Catechesis With Saint John Paul Ii

St John Paul II, 25 November 1981: "Pope John XXIII was a great gift of God to the Church. Not only because – and this would have been enough to make his memory imperishable - he linked his name to the greatest and most transforming event of our century: the convening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, intuited by him, as he had to confess, as through a mysterious and irresistible inspiration of the Holy Spirit; not only because it celebrated the Roman Synod, and wanted to start the revision of the Code of Canon Law. He was a great gift of God because he made the Church feel alive to the man of today. He was, like the Baptist, a Precursor. He indicated the ways of renewal in the great wake of Tradition, as I fully developed in my speeches in Sotto il Monte and Bergamo. He wanted "to be the voice" (Jn 1, 23) so as to prepare for Christ a new advent in the Church and in the world. In his Easter message of 1962 he had wished to say: "It is still Peter, in his most recent, humble successor who, surrounded