Andy Warhol's Religious Journey

On April 2, 1980, Andy Warhol met Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square. John Paul was in the first bloom of his pontificate, and his image as a young, strong, independent-minded world citizen had been burnished by a visit to New York the previous fall. Warhol was hoping to cap a series of silk-screen celebrity portraits with the Polish pontiff. Warhol and his associate Fred Hughes arrived in Rome thinking they had a private audience, only to find that their tickets were for the weekly general audience. In his diary, Warhol recalled the event: "They finally took us in to our seats with the rest of the 5,000 people and a nun screamed out, 'You're Andy Warhol! Can I have your autograph?' ... Then I had to sign five more autographs for other nuns. And I just get so nervous at church." He was in the front row, a V.I.P. after all. "And then the pope came out, he was on a gold car, he did the rounds, and then finally he got up and gave a speech against divorce in seven different languages... That took three hours."