White smoke

This is about the Pope. Not the new one.

Between June and August of 1997, I was stuck at home, working at the base Public Affairs office until it was time to pack up and go to college. I turned 18 in the middle of July and that's the day my parents officially stopped paying attention to me. They did not ask where I was going, they did not ask what time I was coming home, they did not ask who was going with me. They weren't home the weekend I got stuck coming home from Florence and had to sleep overnight in the train station with the bums and the ladies of the evening. And when they came home and found out, they didn't particularly care. And when I told them that I wanted to go to Paris for a week with the crazy church people, they didn't care about that either, except for maybe a slightly raised eyebrow or two because the church people? Fairly crazy. But this is not about my parents.

One of the hip-to-the-young-people things Pope John Paul did was start up World Youth Day, a yearly get together for, um, the world's youth. The Catholic youth, actually, but I'm certain the Pope did not discriminate. A bazillion young people would converge in one city for one week of sermons, singing, and seminars capped off with a huge Mass. At my church that year there were a couple hip-to-the-young-people-or-so-they-thought grown ups and they planned a big trip in August for World Youth Day in Paris. (I think they rather regretted this idea after it was all over, but that is an entirely different- though exceptionally entertaining- story. This is not about the crazy church people.)

At this point I'd lived in Europe for exactly eight years, three of them situated an hour north of Venice- a prime spot for travel. But my family had never gone to Paris and as I was about to leave Italy for good, I was feeling slightly sore about this. I mean, it's Paris. So I decided to join the crazy church folk and pray the Rosary on the ten-hour bus ride for my one last chance to visit the Louvre. Also? I'd get away from home for a week and I'm sure my parents were just as excited about that as I was.

Anyway, imagine my displeasure at finding out the crazy church folk expected me to, you know, participate. I went along with their hokey games and sang their hokey songs and obeyed their hokey demands for the most part, but when the leader of our group put his foot down about me going on my own to visit the Louvre, I responded in ways the Pope probably would not have condoned. (The church folk had their own gaggle of children, but as none of them had yet reached Teenagerhood, the church folk were slightly stymied as to how to deal with the handful of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds on the trip. Meaning that we bullied them mercilessly. Oh come on, that's what teenagers are for, right?) So anyway, I convinced him that the Louvre would be a Religious Experience and by that time he was pretty sick of me so he let me go. And you know what? It was a religious experience. But this is not about the Louvre either.

On the day the Pope was set to descend upon Paris, all the youth gathered at the Eiffel Tower to greet him. And by "all the youth" I mean hundreds of thousands of kids from 150 countries. We were roped into manageable sections and waited for hours, drinking water and praying for clouds to float in front of the sun and rushing across the way to buy a World Youth Day t-shirt. And then the shouts went up- the Pope was coming. We stood up and strained on our tippy toes to see out over the throngs of people. He was being driven slowly down the gravel path in his Popemobile. He was frail and hunched over- I don't ever remember seeing the spry and athletic Pope- but he waved at the crowds and smiled and moved his hands in the sign of the cross. He looked out on each side, as if he were trying to make sure that each kid would be able to say that he saw the Pope at World Youth Day.

Later in the week, renowned gospel singer Dee Dee Bridgewater sang, “O, Happy Day!” as Pope John Paul II rode through the crowd of more than 500,000 pilgrims waving flags, banners and white sashes at him in greeting. For many of the young Catholics, seeing and hearing the pope was a high point of the pilgrimage, and it showed in their response to him.

“It kind of gave me a spiritual renewal to see the pope,” said 15-year-old Marissa Mountcastle of Orange, California. “You hear all this stuff about how ‘big’ the pope is, but when you actually see him, you get to feel it.”

And the pope, in turn, seemed to draw just as much inspiration from the young people. “Some people have said the pope has gathered all the young people of the world to Paris,” he told them. “It is not so. You have brought the pope to Paris.”

When I watched the vigils a few weeks ago when the Pope was dying, there were many many young people waiting in St. Peter's square and in Poland. The cable news channels liked to linger on the kids who didn't quite look the part- with piercings and dyed hair and cigarettes. Plenty of anchors pontificated on the attraction of the Pope to The Young People. It quickly became trite, but I felt that it was true- and I felt privileged to have been one of the young people. At the Mass at the Longchamps race course at the end of the week, the Pope spoke in many languages, always addressing us as Dear Young People! Most of that Mass was a horrible experience, a logistical nightmare, but I remember the thousands of people my age holding candles at night, watching the Pope baptize nine other kids, and the quiet over the crowd as he spoke to us. It made you feel important, to be directly addressed by the Pope. Dear Young People!

Supposedly the pope's final words were addressed not to his loyal friends and assistants that were at his bedside, but to the crowds of young people chanting up at the window of his papal apartment overlooking St. Peter's Square.

He said, in Italian: "I looked for you, now you have come to me, and for this I thank you."