Dziwisz Comes Full Circle

Tomorrow, The Legend -- he who will forever define discretion in the role of personal secretary to the Pope -- will be installed in Krakow... God love him, he's still doing interviews:

As he lay dying, Pope John Paul II was aware of the presence of the crowd in St. Peter's Square below his apartment window and calmly viewed death as a "passage from one room to another," his longtime secretary said in an interview broadcast Friday night.

"He heard everything. He heard the square, he heard the prayer, the presence of the young people. The Holy Father heard, because he was conscious right to the end, almost to the end, even the last day," Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz told private Italian Canale 5's TG5 news in an interview....

The long-standing reports of "Amen" as last word are formally debunked.

The former papal secretary said the last words he heard the pope utter were "Totus tuus," the pontiff's Latin motto for "Completely yours," dedicating himself to Mary.

A nun who was nearby John Paul in the pontiff's final hours told him that she heard the pope say: "Let me go to the Lord."

"We were at his side in these last moments," Dziwisz said. "For him, death was really a passage from one room to another, from one life to another."

"In the last hours of his life there was a great tranquility and peace. He knew that he was going to his destination, to the Lord," the archbishop said. "He had not one bit of fear," but was in "great peace the last day," Dziwisz said.

It seems that Stan's at great peace as well... knowing that he's OK makes me a happy camper.

Tip to a Trad seeking alternative episcopal oversight. And, as we all know, that's so Catholic.

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