c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ If he were still alive, Pope John Paul II would turn 85 on Wednesday (May 18). Two museums are celebrating his birthday with new exhibits including a display of a gift from President Bush, a pair of the pope’s skis and a tribute to his enduring love for the Jewish people.

“One of the nicest things I’ve ever done in my life is tell the vicar of Christ that … we will mount an exhibit in honor of his 85th birthday,” said Rabbi Abie Ingber, an organizer of the exhibit at Xavier University in Cincinnati and executive director at the Hillel Jewish Student Center.

Ingber and the other exhibit creators traveled to Rome last October to tell a delighted pope of their plans. “The exhibit was crafted to tell and learn from his legacy.”

The exhibit, “A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People,” was planned more than a year ago as a birthday present for the pope, honoring his kindness and commitment to Jews, according to Ingber. It was co-sponsored by the Hillel center and the Shtetl Foundation, with major funding from the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati and Xavier.

Like many Europeans, the late pontiff preferred to celebrate the day that honors his patron saint _ in his case, Nov. 4 for Charles Borromeo (Karol is Polish for Charles) _ rather than his birthday. He marked most birthdays with a concert in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

John Paul II was the first modern pope to visit a synagogue, the first pope to recognize the state of Israel, and the first pope to publicly apologize for the church’s past mistreatment of Jews. One of the most prominent pictures in the Xavier exhibit is of the late pontiff embracing the former chief rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff, in 1986.

According to Ingber, John Paul’s legacy of concern began in his childhood in Wadowice, Poland, with his closest friend, Jerzy Kluger, a Jewish boy who lost his mother, sister and grandmother in the Holocaust. They remained friends until the pope’s death in April.

“This was 1930s Poland, this was the country that, with the able assistance of the Nazis, managed to liquidate 90 percent of its Jews,” Ingber said. “The pope understood the pain of the Holocaust not in a vacuum but as the murder of his closest friend’s family.”

Understanding the impact the Holocaust had on the boy is crucial to understanding the kindness of the man, and the historic actions of the pope, Ingber said. That’s why the exhibit begins in Wadowice, with 1920s Polish music as a background to massive images of the town from the time, before it launches into darker images from the Holocaust and Soviet occupation of Poland.

“The exhibit is designed to take visitors and have them walk along the same path John Paul II walked on during his life,” said Anna Smith of Sojourn Communications, public relations coordinators for the exhibit.

The exhibit then winds through John Paul II’s time in seminary, as cardinal and through his years as pope, ending with a replica of the portion of Jerusalem’s Western Wall where he knelt and inserted a prayer during his historic 2000 visit.

“Visitors will be able to write their own prayers and insert them in the wall and they will later be taken to Jerusalem and inserted in the wall,” Smith said.

A less somber birthday celebration will be held at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, where birthday cake will be served alongside a display showing medals of honor the pope received from Bush and from Congress, as well as a small silver box hand-painted with the face of Christ, a gift to the pope from Bush.

“We feel celebratory,” said Penny Fletcher, deputy director of the center. “We need to feel happy that we had him and that he lived such a long and fruitful life.”

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, given in 2004, and the Congressional Gold Medal, given in 2001, will be featured in the Papal and Polish Heritage Room, which houses a pair of skis the pope used along with his papal vestments, and features a myriad of photos of the pope as well as gifts he received from heads of state and coins minted in his honor.

“I think it’s pretty neat,” said Marie Gherlone, a 39-year-old graduate student at nearby Catholic University of America, visiting the center’s exhibition for the first time. Gesturing to the skis and a picture of the late pontiff camping, she added: “I think he represented a lot more common people. A lot of popes didn’t seem as real as he did.”

Mary and Peter Gaydos of Springfield, Va., were there with a group from the Green Spring Retirement Community _ “all that the bus could fill.”

“So far, the exhibit is fantastic,” said Peter Gaydos, standing in front of a cassock and cape that John Paul II wore through the 1980s. “I’m Byzantine Catholic and he, I feel, was the first pope to give respect to the Eastern Catholic Church.”

The Xavier exhibit will open at the Cultural Center on Sept. 13 in its tour across the world to Israel. Fletcher said the center will also use the papal birthday to announce plans to redesign the entire permanent exhibit.

“He was Pope John Paul the Great and we feel, particularly with his passing, that we need to show what says to a new generation, `Who was this man?”’ Fletcher said. The exhibit will reopen on what would have been his 86th birthday in 2006, dealing “not only with his entire life but with the major themes of his papacy,” she said.

Of her birthday wish for the pope, Fletcher said she would say “thank you for a life so beautifully lived that it will inspire us for decades to come.”

For Ingber, the pope has already affected the next generation.

“My grandparents were chased through the streets of Poland and called Christ-killers, my father was chased through the streets of Poland and called a Christ-killer, I was chased through the streets of Montreal, Canada, with those same words. I’ve now raised four daughters and they’ve never been chased through the streets and I give credit to (Pope) John XXIII and John Paul II,” Ingber, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, said through tears. “I would say to him, `Thank you for not being afraid.”’

KRE/PH END GAMACHE

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