John Paul II: A Personal Portrait of the Pope and the Man

I have read many books about His Holiness Pope John Paul II, and this is by far the BEST book I have read about the Pope. It is very easy to read. Infact, once I started to read I could not stop until I finished the book. When I was done...I could not stop crying. Former Ambassador Flynn did an outstanding job in giving his reader a rare and personal glimpse of the Pope, that other authors who have written biographies about His Holiness simply cannot convey. I especially found the stories of the mother who lost her son, and when the Pope offered Flynn money stating it was not church money, but the Pope's own money to help pay for the medical bills of Flynn's oldest son very moving and touching. For those who have never met the Pope...after reading this book you will feel as if you not only met him, but have known the Pope as an intimate friend for years.

Ray Flynn has taken from his many experiences with Pope John Paul II and put together a highly interesting read. This is not your typical biography, although each stage of the Holy Father's storied life is mentioned. This book gives you the Pope up close and personal, in both his public and private dealings. What an absolutely incredible man this Karol Wojtyla is!!

I once dreamt that I was sitting in the Vatican gardens at a picnic table with pope John Paul II over a coke and sandwich, and we were having an intimate conversation. This book is the closest thing to that dream, because it gives you the opportunity to understand in-depth the very person of the pope, his human personality, through the thoughtful memories of someone who has had many personal encounters with him. Although I have never seen John Paul face to face (even in a crowd) I now feel as if I had developed a friendship with him. In 22 mostly short chapters, the former mayor of Boston and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn describes all kinds of personal encounters with John Paul, each time revealing some aspect of his personality. These encounters spread over a period of thirty years. The book also helps the reader understand U.S. and Vatican politics, in an informal but very instructive way. The two co-authors have made the book highly readable. For someone like me, who is a priest, I also found food for spiritual life, during the flight from Boston to Taipei!

Ambassador Flynn's memoir of the 264th Bishop of Rome is admirably done. It is a warmly affectionate, up-close, well-informed, down-to-earth readable series of vignettes dating from 1969 to the Jubilee Year. Ambassador Flynn has an advantage over other commentators who might be imprisoned in their political dichotomies or perpetually harking back to more "progressive" days: he understands John Paul II, and he understands Catholicism.We see Flynn's first encounter with Cardinal Wojtyla in a Polish Church in South Boston; we see the jubilation in Southie and elsewhere over Wojtyla's election as pontiff in 1978; we see the dismay over the assassination attempt in 1981 (Flynn was lecturing at a Boston community college at the time). But the great bulk of this unbulky tome deals with the ambassadorial years of Ray Flynn at the Vatican, and the Clinton administration's sometimes uneasy diplomacy with the Holy See. There is valuable behind-the-scenes material about the United Nation's Cairo Conference, and Flynn's delicately persistent urgings that the Administration take a less nihilistic position.We see His Holiness the Pope in Central Park singing Polish Christmas carols; we see him in St Louis denouncing the death penalty, both for convicted criminals and for innocent children in the womb. We see a man of courage, of conviction, of self-deprecating humor, and a man whose smaller gestures (toward the elderly, disabled, and aggrieved) have been recorded by Ambassador Flynn with an unburdensome thoroughness. We even have a papal footnote to St Augustine's memorable dictum that to sing is to pray twice!This personal portrait (we can call it a biography) should be read in conjunction with "Witness to Hope," George Weigel's admirable, but dauntingly mammoth, masterwork. We note that Weigel's work has not been greeted with approval in every quarter; and on that matter, might we quote Marianne Moore: "In connection with personality, it is a curiosity of literature how often what one says of another seems descriptive of one's self."

Ambassador Flynn presents an incredible view of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. Their relationship started not with President Clinton tapping Flynn as Ambassador to the Holy See, but rather 30 years before, in Boston with Cardinal Cushin and Cardinal Wojtya. It is an inspring volume of the relationship between the Vicar of Christ and a representitive of the United States government. But even more inspiring, that of a Catholic family man and a true priest of God. Anyone who wants a view of the Pope that has never really been explored would be foolish to ignore this book. It would also serve as a beautiful compliment to George Weigal's Witness to Hope!