Hay fever

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You all heard about the savage late winter that came in January and froze all Europe up, killing many old folks including my grandmother and the Pope. However, the previous winter months had been extraordinarily mild, and the vegetation had taken the signal to mean that spring was beginning early. The two or three weeks of polar weather did not do enough to disrupt it, and now that the weather is back to normal, the air is already full of pollen, two months ahead of schedule. Result: misery for all those who, like me, have oversensitive eyes and nostrils. We can only hope in a few months of constant rain (however, this being England, it is hardly impossible).

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I am slightly surprised, because I posted two long posts describing what I saw as good and bad sides of his pontificate. And I am going to post a third today or tomorrow. But to give a brief assessment - this Pope was an extraordinary man, not a doubt about that. I am old enough to remember his predecessor, Paul VI, a great and brave man who fought most of the world through a dramatic and ultimately tragic reign; and I regret that the tremendous impact and immensely long reign of this formidable Pole should tend to obscure Pope Paul's sad and valiant reign. And yet, in a sense, it is more or less natural. The difference between the two Popes might be described as between that of someone who does his duty and someone who follows his good instincts. From the word go, Pope John Paul left the impression of a man with no inner conflicts, not only of formidable energy, but of clear and confident conscience. He was able to project his own high standards and clarity of purpose to everyone around him. Everyone who met him remarked on the air of power and light that he seemed to emanate; some called it star quality, others holiness. But the fact is that, while the challenges of the role of Pope had not changed, the title had passed from a man who left an impression of painful struggle to one of strength, cheer, and a twinkle in his eye. In his early days, he left a great impression going on skiing holidays with Italy's then President, Sandro Pertini, a Socialist former partisan and an agnostic, but a man like himself of formidable personality and cheerful honesty.

It is not really surprising that as a young man he was an actor - he had the spontaneous gift of communication down pat. But if he had ever been an actor, he would not have been one of those who seek refuge from their own inability to deal with actual people into a communion with an unseen and impersonal public - Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton are two perfect examples. The fact is that he did not alienate the people close to him. You can tell a lot about a man by how long his secretaries, collaborators and domestic servants stick with him; and the same core of friends, secretaries, domestic help and close collaborators, save for death or illness, was with the Pope from his first day in office to his death. The tears seen in the eyes of his stately and impassible Press spokesman Juan Navarro Valls when he was asked about his own feelings tell everything that needs to be said about this Pope as a boss and a friend.

In short, he had his flaws, and I dislike, for historical reasons, the proposal to name him "John Paul the Great". Nevertheless, he was that rare thing - a truly great man, a man who would have been great even if he had spent his life herding sheep on a mountainside or being sergeant-major in an army unit. (I say this because I have met such people in such roles.) In Italian, we have a word that describes him perfectly - he was tutto d'un pezzo, all of a piece, the same material all the way through, and that material noble stone. Even in life, there were the moments when he looked like a statue carved from Carrara marble; but a statue that smiled a lot, laughed readily, and reacted swiftly and without dissimulation to any kind of suffering and injustice.