Under gray skies, a chilly rain and heavy security, thousands of worshipers crowded into St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue Sunday to mourn Pope John Paul II.
Speaking at a morning mass, with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy among the thousands present, Cardinal Edward Egan, the archbishop of New York, recalled John Paul II’s many accomplishments and his once “handsome, imposing, athletic and incredibly striking figure.”
“He was easy to admire,” Egan said. “However, I want to testify this morning that I never admired him as much and I was never inspired by him so much as when, brought low by physical weakness, he continued to proclaim the gospel as best he could and feed his flock.”
The cathedral also held a mass in Polish on Sunday.
“Coming from Chicago, I should be able to celebrate that mass myself. But the [Polish] words I learned on the streets of Chicago may not be appropriate” Egan said earlier in the day, drawing some laughter from the otherwise somber congregation.
Born in Oak Park, Ill., Egan, 73, first served as a priest at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking Sunday at an annual political breakfast of Jewish organizations, said Jews would remember John Paul II as a victim of Nazi oppression.
“For the Jewish community, his recognition of the tragedy that took place in the late-1930s and early 1940s obviously resonated,” Bloomberg said. “But . . . he also lost relatives in the concentration camps in Poland, so this was not something he did because he felt an obligation as a leader, but it was a genuine thing that only somebody who really suffered firsthand can understand.”
At Christ Church, an Episcopal congregation in suburban Pelham, Rev. J. Randolph Alexander called John Paul a man of “steadfast faith” who worked for world peace and for reconciliation between Jews and Christians.
Parishioner Lorrie Strauss, 47, a former Chicagoan, credited John Paul for making the papacy seem less remote. And, having watched a close friend die recently in a hospice, she admired the way the pope faced death.
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“I feel he was honest about his death,” Strauss said.