I remember it was Whitsuntide and I was sitting in a train. ‘On the diesel’, we called it in those days. I was in Birmingham New Street Station, waiting for the diesel to set off for Erdington, where I was at Boarding School. I must have seen it on a newspaper stand, the headline, ”Pope John Dead”. It was a sunny day, and I felt sad. I remember sitting by the window in the carriage, looking out at the platform and up at the bit of blue sky that I could see above the railway roofing, and being sad.
I felt as if my granddad had died. I had a granddad back home in Lancashire, a lovely old man, quiet, kind and gentle, my father’s father. He had a moustache, he was strong as an ox, my father said, and he could play the fiddle. He was old now, and going blind, and he lived next door to us. I didn’t really know him that well, me being away at school, but I loved him and I still do. He died in 1968.
But this was 1963, and Pope John had only been pope for five years, but everybody knew about him, and everybody loved him. Why? Well, he was cuddly for a start, being quite fat. But he stole the hearts of people simply by his simple, warm and easy manner. He was everybody’s favourite granddad.
His first Christmas we heard that he went out of the Vatican to visit the prisoners in the Regina Caeli Prison in Rome. He opened the windows of the Vatican to let the fresh air of the modern world come in. He called a Council to renew the church. He was like one of those old people who refuse to sit at home and behave themselves, and instead go out dancing.
After he died, they published the book of his spiritual journey, entitled Journal of a Soul. It tells the story of a very good, holy, pious man. But he was also a man of the world. He had served as a chaplain in the First World War. He was in the diplomatic service in Turkey and in France. He had seen life.
A stop-gap pope they called him, someone to tidy them over, after the long reign of the austere Pius XII. But Giuseppe Roncalli, for such was his name, was no one’s soft touch. Kindly yes, and approachable, but nobody’s fool. And for a few short years the whole world had a granddad, who smiled on us and encouraged us and rejoiced in us. I was sad when he died.
Erris Poetry 