Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

On 14 August 1991, the Irish writer and lapsed Catholic Colm Toibin was with a million people in the spiritual capital of Poland — the monastery of Jasna Gora at Czestochowa. He was researching a book on Catholicism that became "The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe". Pope John Paul was there, too, and the impression he made on Toibin was indelible:

"I watched his face on one of the big screens. In repose he was managing still to be both the stern father and the kind uncle, allowing the considerable number of ambiguities in his being to amount to something powerful and touching and memorable. His eyes were kind and intrigued by things, but also guarded, almost weary, and then, watching him there under the fiercely sharp lights that Polish television shined on him, I studied his mouth, which seemed to me that night to belong to a different being, a more implacable and more stubborn man who would care deeply about discipline and doctrine. His eyes understood and forgave everything; his mouth and the set of his chin forbade deviation and did not want there to be any change. His power, as the night came to an end, arose from the tension between the two, the lure of the drama in his own physiognomy. It is unlikely that the church in our lifetime will be able to find a figure as interesting and intriguing. It is unlikely that the million of us there that night will ever again in our lives see a spectacle so effective and seductive. The glory, or its very opposite, has departed."

That excerpt is taken from a piece entitled "A Gesture Life", which appeared in the New York Times Magazine at the weekend. This is journalism of a high order in which the reporter creates a vista that involves the reader. You can learn more about Toibin at his excellent website.