c. 2005 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) They say death waits for no one and makes no appointments. Just ask the 1,000 people killed by Hurricane Katrina, the 70,000 dead in October’s Pakistan earthquake, or the 181,000 lives claimed by the Asian tsunami that hit in late 2004, overshadowing the dawn of 2005.
Death came suddenly, unannounced and with extraordinary ferocity.
But for the year’s biggest religion newsmaker, Pope John Paul II, death seemed to hover at a distance. It was almost a final touch of grace, a pause that allowed the charismatic former playwright one final moment of drama before he slipped away on April 2 at age 84.
As the frail and failing pontiff struggled with a host of ailments and hospital visits, death seemed to inch closer. With the lights dimming on his remarkable life, the world was moved by John Paul’s personal suffering during Holy Week and the frustrated, voiceless final blessing from the window on Easter Sunday. We strained to hear the final “amen” on his lips as he died.
“And come he slow, or come he fast,” Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott once wrote, in a passage that could be applied to 2005, “It is but death who comes at last.”
The death of John Paul _ and the election of his successor, Benedict XVI _ easily ranked as the biggest religion story of the year.
John Paul’s death capped a remarkable papacy that spanned 26 years, five months and 17 days. He was the most journeyed pope in history, traveling the equivalent of 31 times around the globe. He had visited 129 countries, named more saints than all his predecessors combined and greeted some 17 million pilgrims at the Vatican.
The pope was slowed by Parkinson’s disease and other ailments, but it was the flu that ultimately felled a man who had survived an assassin’s bullet. John Paul died quietly at 9:37 p.m., surrounded by fellow Poles in the papal apartments.
At his funeral five days later, more than half a million people bid farewell to the man who had survived Nazi occupation and stared down communism. Before his simple cypress casket was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, the crowds unfurled banners with “Santo Subito!” (Saint Immediately!) and cried out, “Magnus! Magnus!” They were calling him John Paul the Great.
“This was the popular canonization of John Paul II,” said veteran journalist David Gibson, whose book about Benedict and the church John Paul left behind will be released next year.
“It was the reaction to his death, to the way he died. This was the death of a hero, this man who lept the Berlin wall, who nearly died a martyr’s death, this charismatic, multilingual pilgrim pope who showed in his death a different sort of heroism.”
Barely two weeks later, after three ballots conducted in elaborate secrecy and ritual, white smoke swirled from a chimney above the Sistine Chapel to announce that a new pope had been elected _ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a shy but forceful Bavarian theologian who had policed Catholic doctrine for 24 years and was one of John Paul’s closest aides.
On the afternoon of April 19, Ratzinger emerged on the balcony above St. Peter’s as Pope Benedict XVI, history’s 265th pope and a self-described “simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord” who confessed that he was unsure of his abilities.
For years, Ratzinger had been known as “God’s Rottweiler” for his enforcement of church doctrine, and some U.S. Catholics were wary of a conservative crackdown. A Nov. 29 directive that banned gay men from Catholic seminaries, and the removal of an outspoken editor of a U.S. Jesuit magazine, confirmed many of their fears.
Yet Benedict also displayed a surprising openness to debate. At a global synod of bishops in October, he allowed free-flowing discussion about married clergy and Communion for divorced Catholics. The synod closed, however, with no major changes to church policy.
His supporters say the world will eventually warm to the new pope, and Benedict seems to be growing in his role as pastor and shepherd, although he lacks the charisma and rock-star status of John Paul.
“Even before John Paul died, everyone knew that his successor would have great difficulty emerging from John Paul’s shadow,” Gibson said. “But I think the irony for Benedict may be the difficulty of emerging from his own shadow, that of Cardinal Ratzinger.”
A week before John Paul died, another high-profile death dominated the headlines as conservatives fought to keep the courts from removing life support for Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman. Congress passed _ and President Bush signed _ a bill to keep her alive, but local courts allowed the feeding tube to be removed. Schiavo died on Good Friday.
Conservatives used the Schiavo case as a proxy for their battle against “activist” judges, who they said were imposing a liberal agenda on the country. Another death _ that of Chief Justice William Rehnquist _ reopened the battle over the judiciary and galvanized religious conservatives when John Roberts, Harriet Miers and later Samuel Alito were nominated for the Supreme Court.
Polls showed Americans were overwhelmingly opposed to government intervention in the Schiavo case. Nonetheless, the high-wattage battle over the courts showed how conservatives who won big in the 2004 elections were now trying to take those political chips to the bank.
Just before Rehnquist died, the high court ruled that Ten Commandments displays were unconstitutional if intended as a religious message, but could be allowed in historical displays. The ruling, not surprisingly, left both sides unsatisfied.
Also in June, evangelist Billy Graham, slowed by age and infirmity, returned to New York for what he called his last crusade. More than 230,000 people turned out to see the 87-year-old preacher in the city that first made him a household name almost 50 years ago.
“I was asked in an interview if this is the last crusade. I said it probably is _ in New York,” a smiling Graham said to laughter and applause. “But I also said, `I never say never.”’
Across America’s churches, homosexuality continued to divide denominations. Signs of a fissure appeared in the American Baptist Churches USA, while Lutherans rejected a policy that would have kept a ban on gay ministers but allowed churches to violate it without sanction.
In the United Methodist Church, the Rev. Irene “Beth” Stroud, a lesbian pastor in Philadelphia, lost her bid to be reinstated after she was found guilty of violating a ban against “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy. The same church court also ruled that pastors may deny membership to gays.
A debate about life _ this time over its beginnings, not its end _ flared in classrooms across the country as supporters of “intelligent design” reopened a simmering battle against evolution. The idea, that the natural world is so complex that it must have been overseen by a creator, found a foothold in Kansas. But in November a Pennsylvania school board that supported it was voted out of office. Both sides agree the dispute is likely to continue well into 2006 and beyond.
Death was never so visible as in September, when Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast and flooded New Orleans in a toxic soup of destruction and despair. Some saw it as God’s punishment for a host of sins. Others said God must have been looking the other way.
Those who have worked in tsunami and hurricane relief say it’s best not to ask where God was during the wind and waves, but to search for God in the calm after the storm.
“For me, I do not look at (disasters) as signs or messages because my reading of Scripture is that bad things happen, but not everything that happens comes from God,” said Gary Harbaugh, a Lutheran theologian who is also active in relief efforts.
“I don’t look to God to explain why bad things happen. I look to God to help me to know how, when bad things happen, to embody his care and compassion in the world.”
MO/RB END ECKSTROM
Editors: Dozens of file photos depicting religion and natural disasters are available for this story. Go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos.” Then search by subject for “hurricane,” “tsunami” and “earthquake.” Also search for numerous photos of Pope John Paul II.
