Padre

Despite my filthy, sinner's soul, I still find myself grieving for the Pope's passage. I'm not a Catholic, and I found myself in stark disagreement with many of the official stances adopted by the Papacy. Still, I respected the man for sticking to what he believed were the tenets of his faith, regardless of the many calls for him to "modernize" his "viewpoint". Religion, I've found, doesn't modernize well. You either subscribe or you don't - all this picking and choosing and piece-meal doctrine may feel good to modern Western man, but it sure ain't what the church ought to be preachin'. Anyone who says otherwise has missed the point entirely.

Leave religion and dogma out, and you still have one hell of a man. Fought the Nazis in his youth. Passed messages of hope through men of the cloth, during dark times like the martial law years in Poland. Even George W. Bush said he felt humbled in the presence of Pope John Paul II, and listened seriously to his counsel.

So, yeah...I misted up a few times when his death was made official. I hope that the next man elected to lead the approximately one billion Catholics on the planet - a sixth of the population - is half the man that the old Pole was. I imagine the man that was Karol is bathed in glory right about now, wholly a part of the Lord he followed while on this earth, the damaged husk of his body stripped away, engaged in that happiest of reunions.