The last time a pope visited Washington, D.C., was also the first time.
It was 1979. Only a year earlier, the church had elected as its pope Karol Wojtyla, a cardinal from Soviet-controlled Poland and the first non-Italian to lead the Catholic Church in more than 400 years.
With the selection of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican was putting the world on notice that the church was reaching behind the Iron Curtain, said Rev. Raymond Kemp of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
John Paul II’s trip to Washington came on the heels of a visit to Poland where he denounced communism and encouraged the Solidarity movement for freedom.
During the33-hour whirlwind tour of Washington, John Paul II visited President Carter at the White House, prayed with 1,500 priests at St. Matthew’s Cathedral and celebrated Mass on the Mall for 175,000 faithful.
At Trinity College, John Paul II took time out of his schedule to individually bless people with disabilities.
“He was a man with a purpose. He was magic, captivating,” said Kemp, who got a brief glimpse of the pope when John Paul II took a short detour at St. Matthew’s. “The whole world was his tomato. Nobody was too small, and that’s the way he was in D.C.”
Ten years later, communism collapsed. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the fall of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II.
Paul Ivancie, of Lexington Park, Md., a member of the papal choir singing at the Mass at Nationals Park this Thursday, also got an accidentalfirsthand glimpse of John Paul II. Ivancie and his family were traveling from upstate New York when their bus broke down. A second bus dropped off his group at the Mall just as the pope passed by.
“We could almost touch him,” Ivancie, 62, said.
His oldest daughter, Jennifer, 7, who was battling cystic fibrosis, was waving madly. She succumbed to the disease the next year.
“[Seeing the pope] was very meaningful,” said Ivancie, 62. “His name is Il Papa, he is the father of the church, the direct successor of St. Peter. It’s just rare that you’re going to see the guy.”
