If you were raised in a Catholic and Italian tradition in
the 1950s, it played like a Coppola or Scorsese movie, sans the guns. Huge
weddings, annual butcherings to make sausage and days off from parochial school
for Catholic feasts.
The first pope that grabbed my attention was John XXIII, who
called for modernizing the Roman Church (“I want to throw open the windows of
the church”). The Baby Boom was entering high school and John Kennedy, the
first Catholic president, was bringing a new look to the White House.
John Paul II revived a church that had fallen into some
obscurity with his heroic stand against communism just as President Reagan was
challenging the concept of détente. John Paul II’s high media profile, frequent
travel, but especially his inauguration of World Youth Day, and his huge
success in Denver, put the pontificate back into the headlines and into our
consciousness.
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