Pope’s leadership offers moral compass to world

Christians across the globe, not just Roman Catholics, mourn the loss of a great spiritual, moral and political leader even as they celebrate the life and leadership of Pope John Paul II.
We of the First UMC, Devine, pray with Christians everywhere, including our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers, thanking God for Pope John Paul’s faithfulness and leadership.
We expect God to bless the Roman Catholic Church and the world in the selection process of a new spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church.
We live in times of great contrast.
The last 100 years have produced Adolf Hitler (who killed 6 million Jews just because they were Jewish), Josef Stalin (who killed 13 million people in camps), and Mao Zedong (who killed 11 million in the “Cultural Revolution”). These people are some of the worst influences in history.
But these past 100 years have also produced John Paul II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and others who with many voices had one message: “Never again!”
Pope John Paul won my heart three times:
> John Paul visited the prison cell of the man who tried to assassinate him and forgave him! How difficult it must have been to look into eyes filled with hate and murder and say “I forgive you.”
> John Paul confessed the sin of the universal Christian Church—not just the Roman Catholic Church but mine as well—of not standing up to Hitler and of not proclaiming the gospel to Hitler.
> While Pope John Paul was faithful to Roman Catholic doctrine, he was faithful to its spirit in reaching out in reconciliation to Protestants, Jews and people of other faiths.
John Paul was not my spiritual father, but he was a compass to be checked.
Even when I disagreed with him on political issues such as the Iraq Wars, his objections gave me cause for consideration, for he was so “right” on so many political issues, such as support for the Polish Solidarity movement.
My prayer is that the Roman Catholic Church will be blessed again with great leadership that will be a faithful guide, moral compass, and world leader such as Pope John Paul, to whom the world owes a great debt.
Whomever the Roman Catholic Church elects, I pray that he will add his voice to the chorus of world leaders advocating a “culture of life” and will join a ground-swell of people from many faith communities saying “Never again!” to a culture of death, violence and murder.