UNIVERSAL FATHER: A LIFE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II
By Garry O’Connor, Allen and Unwin, $49.95
Reviewed by Terry Oberg
THE surprising and disconcerting aspect of this biography is its unevenness.
The opening section dealing with the early days in Poland is superb. The follow up covering Karol Wojtyla’s papacy is poor.
One is tempted to think that the publishers forced the author to accelerate his treatment of this important part of John Paul II’s life.
Whether this was so or not, glaring omissions, careless typos and unsubstantiated, subjective judgments reduce this section to tabloid reporting at its worst.
Garry O’Connor is a specialist biographer. Most of his work has been associated with theatrical personalities.
William Shakespeare, Ralph Richardson, Sean O’Casey, Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Schofield and Alec Guinness constitute an impressive list of subjects.
Consequently it is not surprising that Karol Wojtyla’s intimate connection with the live theatre in Krakow is emphasised, perhaps a little too strongly.
Nevertheless those days of amateur theatre, rampant and life-threatening
Nazism, engaging with peers of both sexes and contemplating a priestly vocation are the highlights of O’Connor’s writing.
A persistent distraction is the author’s fixation with the youthful pope-to-be’s association with young women.
He unearths not one atom of viable evidence but still leaves us with the titillating and useless suggestion of what might have been.
In his preface it is specified that he seeks “to understand him from the inside.”
He fulfils this aim in exploring the life of the young Wojtyla.
Surprisingly, he is not as successful in depicting the inner life of the pope. This despite the voluminous writings that were, and thankfully still are, testament to John Paul II’s spirituality.
This is possibly due to the overt, public deeds that dominated the late pontiff’s rule.
In detailing his political intrusions into East European Communism and his numerous international journeys of good will away from the Vatican, O’Connor seems to have passed the substance for the shadow.
Another debilitating omission is the failure to deal with the apparent inconsistency between the way the pope regarded priestly interference in Polish politics and his savage denunciation of South American Liberation Theologians, although both groups appeared to share similar aims.
Garry O’Connor is equivocal about Pius XII and the Jews. All the relevant documentation cited clearly justifies that pope’s stance in this delicate matter.
Despite this, the biographer still throws in several personal asides that are openly critical of what the writer sees as culpable inactivity.
Overall this is a disappointing biography.
The informative and interesting first half is not matched by a second half that promises only to deceive.
