And another thing

A message of hope from a teeming church in Kensington

19 March 2005

What joy it would bring to the Pope’s old and anxious heart to be present in this splendid church! I say splendid, but its splendour lies not in architecture and decoration, in stone and paint, plaster and gilt and gleaming metal, but in the rapt and shining faces of the young as they kneel and pray, in the goodness and healthy pride of their parents, and in the piety and zeal of the priests.

The last time I saw the Pope was in Rome, when I had the privilege of presenting to him a copy of my History of Christianity in its Polish translation, and saw his eyes light up when he recognised the language. That was an occasion when his big audience chamber was crowded with young people of all nationalities, and he moved among them with the confidence of a pastor who sees even in the tiniest infant wriggling in his mother’s arms the future knight of Christian truth and witness to the grand old faith. However frail he is, he would be at home in this noisy and unceremonious, this crowded and vibrant church in Kensington, where in the middle of a society which has abandoned its faith to embrace a putrefying hedonism there is a rich and luxuriant oasis of all-powerful conviction and simple goodness. Here is still to be seen the ancient Christendom, surviving into the 21st century, glad to be alive and in the friendship of its Maker, and ready to face all the furies of a world where Satan rides high and his legions are in formidable array.

*Memory and Identity: Personal Reflections, by John Paul II, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £12.99.