I saw the pope in 1979, with a million other people in a monster outdoor Mass at Logan Square in Philadelphia. He spoke with a heavy accent and made his famous declaration "the priesthood is to be permanent, celibate and male." A tough, conservative Pontiff went over huge in tough, conservative Philadelphia, and I was in one of my brief Catholic periods. I went to Mass maybe five times that year.
Eventually I got some perspective on the Pope... all the anti-woman, anti-gay, top-down, do-as-We-say rhetoric took the shine off his halo for me. The final straw was when he purged Liberation Theology in Latin America, at a time when the Church was the only institution standing up for the poor, and priests and nuns were raped and slaughtered.
Of course, my heart goes out to all who are touched by his death. And big ups to him for recognising anti-semitism and promoting humility and atonement among Catholics. But, to me, this hard-line, hard-ass Pope was no Saint.
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