A panel at the New York Encounter offered three eyewitness accounts of the life of Karol Wojtyla, actor and playwright, priest and pope. The panelists included Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Ireland and filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi. Each recalled John Paul II as a conscious and free actor on the world stage and his recognition of art as an indispensable form of communicating the truth of God’s love.
Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete recalled first meeting a Polish bishop who had come to New York to petition the diocese for a national Polish parish church. On their first meeting, Wojtyla, who was eating cornflakes for breakfast, impressed Albacete with the “weight of his humanity.”