When the Pope passed away on April 3, 2005 at 3:37 a.m. Sunday (Manila time) from a multiple organ failure, my thoughts traced him back when he visited Albay in February 1981, about 3 years after his installation as head of the Roman Catholic Church. It was one of his stopovers in the country. I was in my early 30s and very excited to see a Santo Padre in person.

The Pope’s visit at the historic Albay Cathedral was my first year in the province after having been purged by Marcos from government service. I could hardly contain my excitement; I had a different vigor, so much unlike those I previously felt in the faith: an unprecedented anticipation of hope, very much literal yet overflowing.

I was then staying with my family in a crammed nipa shack in a southern Tabaco inland I haphazardly got. And when my wife learned of my decision to see the Pontiff the next day, I think it was a Sunday, her eagerness sparkled in her eyes. On therefore we went in the pitch of darkness with our eldest daughter Doreen to a late bus bound for Old Albay.

It was about midnight when we reached the place and already many folks and children roamed the public square fronting the Provincial Capitol of Albay. Their various silhouettes glossed of sleep from several unkempt lamps nearby. We took a vacant space and settled thereat for a nap.

Hours fleeted with haste so that before everybody was wide awake melee of uproars broke with the daybreak, “Mabuhay an Santo Papa! Mabuhay an Santo Papa! Mabuhay an Santo Papa!” And all waved their kerchiefs above their heads as if welcoming a kin whose acquaintance had been terribly missed. And the Pope raised his arms in gladness, smiling, and blessing the crowd. And there was joy in each heart; I could see it radiate from faces.

There was a program prepared during the arrival, mostly singing. Preceding this, the Pope spoke in halting Tagalog with German accent, “Ma-gan-dang u-ma-ga, mga ka-pa-tid! Ma-hal ko Ka-yo! Ma-hal ka-yo ng Di-yos!” This was met with thunderous applause.

The meeting was brief. When the popemobile was no longer in sight, the faithfuls dispersed. My wife and I and daughter walked to my office in a nearby college and slept the rest of the morning.

After that, I followed the Pope through readings while finishing my doctoral degree at the Bicol University. I learned the house of injustice throughout the world was no match to his piercing exhortations. Communism crumbled in eastern Europe starting from his native Poland. Marcos’s dictatorship was not spared.

When already a doctor, I returned to Camarines Sur and my wandering days were over. That was after my 2 stints abroad. At last, I was home with “Ina.”

Then I noticed the necessary sufferings of the Pope in terms of physical ailments, particularly the Parkinson disease which of late is still of unknown origin and remedy. I know that the Santo Papa agonized much from the debilitating malady. I used to attend to an American patient with such disorder.

If tremors, as reported, started in 1995, it would be close to a decade that he had pained of the Parkinson. The shaking would be followed by the inability to walk, but with bars, the patient could stand and take steps. His torso would be uncontrollably tilted forward and his face would appear to be a mask. By this time, he needs a caregiver to take care of his personal needs: feeding, bathing, vowel movement, and so on. And the mental functions? That’s the last to disappear. The reason, most probably, the Pope, before his last breath, was still able to say, “amen,” after saying of the Holy Rosary by the devotees below the Pope’s window.

With the life of John Paul II, lately given the epithet, The great, a flower of love of Jesus exuding a human drama of God’s Words of eternal peace, reveal: “To whom much is given, much is required.”

And Bicol is a part of that greatest humanity shown by Pope John Paul II, The Great.