Pope John Paul II died yesterday. While I'm not Catholic, I'm a native of Chicago, a city that has more people of Polish ethnicity than any city in the world other than Warsaw. (For those interested, PBS's American Experience series did a show called "God Bless America and Poland, too"). I still remember both when John Paul II was shot and when he went to Chicago -- believe me, both were big deals. For his lengthy service and his anti-communism, he deserves honors.
As I said, I'm not Catholic, so the thing I associate most with John Paul II (other than going to Poland during the height of the Cold War and facing down Gen. Jaruzelski (sp?)) is somewhat secular and, well, literary: When I was a teenager, I read a novel by Morris West called "The Shoes of the Fisherman." It was published sometime during the 1960s (I believe), and it featured the first non-Italian pope in some 400 years. He was a fierce anti-communist from eastern Europe. Poland? No. The Ukraine, which was pretty close. I found it oddly prescient and a little creepy in the same way that I regard the guy who, circa 1900, wrote the novel about the "unsinkable" ocean liner called "Titan" that hit an iceberg...
No comments:
Post a Comment