global role like that of the Pope, she could not be allowed to transcend her folk heroine status. We forget, too, that in the immediate aftermath of her death, she was ‘Saint’ Diana, with repeated calls for her beatification. The Church had to remind people that she was not a Catholic, and only nominally a Christian – besides other matters which militated against sainthood, of course. The significant difference between them was that Pope John Paul II was a very, very clever man who used the global power and influence of the Catholic Church to give more strength to his persona, and who then used this formidable and forceful combination to bring his plans, which were essentially altruistic but all the same political, to fruition. Diana, on the other hand, was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier; she had enormous influence but no power as an emarginated member of the British royal family, and her ends were essentially narcissistic and selfish, though she generated plenty of sympathy. Yet, had Diana been elected Pope in a scenario that admitted women to the highest echelons of the Catholic hierarchy, she would have drawn the same kind of crowds and mammoth public attention. She would not, however, have been able to bring down Communism in Europe. For that, a certain amount of intelligence was required.
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No doubt, there will be those who consider it blasphemy to compare Pope John Paul II and Diana, Princess of Wales. In this, they make the mistake of assessing him purely as a religious leader, when he was something very much more than that. Goodness and spirituality do not explain his crowd-pulling status – not at all. It was personal magnetism, personal charisma, given global significance by his role as Pope, that truly did it. He is an impossible act to follow, and I truly pity his successor. He would have to be a cross between George Clooney, Mother Theresa and Stephen Hawking to avoid disparaging comparisons. He will be a lacklustre, shoddy Camilla to John Paul II’s sparkling, scintillating Diana.
To put it starkly and briefly, Pope John Paul II was a superstar of phenomenal proportions. He had the natural qualities that made him one, and the giant machine that propelled him to global stardom. But above all that, he had the superstar’s understanding of how stardom works, and what can be done with it. His grasp of the visual message and the workings of the media was that of a professional; there was nothing religious or ‘other-worldly’ about it. It slips our minds that he was an actor, trained in voice projection and stage presence. This made all the difference to his success, success which he used to bring about a practical peace and humane political objectives.
When he forgave the man who tried to kill him, he did not do so privately, as demanded by Christianity for acts of forgiveness and charity (“Let not the right hand…”). He did so in a blaze of publicity, flashbulbs and the lights of television cameras. We like to think of it as a private and intimate moment, but it should be obvious that if it was so much photographed and filmed by the many journalists present, then it wasn’t anything of the sort. It was about as private as Diana’s implied solitude when she was photographed alone on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal. Both photographs were carefully orchestrated and composed. When I watched reruns of the film footage in recent days, and saw that briefest of glances towards the cameras before he closed his eyes and placed his forehead on his hand, bowing in forgiveness near Agca, sitting precisely to create the perfect composition, I was full of admiration. It was far from disingenuous. Here was a man who could have run Saatchi & Saatchi with his eyes closed. The resulting photograph made the cover of Time and Newsweek, and the front pages of all the western world’s newspapers. No amount of preaching of forgiveness could have had the same effect as the message contained in that single picture, and he knew it. His objective was achieved: with the help of the global media, he taught the world the meaning of forgiveness and at the same time shored up his own influence, which he would then use to more important ends.
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A lesser man would have used his influence on crowds, and his ability to reduce them to a state of liminal near-hysteria, to bolster up his own sense of glory. This moral and political giant used his influence instead as the means by which to achieve his primary objective: respect by secular powers for human dignity. First, he ensured that crowds of hundreds of thousands and the world’s cameras would follow him. Then, he used this by going to trouble-spots and countries where respect for human dignity was in question, and brought up these issues, on that very same territory, under the glare of the cameras. That way, he embarrassed – in the true sense of the word – the men whose political leadership he disapproved of. When he gently rapped political leaders, they took on the demeanour of chastised boys. Look at Fidel Castro.
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This did not mean that he increased the number of followers of the Catholic Church. He was fervently admired independently of the religion he represented, and most times even despite it. He had admirers who were not in the least interested in or impressed by Catholicism, and a global fan club of people who disagreed completely with his views, and to which fan club I subscribed. It was impossible not to admire him, even if only for the fact that he was that rare creature: a man who could carry off the wearing of a white dress as though it were a business suit. He understood the meaning of symbolic visits and made them strategically and deliberately under the full glare of the media spotlight: to England, with its tragic anti-Papist history; to a mosque, to a synagogue, to the Wailing Wall (where he again posed for the cameras, but as though indifferent to them, to create the perfect news picture – such skill!)
Though my admiration for him is without limits – I think he is one of the greatest men who ever lived – this has not caused me to reverse my views on many aspects of Catholicism, and in this I am but one of many millions. Conversely – and this is where I part company with those who criticise his intransigent approach – I know that he was right to stick to his guns. He did so out of belief, but also because of his excellent understanding of human nature. People need certainty. They search for it relentlessly. They are powerfully attracted to it, even if they do not necessarily agree with its tenets. Wishy-washiness frightens people; it makes them insecure. When a creed, whether political or religious, seeks to be all things to all men, the seeds of its dissipation are sown. It is the religions that offer cast-iron certainty and no compromise on the rules that have gone on to become the world’s biggest and most powerful: Catholicism and Islam (which is even stricter).
Pope John Paul II understood a fundamental principle: a church should not compromise its principles so as to attract supporters. It is not a political party that needs votes, nor a corporate operation that needs business. If people do not like the tenets of Catholicism, then they are free to look elsewhere for another religion, or to espouse no religion at all. It makes no sense for somebody raised as a Catholic to agitate for changes to the rulings on sex outside marriage (including homosexual sex, which must of necessity be outside marriage) and birth control, just so that he or she can keep on claiming to be a Catholic in all good conscience, while having Church-sanctioned sex and practising Church-sanctioned birth control. People admired Pope John Paul II precisely because he told them this, though in more diplomatic terms: if you don’t like it, leave – don’t expect the Church to change to accommodate you. He was 100 per cent right. As things stand, I respect the Catholic Church despite not holding the same views on divorce, contraception and sex outside marriage. But if the Catholic Church were suddenly to sanction all three, my respect for it would evaporate, and I would feel even less inclined, not more inclined, to become a fully-paid-up member. I don’t even want to see it with women priests, despite my widely-known views on the place of women in society.
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Despite the fact that we have had three public holidays in the past three weeks, many people fully expected to have the bonus of a fourth one last Friday, when the late Pope John Paul II was buried. The grounds on which they expected this are unclear. Did they see a day off work as a fit way to mark their grief? Days off work are generally given only by way of celebration, and not by way of mourning. Or were they simply angry that they couldn’t sit around at home, watching the whole thing on television? I think that’s most likely to be the case. If so, then they were in good time to apply for one day of holiday leave to fulfil their wish. It’s not as though the funeral date were announced with just 24 hours’ notice. But these people appeared to want it all their own way: the freedom to stay home and watch the funeral at their employer’s expense. That way of thinking is hardly in line with the spirit of the religion they purportedly espouse.
Others called the offices of this newspaper to complain that State schools and independent schools did not close for the day, as did Church schools. Here again, we have the “I, me and me again’ syndrome. The parents doing all the complaining were almost certainly people who were free to stay home on Friday, otherwise they would not have wanted their children to have a day off school. They were too busy thinking of themselves to spare a thought for the many hundreds (if not thousands) of working mothers who, every time they are confronted with the problem of a school-free day that does not also happen to be a public holiday (parent’s day, teacher training day, school patron saint’s day, etcetera, etcetera) are thrown into a flurry of panic. The nanniet and various stray relatives are galvanized into action and, if none are available, then mummy or daddy (but usually mummy) has to apply for a day of holiday leave, which they might have preferred to keep for a more useful or fun purpose, like a real holiday.
The decision not to have the State and independent schools close for the day was the correct one. It was also understandable that the Church-run schools should close. They closed not so the children could watch the funeral – after all, they could have done that at the school, on a large screen – but because the Church-run schools are, as implicit in their name, run by the Church. The State schools and independent schools, also as implicit in their name, are not run by the Church – and so there was no valid reason to have them close for the day, and highly valid reasons why they should not close. Schools and businesses closed for the day in Rome for practical reasons, and not for reasons of religion. With an influx of four million pilgrims and curious people, the Roman authorities wisely thought it best to ban all vehicles from the streets of the city, and this included school-buses and cars taking people to work. Schools and businesses did not close in the rest of Italy, where there were no such problems. So why on earth should they have closed in Malta, as some selfish people argued they should?