Pope John Paul II's passing -- one year later

One year has passed since the death of Pope John Paul II. I am curious as to what impact he had on your life, and if anything has changed in your regard of him during the past year.

Here is an excerpt from me from the next Herald:

I am the only one of my siblings never to see John Paul II up close. My two sisters and brother all had their pictures taken with him at audiences in Rome during various travels and studies. The closest I came was being in Camden Yards in Baltimore in 1995 — an appropriate setting for me, I guess, since I was immersed in sportswriting at the time.

I vividly remember sitting in my seat near the top of the lower level along the first base line watching on the Jumbotron the pope’s plane flying into Baltimore, him getting off the plane and getting into a car to come to Camden Yards. The emotion that swelled inside me when the popemobile appeared along the warning track of the outfield brought me to tears. I didn’t think that would happen.

But then John Paul II surprised a lot of people — with his wit and humor, with his fidelity to the magisterium and with his perseverance through illness in the last decade or so of his life.