My Pope Moment

While on a trip with my youth group, I came within 10 feet of Pope John Paul II.

I have never considered myself a really religious person, and I probably never will.  I couldn’t even tell you the last time I was in a church.  Yet the summer before my junior year of high school I wound up in Toronto with over a million Catholics for World Youth Day with a couple of girls from my youth group.  This, however, is not the story of a spiritual journey.  This is the story of how I came to be within ten feet of Pope John Paul II.  Well, actually I was there first, so technically His Holiness came within ten feet of me.

That summer was hot--one of the first to be extremely so.  My two friends, our youth leader, and I had escaped the swelter of Oklahoma only to endure some of the highest temperatures on Canadian record.  So much for the “Great White North.”  

World Youth Day events took place all over Toronto for a week and a half, but each day everyone gathered in what seemed to be an expansive parking lot with a massive stage at one end.  On the day the Pope was due to arrive, we decided to forego other activities in favor of staking out our slab of concrete.  When we arrived, the normally vast plain of gray had been sliced with a winding pathway about twenty feet wide and lined by chest-high black wire fencing.  I, for one, was just glad at the prospect of sitting down.  Even though participants could use public transportation, we chose to walk most of the time because there were so many people everywhere.  We found what we felt would be a prime spot along the fence and waited out the day.

As the afternoon crept by, more groups joined us along the fence until eventually the concrete disappeared and only people were visible in each direction.  A spark of electric anticipation charged the air.  No one knew exactly when the Pope would arrive, but one million necks craned in each direction hoping to be the first to spot the famous Popemobile.  

In the distance, the cheers started.

My heart leapt into my throat and started pounding against my windpipe.  I hadn’t thought very much about this moment.  Maybe I’d thought it wasn’t actually going to happen.  It just hadn’t felt real yet.  

How exactly do you prepare to see the Pope?  Quickly.

As the cheers grew louder, the crowd pushed more forcefully toward the fence but the biting metal didn’t bother me.  I leaned my head over the railing to catch my first glimpse of him.  The white car soon turned down our stretch of pavement to make its way through the shower of roses that decorated the path.

If there were guards walking alongside the car, I didn’t see them.  Hunched with age and clad in matching white, Pope John Paul II raised a single hand to wave at the screaming crowd through his glass box.  Through the chaotic noise and nerves, I felt the strangest tickle of recognition--almost kinship.  This small, elderly man could easily be anyone’s grandfather.  His obviously frail body was tempered with a strength of spirit that radiated for miles.  He drew every eye in the vicinity.

The Popemobile moved steadily along at a snail’s pace but seemed to be gone more quickly than it had arrived, taking the din of the adoring crowd up to the stage.  My friends pushed through a gap in the fence to take pictures touching the ground.  I politely offered to take the picture rather than be in it, and I quietly held on to the fact that I had just come as close as I ever could to meeting the Pope.

I’m not a religious person, but the sudden depth of that moment had knocked the breath out of me more than the crushing crowd.  That moment had united one million people in a Toronto parking lot, and I knew I wouldn’t be the only one who would hold onto it always.