A great man is gone - but why could he never admit his mistakes?

ROCK Hudson died in October 1985. His death convulsed the world not because a handsome if minor star had passed away, but because of how he died.

As his death approached, he confirmed that he was suffering from AIDS, and it became clear that his condition was related to his homosexual activity.

He was the first famous person to die of the terrible disease, and with his death the world finally became aware of something that until then was regarded as rare and mysterious.

Some said that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexual behaviour. Others believed AIDS could be caught by drinking from the same cup as a sufferer. As a consequence, in its early years the disease had the same social consequences as leprosy had had in biblical times. Sufferers were thought to be unclean, and their suffering was compounded by the social isolation that accompanied the disease, spawned by fear and prejudice.

We know differently now. We know that the spread of AIDS can be prevented, and we know that many of its consequences can be treated. In a perfect world prevention can be achieved through education, abstinence, faithfulness to a single partner, giving women control over their own bodies, and safe sex, involving condoms.

This isn’t, of course, a perfect world. That’s why in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, 60% of those living with HIV are women and girls.

Girls between 15 and 19 are infected at rates as much as five times higher than boys of the same age. This disproportionate impact is linked to social and economic factors that severely undermine women’s control over their sexual lives. Education is limited, safe sex is insufficiently possible.

When Rock Hudson died, John Paul II had been pope for seven years. Seventeen years before his elevation to the Papacy, the Church had spoken on these matters in the famous encyclical, Humanae Vitae, issued by Paul VI in 1968 (long before AIDS, or the notion of safe sex, had been heard of).

That document spoke about the promotion of chastity and the value of self-discipline, and set out to address in particular the issue of over-population in the developing world. In it the Church issued its final word. “The Church, nevertheless... teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life... Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse is specifically intended to prevent procreation - whether as an end or as a means.”

The year after Humanae Vitae was published, Pope John Paul II, then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, wrote an article called The Truth of Humanae Vitae. In that article he said, among other things, “conjugal love is enriched through the authentic giving of one person to another person. It is this mutual giving of self which must not be altered” (by an inappropriate regulation of birth).

Throughout his papacy, although confronted with the worldwide AIDS epidemic, although aware and grieving at its devastating impact in less developed countries, although conscious that conditions now existed that were undreamt-of at the time of Humanae Vitae, John Paul II never changed his mind. He never relented, never sought to revisit the principles of Humanae Vitae, written in a different time and different circumstances.

And it will be impossible, I think, for the world to come to a rounded view of Pope John Paul II without wondering, at least, about the basis of that inflexibility. There is no doubt that the world lost a great man last Saturday night.

In the last 50-odd years (in my lifetime, say), the number of people whose actions and presence have shaped the world we live in have been relatively few in number. But their stature has been immense. Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela, for instance, will leave legacies that will endure long beyond their lifetimes. So, too, will John Paul II. He changed the Papacy forever, making it more immediate, more accessible, more a force for change in the world than it has ever been. He established, or perhaps re-established after a lapse of a century or more, the Papacy as a focus of enormous influence.

HIS role in the death of communism cannot be overstated; indeed it was his rare mixture of nationalism, courage and charisma that enabled his country to become the wedge that splintered through the roots of communism throughout Eastern Europe.

His charismatic effect on millions of people throughout the world was profound. Those of us who were there, or even within a hundred miles of it, can remember with total clarity the force of his personality when he came to Ireland.

Yet one of the definitions of charisma, whether it is used for good or ill, is that it seldom survives the person who demonstrates it. And no one can point to a place where, in religious or spiritual terms, the charisma of the Pope succeeded in planting enduring roots. He brought hope and religious fervour wherever he went. All too often the hope went with him when he moved on. He was, of course, a deeply conservative leader. There is no reason why we should expect people of strong religious conviction to be otherwise.

If they are not true to their values, steadfast in defence of the philosophy and ethos they promulgate, how can that ethos be respected and defended when it is under attack? But that determination to defend the faith led inevitably not just to a deep-rooted opposition to change, but also to a compete lack of willingness, even an inability, to admit mistakes.

Because of that opposition to change, he built a church that was rock solid in its adherence to a set of values that had little or no relevance to the world around it. The role and place of women has changed beyond recognition in every country where the Church is strong, except in the Church itself. When John Paul was elected Pope, the white smoke was as useful as any other form of communication, but his death was communicated around the world, in the wink of an eye, by email. The pace of change throughout his papacy was more rapid than in any other period in history, but the movement in his church was slow and all too often backwards.

And the inability to admit mistakes led him to fail where he most needed to succeed, in confronting and rooting out the scandal of child abuse in the church. No one could doubt that John Paul felt deep pain at what some of the representatives of his Church had done to children. But making meaningful redress involved admitting the failure of the institution, and ultimately that was beyond him.

Yes, a great man is gone, a man who deserves to be mourned. Churches were packed with those who wanted to pray for a man who had given everything he had, to the point where his suffering became intolerable. But it was the first time in many years that many of them had been packed. Isn’t that part of his legacy, too?