John XXIII and John Paul II: Pastors in the midst of the people

By Alessandro Gisotti

Who are the saints? First of all, they are not “supermen”, as Francis has so often reminded us. However, in the collective imagination, even of non-believers, holiness is synonymous with exception. If your name is on the calendar – one might say facetiously – it is certainly due to a life lived in an extraordinary way.

But Pope Francis, speaking precisely on this point, emphasized – in an Apostolic Exhortation which perhaps deserves more in-depth study – that all the baptized are called to holiness, to be “saints next door” , which are far more numerous than those recorded in the Church calendar. Holiness, writes the Pontiff in Gaudete and exult, is seen “in the patience of the people of God: in the parents who raise their children with immense love, in the men and women who work hard to provide for the needs of their families, in the sick, in the elderly religious who do not never lose your smile.”

John XXIII and John Paul II believed wholeheartedly in this holiness of the People of God, a patient people who know how to entrust themselves to the Father and let themselves be guided by Him, and on April 27, ten years ago, they were proclaimed saints in a Saint Peter's Square filled with faithful.

Angelo Roncalli and Karol Wojtyła – in Venice and Krakow respectively, and later during their Petrine ministry in Rome – were “shepherds with the smell of sheep”, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio would say today. They lived like shepherds among the people, without fear of touching the wounds of Christ, wounds visible in the sufferings of the sisters and brothers who make up this Body that is the Church. The Second Vatican Council – born from the docile and courageous heart of John XXIII and which had in the person of the young bishop Karol Wojtyla one of its most passionate supporters – put the image of the Body of Christ back at the center of ecclesial life , by linking it to the spring experience of the first Christian community recounted in the Acts of the Apostles.

We live in times of great upheaval: in recent years, first the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine and now the new conflict in the Middle East have come together, sowing pain, fear and a sense of unrest that, thanks to globalization, now seems to be a constitutive dimension of humanity as a whole. However, the era in which Roncalli and Wojtyła lived was no less complex, no less marked by the fear of the annihilation of the human race. John XXIII, aged and ill, was confronted with the Cuban missile crisis from the first days of the Council. John Paul II, who as a priest experienced the Nazi horror in his native Poland and, as a bishop, the stifling communist dictatorship, faced, as pope, with prophetic tenacity, the clash between the two Cold War blocs which led to its dramatic dissolution. of the Soviet Union and the resulting illusion of the “end of history”.

These two 20th century popes did not react to the tragedies of their time with resignation and pessimism. They did not join the litany of “prophets of doom” who, then as now, seemed to prefer to complain about what is going wrong rather than rolling up their sleeves to help make things better. As Pope Francis pointed out in the homily of the canonization mass, in John XXIII and John Paul II “faith was more powerful – faith in Jesus Christ, Redeemer of man and Lord of history”, a faith which manifested itself in joy and hope that only those who have those who have encountered Christ in their lives can testify.

“Such was the hope and joy that these two holy popes received as a gift from the risen Lord,” Pope Francis emphasized in his homily, “and which they in turn generously spread to the People of God, deserving our eternal gratitude. “. This gratitude towards the two saints does not fade over the years, but rather grows in the conviction that now from heaven they can intercede for the Church, for the People of God, whom they served in their earthly life with love and yourself. -denial.