A Visit with Pope John Paul II

VATICAN CITY - This was an experience of a lifetime, and it almost never happened.

In 1988, WALA sent photographer Paula Ross and me to Vatican City for a week to produce a documentary on the ad limina visit of then Mobile Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb to Pope John Paul II.

It almost never happened because as Paula and I were ready to board our Pan Am flight from New York to Rome, we were paged.  That's when we learned that Msgr. David Sullivan had just died back in Mobile, and Archbishop Lipscomb was delaying his trip to Rome to preside at the Monsignor's funeral.

Unfortunately, all of our luggage and our considerable gear was already in the cargo hold and could not be retrieved.  Our camera, tripod, lights and tape, not to mention our clothes, would make the trip to Rome without us.  So we returned to Mobile with just the clothes on our backs.

After the funeral, we were ready to start the trip again, but our gear still had not returned from Rome.  When we were certain it would never return, it did, just in time for us to ship it all the way back to Rome, again.  This time, we successfully accompanied it.

No one knew if we would actually have a chance to speak with the Pope.  We did attend the Wednesday General Audience in the Paul VI auditorium next to St. Peter's Basilica, and I tried to greet him then, but there was too much crowd noise.

The next morning, we attended a private Mass with a number of Mobile seminarians and other Americans in attendance.  At the conclusion of the liturgy, we were invited to stand in a receiving line.  I watched as the Pope moved quickly from person to person and thought, "I didn't come thousands of miles to get 2 seconds of video".  Luckily, Archbishop Lipscomb shook the Pope's hand slowly and introduced me at the same time, enabling Paula to get the pictures I needed.  Knowing the Pope's Polish background (he came to my hometown while still a Cardinal to visit a predominantly Polish parish there), I greeted him in a language I knew he would understand, Slavonic, the primary language of my grandparents.  "Slava Isusu Christu," I said.  (It's a traditional greeting that means, "Praise to the Lord Jesus Christ".)  He stopped for a second and returned the traditional response, "Slava Na V'iki" (Glory to Him forever).  He asked if I were Ukrainian.  I told him, "No, Slavic".  He wanted to continue to talk, but one of his aides pulled him away to keep him on schedule.

Later, after a meeting with all the American bishops making their ad limina visit, we were told to pick up our camera gear and leave.  As we started to do so, the Pope came in our direction and began to talk again.  This time, Paula and I were given rosary beads with the Pope's seal.

And to think, the trip almost never happened.