People’s Pope charms the British

Press, 31 May 1982, Page 1

People’s Pope charms the British

From

KEN COATES

in London

■As the crowds of Britain's most important Catholics streamed out of the great Westminster Cathedral, Salina Miller, aged 18, sat in her wheelchair, tears streaming down her face.

I asked her gently what was the matter.

“He held my hand. It was a wonderful feeling, and I’m so happy,” she said. Pope John Paul 11, the people’s Pope, is back in business you might say, after nearly becoming a martyr, radiating his special brand of happiness. As the first Pope to visit Britain — even the English Pope of the twelfth century, Nicholas Breakspeare, Hadrian IV, never came back for a visit — John Paul brought a message of peace and concern.

His six-day visit involves a gruelling programme that would daunt any seasoned politician. Yet Pope John Paul insisted on moving among the people, shoulders slightly stooped, showing signs of the devastating attempt to kill him in St Peter’s Square, Rome, and travelling with two physicians.

As well as a hand picked squad of special branch detectives, the Pope also brought his own security team, under the direction of his personal bodyguard, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, 1.93 m (6ft 4in) tall, 101 kg (16 stone) nick-named the “Pope’s gorilla.”

But it is when he is most at risk - kissing children,

accepting flowers, shaking hands, anointing the sick, embracing the elderly — that his humanity and personal magnetism are most compelling. “God bless you,” he told Mrs Ethel Irvine, aged 76 and mother of five, whom he warmly embraced without hesitation in un-English fashion' as he moved through the vast congregation.

I asked Mrs Irvine whether she believed, as some Catholics do, that she had only to touch the Pope to go straight to. heaven after death.

She looked me straight in the eye: “I think I would have to do a lot more than that in order to get there. But I do think he is lovely.” Pope John Paul, with his broad, strong, now well known Polish face, and spiritual leader of 700 million Catholics, had .made her day.

Well he might. He is tough, virile, charming, speaks all the important languages, has a way with the young, and the old. He used to be an actor, hence his understanding of reaching out to his audience. He is a poet, and a play he wrote is being performed at a theatre near the cathedral in which he concelebrated Mass. He is also a Pole whose country evokes an enormous sympathy from Britons, while an Italian Pope might not have aroused the same response. John Paul’s extraordinary sympathy and compassion was evident as he walked among 3000 sick and disabled, many on stretchers, at St George’s Cathedral, Southwark. It was a historic occasion for the old faith, tolerated in England only since the

middle of the last century, z and even today out of kilter with the Establishment. John Paul’s personal . charisma gave another dimension to all his gatherings. Whatever people think of his dogmatic and conservative approach, he was such a personal success that he islistened to. and television provided a universal audience in a country that is virtually at war. His decision to visit was a political decision, and he will go to Argentina with the same message of peace and urgings to both sides to “put aside the weapons of death.” It is now realised in

Britain that reunion with Rome is not in prospect. The chief reason is because Rome itself is just not interested. Pope John Paul a year ago sought an assurance that there would be .no repetition of Archbishop Coggan’s somewhat embarrassing request for intercommunion when he met the Pope five years ago. Canterbury gave that assurance without hesitation, which is a measure of how far off reunion is between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.

• Further report and picture, page 8