O'Malley recalls pope's influence
Says that John Paul reinforced his faith
VATICAN CITY -- The first time Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley met Pope John Paul II it was 1979. O'Malley was a street priest working with immigrants in Washington, and John Paul was a new pontiff making his first foreign trip.
For the pope, the trip provided an early suggestion of the extraordinary popular response he would enjoy throughout his papacy, as millions filled the streets of Mexico in an effort to glimpse a spiritual leader they barely knew.
For O'Malley, it was the beginning of a long, life-changing relationship. In John Paul, O'Malley found reinforcement for his Franciscan commitment to the poor and for his concern about the impact of excessive materialism on US culture.
But the new pope would also dramatically change O'Malley's life, plucking the humble Capuchin friar out of the streets of Washington, naming him a bishop in the West Indies and then three times appointing him to head dioceses racked by sexual abuse scandals, in Fall River, Palm Beach, and, in summer 2003, Boston.
Last week, O'Malley joined millions of pilgrims in traveling to Rome to bid farewell to the pope, who died April 2 after a debilitating battle with Parkinson's disease.
''I just felt as though I wanted to be a part of this, I guess, like so many people who threw all their other responsibilities to the wind and said, 'I'm going to Rome,' " O'Malley said yesterday in an interview at the Pontifical North American College, a residence for US seminarians in Rome. ''I feel a special responsibility to his ministry; he made me a part of it."
O'Malley said he also had a friendly acquaintance with Pope Paul VI, forged when O'Malley would function as a translator at meetings between the pontiff and Capuchin friars. Because of the length of John Paul II's papacy -- 26 years, the third longest in history -- and their shared interest in Latin America, O'Malley spent a large amount of time with John Paul II and was clearly moved by his death.
The day after the pope died, O'Malley choked up during a press conference as he described arriving at a part of the liturgy where Catholics pray for the pope and realizing that John Paul was dead. O'Malley said he felt orphaned. Even yesterday, O'Malley appeared moved as he recalled praying with the pope at the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980.
The pope ''had a much more global vision than the church had before," O'Malley said. ''And this man, coming from another part of the world, and also having this Eastern look -- being a Slav, and being close to Russia, and even his experience of being raised in a village where a fifth of the population was Jewish -- he just had an entirely different look at reality than any other popes had had."
O'Malley said that -- despite all his interactions with the pope, which included lunches at the Vatican and multiple foreign trips -- the pope never offered an explanation for why he kept choosing O'Malley for the difficult task of heading dioceses riven by abuse crises. And O'Malley did not ask.
''These are not positions I aspired to or thought would come about in my life, but when they did come about, I thought this must be God's will for me somehow," O'Malley said. ''In the mystery of our faith, you accept it and try and do your best."
O'Malley, for the second time in a week, declined to comment on the role of his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who remains unpopular in Boston because of his role in the clergy abuse crisis. Law, now archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, will preside tomorrow at a Mass of mourning for the pope and will be a voter in the conclave at which the next pope is elected.
O'Malley also said he remains uncertain how the death of the pope and the required resignation of the heads of all Vatican agencies will affect two matters of central importance to the Archdiocese of Boston: the fate of multiple parishes that have appealed O'Malley's decision to close them to the Vatican and the fate of several dozen local priests accused of abuse whose futures are being weighed by the Vatican.
O'Malley, like many American church officials, has accepted a much higher public profile in the days since the pope's death, seizing the death as a teaching opportunity.
''I think it helps people to appreciate our catholicity," he said. ''Sometimes Catholics, particularly in the United States, can be very congregationalist in their outlook, and then suddenly you see this church that is so multifaceted, international, and where we share the same sacraments, the same faith, the same leader, and the same sense of loss for his death. That has been something good for the church."
Looking to the future, O'Malley said it is likely he will know the man who becomes the next pope, because, he said, he knows more than half of the likely candidates. But O'Malley, who does not vote in the conclave because he is not a cardinal, laughed off a question about whether he favors a particular candidate. Instead, he offered simple advice to the cardinals: ''Get the best man."
''In the Acts of the Apostles, they write how the first bishop was chosen to replace Judas, and it was in a very prayerful atmosphere," he said. ''And the church needs to always choose their bishops in that way and to step back from our ethnic prejudices or ideological conflicts and try and let the spirit guide us to find the person that God wants for the job."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com. 