'The body pulled by a soul'

By MICHAEL VALPY, The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, July 24, 2002

The script waiting for him yesterday afternoon as his Alitalia jetliner pulled up at a hangar at Pearson Airport was in the form of a scissor lift, stationed on the far side of the plane that would lower him onto Canadian soil out of sight of the TV cameras.

The script waiting for him called for the cardinals, the bishops, the politicians to get their first sight of the leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics as he was rolled on a wheeled cart under the nose of the plane and across the tarmac.

No doubt the journalists had "frail Pope" already written in their notebooks.

John Paul II did it his way.

Suddenly the bent figure in white soutane, his face fixed in determination, appeared at the jetliner door. He waved briefly to the crowd and began likely the longest descent of an aircraft ramp known to humankind.

Step after laborious step he took, concentrating on every movement, until he arrived in Canada on his own feet and all the dignitaries spiritual and temporal hustled out to the foot of the ramp to greet him.

"The body pulled by a soul," his chief spokesman and confidante, Spanish psychiatrist Joaquin Navarro-Valls, once said.

It looked like there was a gleam in his eye, the trouper's triumph, the stage-master's coup, the onetime actor's dramatic kickoff for the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day. At one point, after greeting Jean and Aline Chrétien, he banged his cane tip on the ground and said something forcefully to an aide.

"An uplifting experience," purred Cardinal James Stafford, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Laity.

"An extremely fine beginning, a delightful beginning," enthused Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto, recalling the 82-year-old Pope once saying, "When one is with the young, one becomes young."

Rev. Thomas Rosica, chief executive officer of WYD and more or less the wagon master of the welcoming ceremony, said he had only a minute's notice that the Pope was going to walk down the stairs (the mechanical lift was employed on his last two trips abroad).

Once the Pope was inside the hangar, Monsignor Renato Boccardo, the chief organizer of papal tours, informed Father Rosica that the Pope wanted to meet young people at the welcoming ceremony.

That wasn't part of the script.

Father Rosica said he dived into the crowd, rounded up 20 or 25 young people at random and brought them to meet the Pope. Georgia Rae Giddings, 10, of Baysville, Ont., shed the nation's most televised tears after he kissed her.

A young man with a brain tumour talked earnestly to him.

The hangar ceremony ended. The Pope boarded a helicopter to fly to a Basilian monastery on Strawberry Island, for a two-day rest. The helicopter did not take off.

Father Rosica said when the Pope boarded the helicopter he asked for the flight path to be changed so he could first fly over Exhibition Place -- the main WYD site on Toronto's lakeshore -- and see all the young people.

The helicopter sat on the ground until an altered flight plan was approved.

"I've learned that when you work with Pope John Paul, you should prepare for surprises," Father Rosica said.

The Basilians had a motorized golf cart waiting for him when his helicopter arrived. They expected he would want to go to his room and rest. Instead, the Pope -- described by the abbot as "very excited" -- asked to be taken around the island.

He stopped at a shrine and prayed. Then he asked to meet everyone on the island. Then, finally, late into the afternoon, he sat outside the building where he's staying and gazed out across the lake.