Popes for Baby Boomers

Next Sunday, the Roman Catholic Church will sanctify two popes who were special to my generation.

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.