Papal visit sparks memories - six families who saw Pope John Paul II in '79 reflect on life, death and faith today

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 5, 1999 by Pamela Schaeffer

Six families who saw Pope John Paul II in '79 reflect on life, death and faith today

Fall 1979. Pope John Paul II was making a historic first visit to the United States. "Historic" was the operative word in articles about the event, as author Garry Wills pointed out in his acerbic critique of the way American journalists venerated the visitor from Rome in a carnival of excess and "make-believe."

Even the most hard-nosed news professionals seemed incapable of a shred of objectivity, let alone analysis or historical context, Wills wrote in a 1980 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. His article remains as one of the most endearing and enduring souvenirs of that papal event.

"Miracles abounded. Crowds surged. The pope glowed. And the press swooned," Wills wrote. "Instead of reporting the papal visit, journalists celebrated it like a pack of acolytes."

Guilty as charged. Recently hired as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I joined the celebratory chorus in a feature story scribbled in longhand in the back seat of a homeward-bound car and phoned in to an editor at 3 a.m. The article chronicled a pilgrimage by a caravan of St. Louis families, including ours, to Des Moines. The pope, elected almost exactly one year before, said Mass on an Iowa farm following his tour of the Eastern seaboard.

Our six families, dutifully Catholic, included 16 kids. The Schaeffer five ranged in age from 16 to 8. That year the families making the journey had few reservations about this pope. Some still do. A nun, a dear friend given to mirth, boundless energy and wise words to help me balance family and career, had provided a musical theme for our trip: "We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Rome." She said the words had been running through her head. Most of us were in our 30s, filled with spiritual energy from Marriage Encounter weekends and Vatican II-inspired love for the church. We were accompanied in presence and in singing by a young priest dubbed "Father Guitar."

As the pope's 1999 visit to St. Louis approached, I interviewed many of the people from that caravan. A few were going to see the pope again. Most were not. Some who were children in '79 have since joined other Christian churches. Several former pilgrims had been dissuaded by what the Post-Dispatch later labeled a "Chicken Little atmosphere," marked by repeated pre-visit warnings of huge crowds and possibly extreme cold. (It turned out to be sunny and spring-like in St. Louis on Jan. 26 and 27, making local heroes out of the so-called Pink Sisters, a contemplative group that had prayed for weeks for such a favor.)

"It would be fine if they would send somebody to pick us up," said Ron Sczepanski, a devoted Catholic whose travels of the past few years have taken him and his wife, Audrey, to every continent except Antarctica. "They painted a very bleak picture."

Just a few intrepid souls from our caravan had resolved to close the loop between John Paul's first U.S. trip and what would 'surely be his last. They included Evan Schaeffer, the eldest of our offspring. In October of 1979 he was 16. Now 35, with three children of his own, he had agreed to accompany his firstborn, 9-year-old Lydia, to the papal Mass at St. Louis' indoor football stadium, the Trans World Dome.

It struck me as a powerful sign of just how long Pope John Paul II has been pope. It also struck me as a powerful symbol of the faith being passed.

We decided to go together, Evan, Lydia and I, along with Sarah Bernard, 34, our now-married second-born. Going as an extended family to the St. Louis Mass posed obstacles, as tickets were distributed by lottery and by parish. But we had worked it out.

What had moved Sarah most in 1979, what had moved most of the children then, according to their current memories, was the bigness of it all.

"I remember the whole friendship thing," said Elizabeth Grace, who was 9-year-old Elizabeth Nedwek at the time. Ellen Schaeffer, our youngest, then 8, recalled it being "kind of like Woodstock ... touchy feely and warm, though cold and rainy," she said. "I remember the spirit."

Over dinner recently in St. Louis, Barb Beckermann -- eighth-grader Barbara Perry in 1979 -- recalled the long walk in the dark to the Mass site that year. "Then it started getting light," she said. "I saw all of these people walking in the same direction, and I realized I was part of something really big."

Renewal of that communal spirit in her own hometown was what Sarah was anticipating in early January. Before the pope arrived she had a dream, "I was talking on my cell phone from the papal Mass to a woman who was saying she'd decided not to go this time, but she might go next year. `But you don't understand,'" Sarah told her in the dream. "`This is never going to happen again. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event.'"

The hours spent waiting for the pope's arrival at the stadium were a chance to reflect, with no small amount of grandmotherly affection, that Lydia is rich in blessings. Her treasury includes brains, an enterprising spirit, wholesome good looks, a devoted extended family and the hard-driving lawyer and writer father who had brought her to the papal Mass.