Pope St. John Paul II and his visit to Denver had a “revolutionary” impact in bridging generational divides and helping Catholic Christians discover what it means to be human, Cardinal James Francis Stafford said on Oct. 26 to students at the Denver high school named for the sainted pontiff.
World Youth Day 1993 brought 750,000 young people to Denver to join Pope John Paul II in fellowship, prayer and pilgrimage. The events of Aug. 12-15, 1993 included a massive gathering for a closing Mass at Cherry Creek State Park.
Cardinal Stafford was among them. Stafford, the Archbishop of Denver from 1986 to 1996, visited St. John Paul the Great High School in south Denver on Thursday to give students his perspective on the pope and the massive Catholic event.
“I experienced those young people as the light of Christ,” Stafford said of World Youth Day. “I experienced a tremendous joy and a tremendous hope in those young people. I think they experienced the same thing.”
“I think it’s one of the greatest events since the Second World War,” said Stafford. The cardinal, now 91 years old, said World Youth Day “revolutionized” how the older and younger generations related to each other.
“We didn’t think that you were worth very much,” he told the students. “John Paul taught us differently.”
“We didn’t think it was possible for us, in our language, to get to you in your language,” the archbishop added. “And probably that was true. But he showed us how to do it: to love you, to respect you, to pay attention to you. Really, that’s what he taught the bishops. He probably taught mom and dad that too.”
Stafford said the experience changed John Paul II. The first Polish pope, who helped inspire movements against communist governments in eastern Europe, had looked for a spiritual revolution to come from the East. After Denver, he came to believe this revolution would come from the west as well.
Stafford encouraged the students of John Paul the Great High School to be “spiritual revolutionaries.”
“That’s what the Holy Father saw in you, or in your predecessors, at World Youth Day,” said Stafford, whom Pope John Paul II made a cardinal in 1998.
The venue for his remarks, St. John Paul the Great High School, opened in Denver’s Rosedale neighborhood in 2022. It currently has 45 students in ninth and tenth grade, all of whom were born after the 2005 death of their school’s namesake.
Stafford told the students that to be in John Paul II’s presence felt “extraordinary” and “unexpected.”
“He was so unusual in his normalcy, you became much more alert,” the cardinal said, adding that this prompted him to wonder: “Who is this guy?”
In November of 1990, Stafford had never heard of World Youth Day. Then he learned John Paul II was planning a possible U.S. visit and that he wanted to come to Denver.
Stafford said he felt the news like “a thundershock.” It made him contemplate why the pontiff might choose Denver.
Later in his remarks, the cardinal noted that the pope had spoken about Denver’s location amid the great natural beauty in Colorado’s mountains, meadows and rivers. It is located “as if to put the work of human hands in relationship with the work of the Creator.”
Living in such surroundings means “we can’t help but be affected by beauty… given to us to be included in forms that we create.” Our lives, our families, our participation in work and in culture, should be “enhanced by the beauty that God has given to the people of Colorado,” said the cardinal.
Pope John Paul II was known for his athletic love for the outdoors. In response to a student question, Stafford said he had never gone skiing with the pope.
However, the cardinal’s favorite memory of the pontiff was of a Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Stafford was struck that the pope was celebrating Mass and proclaiming the redemptive death of Jesus Christ above the tomb of St. Peter, martyred for his faith. John Paul II was “a great successor to Peter,” said Stafford, who admired him as a man “with wisdom and goodness and beauty and truth.”
The cardinal’s reflections drew on the Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross and the 20th century Italian saint Pier Giorgio Frassati.
“What does it mean to be human?” Stafford asked, calling this “probably the greatest question for two to four centuries.”
“The Psalter says: we are made to praise God. Everything we do is for the honor and glory of God,” the cardinal answered. He encouraged students to see this purpose behind all their studies and preparations for adult life. He also encouraged them to foster a “Catholic imagination” that is “rooted in the mystery of Christ.”
“The measure of what it means to be human is Jesus Christ,” Stafford said. He encouraged them to look to John Paul II’s encyclicals for “the foundations of what it means to be human.” They should contemplate how the Trinity is essential to our life as Christians, God’s “fathomless love” in the Trintiy and the self-emptying love of Jesus on the Cross. Everything we have in life comes from God the Father, he said.
“Know everything that is beautiful and good and true, everything in life and in the world is given to us by the Father, through the Son,” Cardinal Stafford said.
In a family or a community of Catholic faith, Stafford told students, they should have an experience of the light of Christ and of joy among them, as well as experiences of other spiritual gifts.
“You’re an intimate participant in that community of Jesus,” he said, encouraging them to ask themselves how they can be joy, hope and light for their families and friends.
Becca Caudle, vice-president for admission at St. John Paul the Great High School, told the Denver Catholic that the high school was named for John Paul because “his vision for young people and what he wants the world to look like is so much in line with what we are trying to do here.”
“He was such a role model for the youth and I think we want our students who are striving to be saints to be like him,” she said.
The newly opened high school hopes to double the size of its student body next year. Its eventual goal for full enrollment is 400 students.