Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Why? Well, a number of reasons, but here's one: it's an e-mail that I got from a good friend who was in St. Peter's Square 24 hours ago. It reads: "The viewing last night began at 8pm and we got inside about 90mins. later. A deeply moving and beautiful experience. May he rest in peace."

Another reason? Pope John Paul's encyclical Veritatis splendor in which he says: "No one can escape from the fundamental questions: What must I do? How do I distinguish good from evil?" There is truth and there are lies, he believed. And the question for us to ponder now as we prepare to bid him farewell is: What if he was right? Not just about Communism, but about some of the other things as well? He never wavered from the "splendour of truth" because he knew what the alternative was. He had seen it in Poland and would have seen it and named it if the Chinese had granted him permission to visit. And it is this honesty and this clarity that we need and which we shall miss most.