The Pope Who Sings

Seated at a Rome refectory table, a young priest tells of hearing the Pope at his window singing along with a choir far below in St. Peter's Square. An older priest shakes his head. "This could not happen," he says emphatically. "Popes do not sing."

That may have been true in the past. But no longer. Last week, as Pope John Paul II made his triumphal progress through Poland, the watching world began to grasp what people in Rome and the highly conservative Vatican Curia have known for months: this Pope not only sings, but he sings out. He also kisses babies, cuts red tape, says what he thinks, has an actor's (or a politician's) delight in an audience, and a former laborer's gift for gauging the common touch of a crowd.

In contrast to his introverted, complex predecessor, Paul VI, the Pope is an outgoing man who treats the people around him, and indeed the whole Roman Catholic Church, with infectious optimism. As Wilton Wynn, TIME bureau chief in Rome, reports, John Paul's impact is electric, exceeding even that of another people's Pope, the beloved John XXIII. Pilgrims throng the Vatican at a rate normally seen only in once-a-generation Holy Years. Vendors have sold more photos of John Paul since October than they did of Paul VI during his 15 years as Pope. Priests who hear confessions in St. Peter's have encountered five times the number of penitents.

The Wednesday general audiences have been moved outdoors to St. Peter's Square unusually early in the year to meet popular demand. An unprecedented 50,000 to 80,000 people now regularly attend. To ease the midday traffic chaos, the starting time was shifted from noon to 6 p.m. Unlike past Popes, John Paul reaches out to press the flesh as he roams the piazza in an open van.

Even anticlerical observers in Rome admit, rather glumly, that John Paul has galvanized Italian Catholics, especially the young. Says Cesare Pagani, Bishop of Citt`a di Castello: "The arrival of Pope Wojtyla has turned our youth upside down. They are taking over the leadership of the young again to advance not only the ecclesiastical but the civil life of our country."

Most modern Popes have been Bishop of Rome in name only. As the first non-Italian in Peter's Chair in 455 years, John Paul plunged forth from the Apostolic Palace to learn his new turf. Each Sunday he visits a different parish and, in preparation, summons the parish priest to brief him. What is the street layout? How did the people vote in the last election? What are their problems? After one visit, he invited the parish priest back to the Vatican for supper and an evening of sipping the priest's homemade wine".

On his pastoral rounds, John Paul never neglects the personal touch. At ceremonies, the Pope invariably will pause to lead a wandering child back to his astonished parents. A street sweeper's daughter asks him to perform her wedding and he instantly agrees. On a Sunday afternoon he stands on a field, racquet in hand, as it starts to rain. One of the young people who surround him suggests he seek shelter. Replies the Pope: "We athletes are not afraid of rain."

John Paul does not seek the splendid isolation preferred by his predecessors. Breaking with custom, he rarely celebrates early morning Mass alone, nor does he like to dine by himself. When a Pope strolls through the Vatican gardens, Vatican guards normally keep watch over him from a distance. One morning John Paul eluded them and offered to shake hands with a gardener. Awed, the man put his hands behind his back, stammering, "They're dirty, Holy Father." With a grin, the Pope grabbed the earthy hands and rubbed them on his white cassock. "I know they're dirty," he said, "but I don't do my own washing."

The Pope's skill with crowds and affection for people, however politic they appear, seem to be more a matter of character than of calculation. John Paul appears almost driven to be out among his flock. "This Pope is not a workaholic; he's a live-aholic," observes a priest from an outlying parish in Rome. This, plus the normal burdens of office, puts an observable strain on even a robust 59-year-old. Since taking office, the Pope has suffered from a lack of his customary exercise and reportedly has dropped about 15 Ibs. due to overwork. He is installing an 83-ft. swimming pool at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer retreat. When a French cleric injudiciously remarked on the cost, the Pope was quick to reply, "It's less expensive than having another conclave."

The Pope's vigor and popularity could not only revitalize his troubled church, but also strengthen his hand in governing it. With such a wide following, one priest in the labyrinthine, ungovernable Vatican Curia admits, he can "do things the hierarchy may not like."

Precisely what John Paul will eventually do is still unknown, but in choosing the able and totally obedient Agostino Casaroli as his top aide, the Pope has signaled that power will be centralized in his office alone. He has a disconcerting tactic of popping into curial offices to look around, and of conferring with staff experts when their bosses are not present.

Paul VI would agonize over decisions, creating confusion and expectation of change, then end up with a conservative choice that was loudly criticized. John Paul lets everyone know from the start that he is unequivocal on both dogma and discipline. He drew far less opposition than Paul when he too reaffirmed the celibacy rule for priests in April. In fact, the new Pope is more conservative than Paul: he has made clear that priests should remain faithful to their vows, rather than seek laicization. He not only flatly opposes divorce and remarriage but has provoked speculation that he will tighten up on the granting of annulments.

As John Paul's approach to the regime in Poland shows, he is a man who speaks out with eloquence and has no fear of departing from a prepared script. Earlier, when the bishops of Holland revived their conservative vs. liberal squabbling, the Pope ordered them to appear at a special synod that he will direct himself, the first of its kind in modern history.

Says Daniel Maguire, an ex-priest and ethics professor at Marquette University: "He seems to see the world as Poland writ large." Poland's bishops hammer out any differences in private and then unite under the Primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, in order to survive. This Polish Pope is accustomed to that type of collegiality, which means top-down obedience, not ecclesiastical democracy. No one knows how it will go when an international Synod of Bishops meets in Rome the fall of 1980 to discuss family life.

With John Paul, often the striking thing is not what he does but the way he does it. A Jesuit theologian in Rome compares two Popes: "Paul VI constantly reminded people of how hard it is to be a Christian in this world. John Paul, from long-suffering Poland, reminds them how wonderful it is to be a Christian in spite of all the difficulties. Paul's was the way of the Cross. John Paul looks to the Resurrection." If the Sacred College of Cardinals last October sought to bring about an era of consolidation and renewed confidence within Catholicism, they chose well in elevating Karol Wojtyla to the See of Peter.

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