[Harry]

As Rei said so well in her post, the church may have its faults, but this man was a resource, a treasure for all those who believed in values that have become rare in our society. Whether you were catholic or not, Karol Wojtyla was more than a "role", more than an "institution", more than another figure representing hidden powers moving in the shadows - he was a just man, able to see the suffering of those who have no way to be seen, a man able to be sympathetic to the pain of the others. It may sound like something you hear everyday, but I believe that men able to speak with honesty to the heart of men like he did are the rarest treasure in the world. Yes, non catholic people like me couldn’t really agree to everything he said, but what he said he said with honesty, with clear eyes, looking at what he knew was the only way for humanity to live a better and more meaningful existence. His teachings, his words, often simple (not in their meaning, but in the way he spoke them), were not aimed at creating a stronger "Church-institution" (which he knew would be not possible nowadays), but at creating a community of men following the teachings of the Christ. And whether you believe or not, this makes of him a man that did something also for you, and for me. The believers who "seem to worship this pope more than god", have all the reasons to do so. John Paul II is all the things he has said, all the things he has done, all the countries he has visited, all the people he saluted, all the never-ending and never heard appeals against war and against criminals that claimed Christ was on their side, all the signs that accompanied him during his pontificate. Those who don’t believe in god, can love this man for some of the same reasons.

But I am not afraid to say that I prefer to admire and feel affection for a man like him more than worshipping an abstract conception of god. His body, once vigorous, in the end crushed, a concentration of pain and suffering, became a living – and for this reason, incredibly powerful - allegory of the suffering of any living being. How painful is the existence of any creature, how much we must all suffer in our life, from the day we are born until we die, yet how many incredible things we have to see, to feel, to love in this world. A good beer, the embrace of the person we love, a warm bed your mother has prepared for you, snow, rain, the sky, the sea at dawn, the sea at dusk, the whole universe is so incredible, so immense, and our body, so small and frail, yet a ship from where we can look at all this. And we often risk to spend all our life loving nothing, and hating everything. I may not be a believer, but I am able to see that behind the adventure of this man there was every man, and every man is Christ.