After years of covering Pope John Paul II up close and personal, now retired Time magazine Vatican correspondent Wilton Wynn converted to Catholicism.
After years of covering Pope John Paul II up close and personal, now retired Time magazine Vatican correspondent Wilton Wynn converted to Catholicism. The reporter says it was all due to the pope - who became his friend. Wynn, 84 - the same age as the pope and once a non-practicing Baptist - recalled that when Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978 he was covering Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, but he said he had a feeling that the new pope "would be a real newsmaker ... so I abandoned Sadat in favor of John Paul," he told USA Today.
Accompanying the new pope to Mexico in 1979, Wynn got a close look at the man and was deeply impressed, recalling that while aboard the papal plane, the pope would field questions from journalists in five languages and never dodged the tough queries. Wynn said John Paul would talk one-on-one and spend as much time as the reporter wanted.
He recalled being impressed by the pope's interpretation of the Bible, "especially for me, having grown up in the Bible Belt. He said, 'The word 'Adam' does not mean man, it means human. God created Adam, the human, and then divided it so there was male and female.' Instead of saying man was created and the woman created from him, he puts it on a level of perfect equality."
In April 1987, Wynn and his wife, Leila, a Protestant, joined the church together, and a few days later John Paul invited them to a Mass in his private chapel in the Vatican.
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2 comments:
Touching story. Having said that I would have been much more encouraged to read that the couple had received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
I personally belive they are one in the same. Not that the pope is Christ but his message is the message of Christ. So to accpet it is to accept Jesus.
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