Two Popes at the Holocaust

As that familiar parody of bad fiction has it, “it was a dark and stormy night” – March 21, 2000, to be precise – when I made my way from the Jerusalem Hilton to the Notre Dame Center, to meet a Senior Vatican Official who had promised me a diskette with the addresses John Paul II would deliver during his epic visit to the Holy Land. The diskette was duly handed over, and back in my hotel room I browsed through the upcoming speeches, paying particular attention to what the Polish pope would say when he came to the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem – a meeting about which there had been considerable controversy, involving considerable yammering.

The text, which could only have come from John Paul’s own pen, ended that untoward blather in four perfectly-crafted sentences: