SADR, BERRA AND THE POPE

Commentary

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

UPI Religious Affairs Editor

PARIS, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- As one analyzes the pope's weekend pilgrimage to Lourdes, U.S. baseball great Yogi Berra curiously comes to mind. Here was the ailing John Paul II whispering urgently in Polish during a sermon given in French: "Help me; I must finish." Here, Belgian cardinal Godfried Daneels hinted to a newspaper at the possibility of the 84-year old pontiff's impending death.

But then no sooner was the pope back in Rome than he offered his good services to end the carnage in Najaf in Iraq, where rebellious Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr had appealed to the head of the Catholic church to intervene.

Clearly, Berra's adage applies just as well to the ecclesial realm as its does to his sport: "It ain't over till it's over."

For the last few years, every one of the pope's foreign journeys triggered expressions of fret over his weakened health. Cardinal Daneels, considered by many as a possible candidate for St. Peter's throne, has articulated such concerns before. Now one of 11 princes of the church in John Paul's entourage during last weekend's pilgrimage, Daneels told the Brussels daily, Het Laatste Nieuws (Latest News), "It was his goodbye to Lourdes and maybe also to his life."

Indeed, it would amount to a miracle if the pope were alive or in good enough health to travel to Lourdes in 2008 for the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's first apparition to Saint Bernardette Soubirous near that village in the Pyrenees. Nevertheless, he already is planning his next trip to another Marian shrine: On Sept. 5 he will visit Loretto in Italy.

What 300,000 other pilgrims witnessed during John Paul's stay in Lourdes was the normal evolution of the Parkinson's syndrome of which he himself had informed the world in 1996. This disease is well advanced, but according to Vatican insiders it has in no way affected his intellectual acumen and feistiness.

This might well have been his farewell to France, but as during his first visit there almost a quarter-century ago, he reminded this nation, the "Church's first daughter," of her baptismal vows. What has she done with it? Why is she wavering in such essential matters as bioethics, abortion, or the Christian roots of her civilization?

One hopes that French President Jacques Chirac, once retired, will have the grandeur to reveal to future generations what it felt like when this shaking old Pole gave it to him straight during a 20-minute tete-a-tete on the tarmac of Tarbes airport near Lourdes.

It was France -- governed by conservatives -- that prevented any mention of God and Christianity in the draft of the new European constitution. And it is France to which John Paul appealed: "Defend your liberty." It was first and foremost the French whom he reminded that the ideals of their 1789 revolution -- liberte, egalite, fraternite (freedom, equality and brotherhood) -- have Christian roots.

It is easy to mistake the pope's frailty for weakness. Crippled, he rubbed shoulders with thousands of fellow cripples looking hauntingly like Hieronymus Bosch figures. But at the world's largest site of pilgrimage -- a site dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the quintessence of the "new woman" (Christianly understood) -- he once again proved his ability to transmit a powerful message.

This message won't please everybody, especially not self-centered post-moderns, but it nonetheless conveys an anthropology common to Judaism and Christianity alike: "Today's society needs the essential values that can be seen only with 'the eyes of the heart.' It is up to you women to be witnesses to that which cannot be seen."

It doesn't matter if the mouth conveying such words emits spittle. What matters is that the world is once again reminded that the most important eyes are the ones of the heart. And as long as that can still happen, Yogi Berra's words apply: "It ain't over."

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