janelle
04-07-2005, 06:12 PM
After years of covering Pope John Paul II up close and personal, now retired Time magazine Vatican correspondent Wilton Wynn converted to Catholicism.
The reporter says it was all due to the Pope - who became his friend.
Wynn, 84 - the same age as the Pope and once a non-practicing Baptist - recalled that when Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978 he was covering Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, but he said he had a feeling that the new pope "would be a real newsmaker ... so I abandoned Sadat in favor of John Paul,” he told USA Today.
Accompanying the new Pope to Mexico in 1979, Wynn got a close look at the man and was deeply impressed, recalling that while aboard the papal plane, the pope would field questions from journalists in five languages and never dodged the tough queries. Wynn said John Paul would talk one-on-one and spend as much time as the reporter wanted. "The way he handled an audience, his charisma, was overwhelming,” he recalled to USA Today.
Over his years with the Pope, Wynn had a front-row seat on history, watching as John Paul become the first pope to visit a synagogue, preach in a Lutheran church, and visit a mosque. Said Wynn, John Paul was "the first pope to swim, to ski, to go mountain hiking ... These were little things, but they're significant. He broke the mold.”
All told, Wynn covered 20 of the Pope's world travels and often talked of religious matters with him.
He recalled being impressed by the pope's interpretation of the Bible, "especially for me, having grown up in the Bible Belt. He said, ‘The word ‘Adam' does not mean man, it means human. God created Adam, the human, and then divided it so there was male and female.' Instead of saying man was created and the woman created from him, he puts it on a level of perfect equality.”
The two became close and during their travels he discovered the Pope was reading his work, he told USA Today. After he co-wrote a Time cover story on the pope's visit to England's Canterbury Cathedral in 1982, the pope stopped by Wynn's seat on the papal plane. "He reached out and took both of my hands and said, ‘You are a good journalist,' ” Wynn told the newspaper. "I felt like I'd won the Pulitzer Prize.”
In the late summer of 1985, before he retired for health reasons, Wynn took one last trip with the Pope to Liechtenstein. He recalled that the meeting rooms were so small that the reporters divided into teams called "pools” and shared their notes.
"I wasn't in the pool, so I went back to the hotel room to have a siesta. The phone rang. It was one of my colleagues saying, ‘Wilt, the pope wants to see you.'
"I said, ‘Oh sure, and (President) Reagan called me this morning. And (Russian President Mikhail) Gorbachev a while ago. Now, the pope.' And I hung up and tried to get back to sleep.” Then he said his photographer "came banging on the door saying, ‘Wilt, the pope wants to see you.' ”
When Wynn saw the Pope he learned that John Paul had stopped between meetings to give him a blessing on his retirement. "That was one of those times I just broke down. I wept. I can't even remember what I said. I was overwhelmed.”
Soon after, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls asked Wynn if he wanted to dine with the pontiff. According to USA Today, Navarro-Valls had worked alongside Wynn as a correspondent and was aware that Wynn was thinking about becoming a Roman Catholic.
That fall they had dinner together. "The pope came into the dining room wearing nothing but a white cassock — no headdress, no belt — and he apologized to me for being so informal.”
The pope had a few spoonfuls of his soup, and then pushed it aside, absorbed in the conversation. "He was just so intense. I could see he was determined to make sure he was understood ... He didn't talk about my becoming a Catholic. He didn't even ask what religion I was.”
Wynn says he was bothered by the church's opposition to certain kinds of lab research with human material, like embryonic stem cell research.
"He said it is all based on the transcendent value of the human person. No human being must ever be treated as an object. That person is created in God's image and therefore has infinite value,” Wynn says, adding that he left the dinner a changed man. "After dinner with the pope, I said, ‘I believe.' I don't care if it looks crazy or irrational. You don't have to try to enforce this on anybody else, but you accept it and you do it, or you don't.”
In April 1987, Wynn and his wife, Leila, a Protestant, joined the church together and a few days later, John Paul invited them to a Mass in his private chapel in the Vatican.
After Mass, the pope spoke briefly with everyone. Leila had never met John Paul and said she was not going to bow and kiss his hand, as is the custom.
"As he walked to us, it's not possible to describe the charisma that man has. He radiates something, his smile. He got to Leila, who's not going to kiss his hand. I presented her to the pope, and she just melted. I looked down and she was smooching his hand, tears running down her cheeks. She was never so moved in her life.”
Wynn saw John Paul in person just one time after that, soon after Time named the pope "Man of the Year” for 1994. He remembered Wynn, and as they shook hands, the pope joked that Wynn himself was the "Man of the Year.”
He dreaded John Paul's approaching death, the journalist told USA Today.
"If we lose him, how much I will have lost,” he said. "He's been such a support for me, a spiritual support. When he is gone, of course, there will be another pope, but for me, it's impossible to replace this pope.”
The reporter says it was all due to the Pope - who became his friend.
Wynn, 84 - the same age as the Pope and once a non-practicing Baptist - recalled that when Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978 he was covering Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, but he said he had a feeling that the new pope "would be a real newsmaker ... so I abandoned Sadat in favor of John Paul,” he told USA Today.
Accompanying the new Pope to Mexico in 1979, Wynn got a close look at the man and was deeply impressed, recalling that while aboard the papal plane, the pope would field questions from journalists in five languages and never dodged the tough queries. Wynn said John Paul would talk one-on-one and spend as much time as the reporter wanted. "The way he handled an audience, his charisma, was overwhelming,” he recalled to USA Today.
Over his years with the Pope, Wynn had a front-row seat on history, watching as John Paul become the first pope to visit a synagogue, preach in a Lutheran church, and visit a mosque. Said Wynn, John Paul was "the first pope to swim, to ski, to go mountain hiking ... These were little things, but they're significant. He broke the mold.”
All told, Wynn covered 20 of the Pope's world travels and often talked of religious matters with him.
He recalled being impressed by the pope's interpretation of the Bible, "especially for me, having grown up in the Bible Belt. He said, ‘The word ‘Adam' does not mean man, it means human. God created Adam, the human, and then divided it so there was male and female.' Instead of saying man was created and the woman created from him, he puts it on a level of perfect equality.”
The two became close and during their travels he discovered the Pope was reading his work, he told USA Today. After he co-wrote a Time cover story on the pope's visit to England's Canterbury Cathedral in 1982, the pope stopped by Wynn's seat on the papal plane. "He reached out and took both of my hands and said, ‘You are a good journalist,' ” Wynn told the newspaper. "I felt like I'd won the Pulitzer Prize.”
In the late summer of 1985, before he retired for health reasons, Wynn took one last trip with the Pope to Liechtenstein. He recalled that the meeting rooms were so small that the reporters divided into teams called "pools” and shared their notes.
"I wasn't in the pool, so I went back to the hotel room to have a siesta. The phone rang. It was one of my colleagues saying, ‘Wilt, the pope wants to see you.'
"I said, ‘Oh sure, and (President) Reagan called me this morning. And (Russian President Mikhail) Gorbachev a while ago. Now, the pope.' And I hung up and tried to get back to sleep.” Then he said his photographer "came banging on the door saying, ‘Wilt, the pope wants to see you.' ”
When Wynn saw the Pope he learned that John Paul had stopped between meetings to give him a blessing on his retirement. "That was one of those times I just broke down. I wept. I can't even remember what I said. I was overwhelmed.”
Soon after, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls asked Wynn if he wanted to dine with the pontiff. According to USA Today, Navarro-Valls had worked alongside Wynn as a correspondent and was aware that Wynn was thinking about becoming a Roman Catholic.
That fall they had dinner together. "The pope came into the dining room wearing nothing but a white cassock — no headdress, no belt — and he apologized to me for being so informal.”
The pope had a few spoonfuls of his soup, and then pushed it aside, absorbed in the conversation. "He was just so intense. I could see he was determined to make sure he was understood ... He didn't talk about my becoming a Catholic. He didn't even ask what religion I was.”
Wynn says he was bothered by the church's opposition to certain kinds of lab research with human material, like embryonic stem cell research.
"He said it is all based on the transcendent value of the human person. No human being must ever be treated as an object. That person is created in God's image and therefore has infinite value,” Wynn says, adding that he left the dinner a changed man. "After dinner with the pope, I said, ‘I believe.' I don't care if it looks crazy or irrational. You don't have to try to enforce this on anybody else, but you accept it and you do it, or you don't.”
In April 1987, Wynn and his wife, Leila, a Protestant, joined the church together and a few days later, John Paul invited them to a Mass in his private chapel in the Vatican.
After Mass, the pope spoke briefly with everyone. Leila had never met John Paul and said she was not going to bow and kiss his hand, as is the custom.
"As he walked to us, it's not possible to describe the charisma that man has. He radiates something, his smile. He got to Leila, who's not going to kiss his hand. I presented her to the pope, and she just melted. I looked down and she was smooching his hand, tears running down her cheeks. She was never so moved in her life.”
Wynn saw John Paul in person just one time after that, soon after Time named the pope "Man of the Year” for 1994. He remembered Wynn, and as they shook hands, the pope joked that Wynn himself was the "Man of the Year.”
He dreaded John Paul's approaching death, the journalist told USA Today.
"If we lose him, how much I will have lost,” he said. "He's been such a support for me, a spiritual support. When he is gone, of course, there will be another pope, but for me, it's impossible to replace this pope.”