Michael Novak on National Review Online: "Farewell To A Great"

Michael Novak, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission and George F. Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, writes of the late Pope John Paul II on National Review Online, “There was a man!”:

Well, it seems to be sticking. Signs in the crowds at the funeral read: JOHN PAUL THE GREAT, even JOHANNIS PAULUS MAGNUS, which has about it the air of the ages. Indeed, it has been 1,400 years since the last pope was by popular acclaim called "the Great" — that was Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) — and before him there was only Leo the Great (440-461). I do not recall so much emotion at one event in my lifetime — so many arduous hardships endured by so many just to arrive here, so many truly devout and heartfelt prayers, so many declarations of loyalty and love, so embracing a sense of friendship. The crowds were immensely respectful of one another, across nationalities and races. They wanted these moments in Rome to be worthy of him, and of Him whom he served.

I wonder whether there has ever been so great a crowd at the death of any single human being in history. I wonder whether any single human being has been loved by people of so many different religions and races and regions — so loved, so honored, so esteemed, and already so sorely missed.

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How great he was, we shall only know decades, maybe centuries, hence. But those who follow us in the distant future need to know that the wave of feeling here in Rome at his death — and, apparently, on television worldwide — is deeper than emotion. It springs from a very deep and ineffable part of the soul. And it is not, exactly, a sorrow that he is gone. We know that he is with us still, interceding for us before the Lord. We know very well that now he is interior to us, not just exterior, as he perforce was in the flesh. Yet in him we had such a privilege. His kind is so utterly rare. He may be the one man most like Christ in the whole history of the papacy — well, if I am wrong about that, there cannot have been many in whom nature had vested so many human gifts, to show forth the manifold sides of Christ the Lord, "in Whom and by Whom and with Whom were made all the things that were made." So many gifts endowed in Karol Wojtyla that all nature might stand back and say: "There was a man!"

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It will be nigh impossible for the cardinals, even if some would, to turn now in another direction. I think they must keep faith with the millions in the streets and weeping before their television sets worldwide. At all times, the Catholic Church (now 1.1 billion strong, and the fastest growing religious body in the world) turns like a great aircraft carrier — very slowly. It now owes it to its greatest leader ever to sail straight ahead, directly into prevailing winds. The very winds into which our admiral joyfully sailed: "Be Not Afraid!"

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UPDATE:
See also Novak's tribute at AEI.org titled "John Paul the Great - Reminiscences and Reflections."