Word: wojtyla
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Utterly loyal and discreet, Dziwisz (pronounced Gee-vish) served as Wojtyla's secretary and chaplain when the future Pope was still Archbishop and Cardinal of Cracow. Today he is the gatekeeper: no one -- neither papal friend nor foe -- comes to the Holy Father save through the humble monsignor. Says a close papal aide: "Whoever the Pope is, he's going to be someone who feels very much alone. You need someone by your side, a kind of soul mate, and that's what Don Stanislaw...
...Pope's youth wasn't happy," says Father Joseph Vandrisse, a former French missionary in the Middle East who now covers the Vatican for the French daily Le Figaro. Wojtyla lost his mother when he was nine, his father when he was 21, and his only brother, a doctor, died during a scarlet-fever epidemic. "He has meditated a lot on the meaning of suffering. Now that he is weakened in a world that is horrified by sickness and death, he thinks that the image of someone who is suffering is important for the church." To the sick whom...
...goal, says his spokesman and intimate adviser Joaquin Navarro-Valls, is nothing less than the establishment of a completely Christian alternative to the humanistic philosophies of the 20th century -- Marxism, structuralism, the atheistic ideas of the post-Enlightenment. "They were simply among the tools of the age. Wojtyla said no, we have something new, we don't have to copy. Let us humbly build a new sociology, a new anthropology, that is based on something genuinely Christian." The Pope, says his spokesman, believes he has at least laid the groundwork for this task...
...Jerzy Kluger, a Jewish classmate from Wadowice who is a businessman in Rome. Swapping stories and memories, Kluger calls the Pope by his youthful nickname, Lolek. John Paul likes to spend his vacations hiking with the Rev. Father Tadeusz Styczen (pronounced Stee-chen), the Polish philosopher who succeeded to Wojtyla's chair at the University of Lublin and plays a key role in the shaping of his encyclicals. Styczen, 62, continues to be fascinated with John Paul. "He still remains a mystery to me. He begins to pray and five minutes later forgets anyone is around." Styczen hinted he actually...
...then there is Danuta Michalowska, an actress who performed with Wojtyla in an underground drama group, the Rhapsodic Theater, during the Nazi Occupation. After his election as Pope, she sent him a formal message of congratulation, lamenting that they could not stay in touch because of his new eminence. Back came a handwritten note from John Paul, gently chiding her for thinking he would ignore her. Since then she has written the Pope dozens of letters, and every one has been answered...