The Pope's Silver Anniversary Photo Album

Please add your favorite pictures and stories about Papa?!

Emotional Pope Marks 25 Years, Says Will Stay On Thu Oct 16, 1:50 PM ET By Crispian Balmer and Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A weak, emotional Pope John Paul (news - web sites) was wheeled on Thursday into the same square where 25 years ago he first stepped out as pontiff, and said God wanted him to continue leading the Catholic Church despite his frailty.

Reuters Photo

AP Photo Slideshow: Pope John Paul II

Applauded by tens of thousands of pilgrims, the 83-year-old pope recalled the day in 1978 when he was elected by cardinals in the Sistine Chapel and said he had trembled under the weight of the responsibility entrusted in him.

His body now trembles from Parkinson's disease (news - web sites) and is pained by arthritis, but the Polish pope made clear he intended to remain in charge of the billion-member Church until his death and will not resign as some have speculated.

"He (God), while knowing my human fragility, encourages me to respond with faith...and he invites me to assume the responsibilities that he himself has entrusted to me," the pope said in a homily during an open-air Mass.

Choirs sang and bells tolled as the sun set behind the imposing St Peter's Basilica during the service, which was celebrated at the same time that cardinals sent up white smoke on October 16, 1978, to announce the election of John Paul.

"Today, dear brothers and sisters, I am happy to share with you an experience which has been going on for a quarter of a century," the pope said, his speech slurred and slow. Few could have predicted in 1978 that the first non-Italian pope in 455 years would throw off the stiff trappings of the papacy and take his message far beyond the confines of the tiny Vatican (news - web sites) state.

He became a major international player who crusaded for peace, worked tirelessly toward Christian reconciliation with the Jews and helped bring down communism.

But not everything he has done has won him praise: critics say he has divided his Church more than any predecessor with his hardline proclamations against contraception, abortion, married priests and women clergy.

PRAISING THE PAPACY

Clad in resplendent gold robes, the pope appeared watery-eyed as one of his top aides, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, praised his papacy, already the fourth-longest in the history of the 2,000-year-old Church.

"Holy Father, today the entire Church thanks you for the service you have given in 25 years. Even non-Catholic brothers and sisters, men of good will of other religions and convictions thank you," Ratzinger said.

As the Silver Jubilee has neared, the pope's health has appeared to go into steep decline. Speculation about how long he might live or who might succeed him have inevitably cast a long shadow over the festivities.

"I was here the day that they announced his election. He was filled with energy, filled with dynamism, and 25 years later it's gone," said U.S. Cardinal-designate Justin Rigali of Philadelphia.

Many cardinals have declined to talk about the pope's ailments and insist his papacy is still active. But other visitors to the Vatican on Thursday were clearly concerned.

"We felt we had to be here for his anniversary because it may be his last," said Filippo Belfiore, a retired fisherman from Sicily, who says he recovered from a coma after his family prayed to the pope.

Earlier in the day, the pope kicked off the celebrations by signing a 192-page document that he wrote on the role of bishops. It condemned religious fundamentalism and told rich countries not to lord it over the wretched of the earth.

"In many areas the world resembles a powder-keg ready to explode and shower immense suffering upon the human family," he wrote, adding that a "war of the powerful against the weak" seemed to be embroiling the world.

The celebrations continue on Friday with a concert and firework display. On Sunday, the pope will beatify Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India's revered "Saint of the Gutters."

The festivities reach their climax on October 21 when the pope elevates 31 prelates to the College of Cardinals -- the elite group that will choose his successor after he dies.

Ping ;)

My favorite photo is the one showing the Pope speaking with Ali Agca (his attempted assassin) in Agca's cell. They are both seated on simple chairs, about 2 feet apart. I found it on the web, but for some reason cannot reproduce it on this thread. Can someone post it for us?

My personal memory of him when he was here in Chicago. We stood out in the fareezing winter for 6 hours as he drove (sped) through Jefferson Park. There had a security breach so he drove by us so fast we couldn't even see him wave.

I will never forget how he greeting the cheering throngs of teenagers in Denver a decade ago:

Pope John Paul Two

He Loves You!

Pope's legacy with the Jews
FOCUS ON ISSUES
By Ruth E. Gruber

ROME, Oct. 13 (JTA) -- Twenty-five years ago this month, white smoke billowed from a chimney above the Vatican to signal the election of a new pope -- Karol Wojtyla, the 58-year-old archbishop of Krakow, the first pontiff ever chosen from Poland and the first non-Italian to sit on the papal throne in 456 years.

Wojtyla, who took the name John Paul II to honor his immediate predecessor, was slated to mark the silver anniversary of his election on Thursday.

Now 83 and visibly marked by age and illness, he has left a decisive mark on the world, on Catholicism and, in particular, on the long-troubled relations between Catholics and Jews.

Though a staunch conservative on most Catholic and social issues, John Paul II has made bettering Catholic-Jewish relations a centerpiece of his policy, and has taken revolutionary strides throughout his tenure.

Today, despite some lingering tensions and unresolved issues -- including conflicting views of the role of Pope Pius XII during World War II -- many Jewish observers say John Paul II will be remembered as the best pope the Jews ever had.

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee's international director for interreligious affairs, describes John Paul's contributions to Catholic-Jewish reconciliation as ``unique and historic."

The pope, he said, ``has had the courage and vision to take the Catholic-Jewish relationship on to a new level of deeper dialogue, in which the relationship with the Jewish people is seen within the Catholic world as being something that is at the root and heart of Christian identity itself."

John Paul II was elected to the papacy only 13 years after the Vatican's historic Nostra Aetate declaration opened the way toward Jewish-Catholic dialogue. That declaration, issued in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII, condemned anti-Semitism and for the first time officially repudiated the age-old assertion that the ``perfidious Jews" were collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.

John Paul's papacy expanded on the Nostra Aetate, and in Jewish terms it has been marked by dramatic ``firsts" -- starting with the pontiff's own personal history. Perhaps most importantly, he was an eyewitness both to the Holocaust and to the oppressive and often anti-Semitic policies of totalitarian communism.

Born in 1920 in the southern Polish town of Wadowice, near Krakow, Wojtyla grew up at a time when Poland was the rich, vital heartland of European Jewry. The country's 3.5 million Jews represented 10 percent of Poland's overall population. Wadowice itself was more than 25 percent Jewish, and the future pope had Jewish
friends, neighbors and classmates.

During World War II, Poland became the Nazis' main killing field. Half of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were Polish Jews -- including the future pope's friends and neighbors. Wojtyla himself worked in a Nazi slave labor camp and studied for the priesthood clandestinely.

After the war, the future pope's discovery of what had happened at Auschwitz, located only a few miles from his home, ``marked him for life and would eventually make him, perhaps despite himself, a revolutionary figure in the Catholic Church," James Carroll, author of ``Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews -- A
History," wrote in a recent article in the Boston Globe.

Given this history, it was highly symbolic that in 1979, on John Paul's first visit to Poland after his election as pope, he knelt in prayer at Auschwitz-Birkenau as a sign of commemoration for the Jews killed there.

At an ecumenical prayer meeting in Assisi, Italy, in 1993, the pope told a Jewish participant that ``the memory of the Shoah must animate our teaching and preaching for the sake of future generations."

Throughout his reign, John Paul repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism as a sin against God and humanity, and on his more than 100 trips around the globe he sought to meet with Jewish leaders. He also issued unprecedented contrition for past Christian hostility and violence toward Jews.

The most dramatic of his many meetings with Jews took place in April 1986, when he left the Vatican and crossed the Tiber River to visit the Great Synagogue in Rome, becoming the first pope to visit a Jewish house of worship since the apostle Peter, considered the first pope.

At the synagogue, the pope spoke of the ``irrevocable covenant" between God and the Jews. With Judaism, he said, ``we have a relationship that we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and in a certain way it may be said that you are our elder brothers."

At the end of 1993, the pope took another unprecedented step, overseeing the formal establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican, 45 years after the founding of the Jewish state.

The pope's visit to Israel in March 2000 was historic. He visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, and at the Western Wall he bowed his head in prayer and slipped a prayer note into the cracks between the stones.

In the note, the pope wrote, ``We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the People of the Covenant."

But the pope's Mideast visit was not without its low points. When he visited Syria, some criticized the pope for remaining passive when President Bashar Assad engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric. The pope also angered some Israelis with remarks they considered too pro-Palestinian.

Since the pope's historic visit, however, the emergence of what some observers have termed a ``new European anti-Semitism" -- linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- has dogged Catholic-Jewish relations in what the pope calls ``Christian Europe."

Other issues also have continued to pester Catholic-Jewish ties, including differences over the wartime role of Pope Pius XII, whom the Vatican wants to beatify but whom critics accuse of ignoring pleas to save Jews during the Holocaust.

There also is an ongoing internal debate within the Catholic hierarchy as to whether the church as an institution is responsible for anti-Semitism, or whether responsibility for the social ill rests with individuals.

As the pope's health visibly declines, observers are questioning whether his positive teachings regarding Jews will endure and whether they will trickle down to the more than one billion Catholics around the globe.

`This is a major challenge for the post-John Paul II church," said Rabbi A. James Rudin, the AJCommittee's senior adviser on interreligious affairs. ``To have his church retreat from the gains John Paul II has achieved in building mutual respect and understanding between Catholics and Jews would represent a huge setback,
and an insult to this remarkable pope."

The Rev. Norbert Hofmann, secretary for the Vatican's Commission for Religions Relations with the Jews, says the pope's legacy should be safe.

`The whole Catholic Church stands for these changes" regarding Jews, Hofmann said, ``not only Pope John Paul II. Of course, he was and is the most visible agent of these changes and one of his most important pastoral activities was the reconciliation with the Jewish people."

There are ``irritations" in Catholic-Jewish ties from time to time, he said, ``but they can't stop the process of reconciliation set by the church and the pope.''

There are many links ould you post the link you tried?

Anyone got a story to go with that pic? I'm not familiar with it.

ping

You pinged me over here to see the pope's photo album, knowing full well there's not even one picture of the Popemobile?!

yb!

1981

Pope John Paul I is seriously wounded by an assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square by a young Turk.

During his trial for the attempted assination of Pope John Paul II, Mehmet Ali Agca claimed that he was Christ, and warned that "in this generation, the days are counted," and said that his attack on the Pope was linked to
the third "Fatima Secret," which he demanded be revealed.

I mean a story behind what was said at the meeting in the pic, or any stories related to the meeting.

I recognize that as the pope with his attempted assassin.

The photo was posted in reply to #5. Check that post.

Oh, I see. Gotcha. :-)

Assassination attempt

A hand holding a gun aims from the crowd at Pope John Paul II as he rides through St Peter's Square at the Vatican on May 13, 1981. An instant later he was shot. Following a 41-hour-operation the next day, the Pope went on to make a full recovery. The gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, was immediately arrested. He was pardoned in June 2000, a month after the Pope revealed that the attempt on his life was the last of three 'secrets of Fatima', revealed to three Portuguese shepherd children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary's apparition in 1917. Photo: ADN Kronos / AP The life of Pope John Paul II

The appearance of His Holy Highness Pope John Paul II inside the Pope-mobile in his magesty down the street of Lindel.

Pope John Paul II inside the Pope-mobile as the Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis smiles on while sitting next to the Holy Father.

The Pope-mobile of the new generation and eight percent of the Polish people

Poland prepared a gift for John Paul II
Today is the first day of John Paul-s visit to Poland. Poland has produced the pope-mobile v the unique vehicle that is exclusively meant for the Pope.

TVC television channel described the new Polish invention. As it turned out, the Polish popemobile industry has a very long history. The first vehicle was produced in 1980. The current new model is the third model of this interesting vehicle. The latest model is not big. Engineers- goal was to produce a vehicle, on which the Pope could move during the services in large cathedrals. The Polish popemobile does not have a glass top, it is equipped with a noiseless electric engine. The vehicle can run up to 60 kilometers daily, its maximum speed is 25 kilometers per hours.

The throne,or the chair for the Pope was the most difficult part of the vehicle to make. The chair had to be a revolving one. The local factory believes that the new model of the vehicle will be a very good gift for the Pope. However, only 58% of Polish Catholics go to church on Sundays, and only 31% have fear for hell. The sexual morality of the Polish people is much worse in this respect. Only eight percent of them approve Pope-s absolute prohibition of abortions.

Just to follow up: then, in December 1983, the Pope visited Ali Agca in his cell in Rebibbia prison (the photo at # 9 was taken at the end of the visit), during which visit the Pope stated that he had forgiven his assailant. I was living in Rome at the time, and even the most secular Italian was moved by that gesture.

Mehmet Ali Agca
was pardoned by Italy's president in June for his 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Agca returned to Turkey, where he was imprisoned for the murder of a newspaper editor. It remains a mystery why Agca tried to kill the pope, or who may have backed him.

Pope clears Bulgaria over shooting
Turkish Daily News -July 11,2000
Agca accuses Vatican of being 'enemy of God'
In an outburst in court, the gunman who shot Pope John Paul II accused the Vatican Monday of being the 'enemy of God and humanity' and said he had launched 'a cultural war' against the Holy See

Agca's lawyer distributed a handwritten statement from the Turk accusing the Vatican of 'changing' the secrets of Fatima and of orchestrating the 1981 assassination attempt against the pope. 'My Catholic brothers, I love you, why do you not abandon a Vatican which arranges the assassination of its own pope?' the statement said.

Good luck doing a search on the actual news story