Why I don’t write much fiction about the Pope

In honor of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, I thought I’d tell a true story about me and my good buddy, Pope John Paul II. The reason that this fits into my LiveJournal is that sometimes, people ask me where I get ideas for stories. I tell them that my ideas come from real life. But that’s not exactly true. The stuff that happens in real life is usually so strange and unbelievable that I could never fit it into fiction. For example:

In 1987, the Pope decided to come to America. I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area then and had several friends preparing for the priesthood or already serving as Holy Cross priests. One of these fine fellows, Father Tim Scully, let me know that he would be traveling and unable to use his ticket to the Pope’s mass at San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral… Did I want the ticket?

I attended Catholic schools for 16 years. There was only one right answer to the question. I took the ticket.

“There’s only one thing,” Tim told me. “The ticket has my name on it, and the mass is just for members of religious communities. You’re going to have to say that you’re me.”

“You mean I have to lie if I want to see the Pope?”

“Don’t worry,” Tim told me. “At the end of Mass, you get a Papal blessing. All your sins will be forgiven. Do you still want the ticket?”

A few days later, I let an usher lead me to my seat in the cathedral. “Right this way, Father Scully,” said the usher.

“Oh,” said me with a hint of an Irish brogue “Just call me Tim.” (I’m not Irish and Scully has no accent, but I’ve seen Spencer Tracy in “Boys Town” and the brogue just seemed like the right thing to do.)

After I was seated, another good friend and excellent priest, Father Mark Poorman basically told me the following: When the Pope walks into the cathedral, you’re basically going to see people go crazy. They’re going to cry and scream and act like nuts.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because you’re sitting next to me,” Mark said. “And I’m wondering if you’re going embarrass me.”

I promised him that I would not act like an idiot.

“In that case,” he suggested, “why don’t we go stand along the rope at center aisle and see the Pope up close.”

That sounded good, so the two of us found our way to the center of the cathedral. There was a lot of good natured milling around. Priests and nuns and brothers from all over the San Francisco Bay area were waiting for the big guy. And when the cathedral’s huge double doors finally opened to admit the Pope and his entourage, it was just like Mark predicted. The crowd went wild. Especially the nuns! It was like a grade school nightmare, a Who concert populated by the Sisters of Saint Joseph, all screaming VIVA IL PAPA VIVA IL PAPA. As the Pope parade moved down the aisle, the screaming got louder, and as John Paul himself approached, the people surged forward. Especially the nuns! They were waiving scapular like bolos, trying to brush the Holy Father’s robes in order to make the scapular even more blessed. In the meantime, I was getting pelted around the head and neck by the stupid things (the scapulars, not the nuns) and Mark and I became separated by the mob. It became clear to me that the experience of seeing the pope up close was a lot more important to the gaggle of Sister Mary Somebodies than it was for me so, even though his highness was only a few steps away, I decided to back away from the center of the madness.

And that’s when things got bad.

In the confusion, I’d become turned around. I tried to step back, but my foot landed on the hard, black-leather work shoe of a Sister. My ankle turned and I slipped, tipped, fell over the rope and landed in the arms of… Karol Jozef Wojtyla. Also known as THE POPE.

As I mentioned earlier, I am a product of Catholic schools. We’re talking grade school, high school and University. I’ve been an altar boy, a Eucharistic minister, a worker at the parish carnival, and a Catholic school teacher (those last two are interchangeable). I know the prayers and the responses. I was taught to stand up and say THE LORD BE WITH YOU when adults entered a classroom and not return to my seat until I heard AND ALSO WITH YOU. I’m not going to win any best-Catholic-of-the-year awards, but over the decades, I got the drill down. But in all that time, nobody ever told me the correct and appropriate greeting for the day I went nose to nose with the Pope. Especially if I happened to have just trampled a nun, collapsed in a cathedral, and lay sprawled pieta-like in the Holy Father’s arms. So I blame the combination of shock, ignorance and adrenaline for the next words that came out of my mouth.

I said, “Hi Pope.”

Honest.

“Hi, Pope.”

And you know, I’m no big fan of the every single little thing that the now-dead JP2 did to my church. I don’t like the way he politicized the saint-making process. I can make a laundry list of things that I think he was wrong about. But in that moment, lying in Karol’s arms, it seemed to me that he was a good man. Even a holy man. Because in that moment, even with all the pomp and circumstance still screaming around us, he looked down at me… and he laughed. He actually laughed! Then he lifted me up to my feet, patted me on the shoulder, and still grinning, told me, “I have to go.”

And that’s what he did, leaving me standing in the aisle, dazed and embarrassed.

So that’s my true story. And believe me when I tell you, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

For lent, instead of giving stuff up, I’m going to try and finish a novel. Wish me luck.