Denver Newsroom, May 5, 2020 / 02:52 am (CNA).- Pope St. John Paul II, who led the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005, is perhaps one of the most compelling figures of the 20th century.
Born nearly 100 years ago on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland, Karol Woytila— the future pope— endured the loss of most of his family, clandestinely studied for the priesthood while his country was under Nazi rule, and rose through the Church hierarchy while never ceasing to encourage his Polish countrymen to keep the faith while resisting Communist pressure.
He participated in the Second Vatican Council and, upon his election as pope, became the most widely-traveled pontiff ever and likely the most-seen person in the history of the world. He was an academic, and widely regarded as a genius, but also a man of simplicity and humility.
He survived a brutal assassination attempt in 1981, crediting Mary’s intercession for his survival and extending forgiveness to his attacker.
“He’s the exemplar of the fact that a life wholly dedicated to Jesus Christ and the Gospel is the most exciting human life possible,” George Weigel, John Paul II’s biographer, told CNA.
“This man lived a life of such extraordinary drama that no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare come up with such a storyline. It would just be regarded as absurd.”
His compelling life story has been told and retold many times, including on the big screen.
But did you know that John Paul II’s life story was once the subject of a Marvel comic book?
Printed in full color and featuring dramatic, stylish visuals, the 1982 comic chronicles the pope’s life, from his childhood in Poland all the way up to the attempt on his life by a would-be assassin.
Marvel, which Disney purchased in a multi-billion dollar acquisition in 2009, is one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, and the purveyor of such iconic characters as Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Captain America.
So what persuaded the Marvel executives to green-light a comic book about the then newly-elected pope?
‘Marvel’s Man in Japan’
It all started with Gene Pelc— a New Yorker and Marvel representative living in Japan.
Pelc— whose wife is Japanese— had moved to Japan in the 1970s in order to report back to Marvel on how the comic book company could adapt its products for a Japanese audience.
Pelc was tasked with licensing Spider-Man to play on Japanese television, and was largely successful at what he did, earning the moniker “Marvel’s Man in Japan.”
Pelc told CNA that he and his family went— and still go— to Mass at the Franciscan Chapel Center, a community of English-speaking priests in Tokyo.
Japan was then— and remains today— a very non-Christian country, with Catholics comprising less than half of 1% of the population.
One day, a priest named Father Campion Lally approached Pelc at the Franciscan Chapel Center with an unusual proposition. The eight-hundredth anniversary of St. Francis’ birth was coming up in 1982, Fr. Lally said…what if, to commemorate it, Marvel produced a comic book about the life of St. Francis?
Pelc liked the idea, and wondered whether it would prove popular amongst Catholics in the US. Fr. Lally was adamant, however, that the comic be marketed to non-Catholics as well.
“The real reason I want this done is to reach an audience the Church doesn’t normally reach,” Pelc remembers Fr. Lally saying.
“’I want to take St. Francis out of the birdbath’ was his exact comment.”
Pelc called up Stan Lee— a legendary Marvel comic book publisher— who apparently liked the idea. But when Pelc pitched the idea to the higher-ups at Marvel, they weren’t quite so supportive at first.
“They all said: Gene, you’ve been in Japan too long. No one wants to hear about that. They want to hear about superheroes,” Pelc remembers the executives telling him.
Pelc was able to appeal to the financial sensibilities of the executives to help his case, however— the Paulist Press, a U.S.-based Catholic publisher, had expressed interest in purchasing some 250,000 copies of the comic upon its release.
Needless to say, the prospect of a minimum of 250,000 copies sold— when a popular comic at the time could be expected to sell around 150,000 copies— was enough to sway the executives to approve the project.
Father Roy Gasnick, a Franciscan priest and director of communications based in New York, helped Marvel writer Mary Jo Duffy to write the story of St. Francis’ life for the comic. Fr. Gasnik was, by all accounts, a massive comic book fan himself.
Then the artists at Marvel did their magic, and produced the comic entitled “Francis: Brother of the Universe,” which hit stores in 1980.
Helped by the Paulist Press’ large order, “Brother of the Universe” proved to be a hit, both critically and commercially.
A new project
“The next step was pretty obvious to me, being Catholic and being Polish,” Pelc said.
“Pope John Paul II was extremely popular in the world at the time; he was traveling much more than the old popes did previously. And he was actually coming to Japan.”
John Paul II was the first pontiff to visit the country. The pope arrived in Japan in February 1981, to a small but enthusiastic welcome.
The pope’s visit galvanized Pelc, who was still riding high on the success of the St. Francis comic. He began looking into the possibility of producing another religious-themed comic for Marvel.
A friend of Gene’s introduced him to Father Mieczyslaw Malinski, who was a friend of the pope’s back in Poland during the war. Fr. Malinski apparently consulted with the pope himself about what he thought about the idea of turning his story into a comic.
According to Pelc, John Paul II was supportive of the idea, as long as Fr. Malinski himself worked with the comic book team on the project.
So, the Marvel team was off to the races yet again. The first step? Research. And a lot of it.
Most of the information came from Fr. Malinski, but the story still had to be adapted to fit into the panels and speech bubbles.
That task fell to Steven Grant, a young freelance comic book artist who at the time was living in New York and working for Marvel. He had heard that Marvel was producing a second religious-themed comic, but he didn’t think much of it— he assumed that Mary Jo Duffy would be tasked with writing this one, too.
Instead, Marvel’s editor-in-chief called Grant into his office and asked him to take on the task of writing the John Paul II comic book.
“I got involved because I was expendable at the time,” Grant told CNA.
“I wasn’t one of the artists they particularly wanted writing the Fantastic Four that month,” he laughed.
“And they knew I was Catholic— that was my big credential.”
For Grant, working on a comic book about John Paul II— which the team always referred to as “the Pope Book”— was both ordinary, in the sense that the writing process was not markedly different than other comic books; and extraordinary, given that the subject matter was not only a living person, but also the leader of a 1-billion strong worldwide religion.
“No one was worried about offending him, but there was a lot of room to offend a lot of people if we did a bad job with it,” he said.
Bumps in the road
The project experienced two major roadblocks the year before it was released, the first of which was the attempt on John Paul’s life in May 1981, in the midst of the comic’s production.
Instead of dropping the project, the Marvel team wrote the events of the assassination into the book itself.
In addition, communicating with Fr. Malinski would prove more difficult than the team at Marvel had expected.
On Dec. 13, 1981, a general named Wojciech Jaruzelski appeared on television sets throughout Poland. In a video message repeated over and over again, the general declared martial law, and ordered troops to suppress the Solidarity movement, a trade union rooted in Catholic principles that opposed Communism.
Many striking Solidarity workers would die in the next few days, as Polish troops fired into groups of them.
After John Paul’s visit to his native Poland in 1979, it would be another decade before the Solidarity Party in Poland, with the pope’s encouragement, would finally gain a majority in Parliament, and, largely peacefully, the country would shrug off the shackles of Communism.
To make matters worse, the turmoil in Poland was taking place in the middle of the comic book’s production schedule, and the Marvel team needed Fr. Malinski’s insights in order to get the comic book written.
The Communists restricted much of the communications in and out of Poland during that time. Pelc said he remembers receiving smuggled communications from Fr. Malinski, which he brought to his father in New York to have translated from Polish to English.
Apart from Fr. Malinski’s contributions, Grant says he simply put his nose to the grindstone and read up on as much as he could about the pope’s life.
“It was a little pre-internet,” Grant chuckled.
“I figured anything I found three or four references to was probably accurate.”
His total research spanned about two months, he says, but the actual writing process was only a couple of weeks long, spurred on by Marvel’s tight production schedules.
Legacy
Finally, in 1982, the comic book hit the shelves. Thanks in large part to Catholic agencies buying up the edition, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million copies made their way into the world.
For a young comic book artist, it was quite the windfall. Grant said he was able to pay off his student loans when he received the royalties for the comic the following year.
So, did the pope himself ever get a chance to see himself as a Marvel hero? According to Pelc, he did. A Marvel executive flew to Rome and presented the pope with a leatherbound edition.
The success of the first two religious-themed comic books led to a third, this time about another future saint— and friend of John Paul’s— Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Although Pelc was not able to assist with that project, that comic also proved successful, though it was the last of the major religious-themed comics that Marvel produced. That comic even won a Catholic Press Association award in 1984.
In the four decades since the John Paul II comic book’s release, several members of the team that worked on it, including the artist who created the drawings, have died.
Pelc and Grant have gone their separate ways. Grant is still a freelance comic writer, and does writing work for Marvel “once in a blue moon” when they call him up.
Though the “Pope book” remains just one of the hundreds of projects that Grant has worked on over the years, he said he remembers walking into his local laundromat in New York a few months after the comic’s release, and being surprised to see the comic’s cover framed and hung proudly on the wall.
Though Grant never told the owners of the laundromat— clearly devout Catholics— that he was the author of the comic, he said it brought him pride that they valued it so highly.
Pelc, who still lives in Tokyo, owns a company that sells merchandise for musical artists. He said he still gets asked to this day— mostly by parishioners at the Franciscan Chapel Center— about Marvel’s religious comics, he says.
On the side, Pelc still has a passion for telling compelling Catholic stories. He is currently working on a book about the late 16th-century 26 Christian martyrs of Japan, and hopes eventually to adapt the story into a screenplay.
For his part, Pelc says he thinks it unlikely that a company like Marvel would produce something like this again. But he’s glad that by means of the “Pope book,” he and Grant and the entire team were able to tell a good story, in a world inundated by bad stories.
“That man deserved to be known by more than just people who go to church. He was an everyman pope, and I, being Polish, loved him,” he reflected.
Note: This story was adapted from an episode of Catholic News Agency’s podcast, CNA Newsroom. Click here to listen to the full story.
[…]
JPII allowed Cardinal Ratzinger to give communion to a Protestant, Brother Roger Schutz, so there is some precedent here.
That is true, but Brother Roger was at least a believing Christian.
Of the Lutherian type; the Zwinglianisme ilk, perhaps, or some other sect? There are a lot of protestant fancies and flavors Father and some hold rather weird views about the Eucharist, let alone the Real Presence. Just because he may have been a “believing” person really doesn’t make him a brother to us Catholics, Father.
There is a substantial difference between a baptized Christian and an unbaptized person. By itself, the lack of baptism renders a person incapable of receiving Christ in the Eucharist, and therefore a case of sacrilege – the same as if a Catholic were to receive the Eucharist while in mortal sin.
Presumably, Cardinal Ratzinger had the care to ensure that the Protestant believed as the Church believes regarding the Eucharist. Canon law requires this, along with baptism, even in the limited cases where bishops are allowed to make exceptions to the rule of Catholics only. Such exceptions are not necessarily prudent (there’s still the question of whether they are in error or heresy, and whether they have committed a mortal sin at any point in their lives), but they are not manifest and obvious sacrilege.
From the sounds of it, the archbishop committed sacrilege, and according to him, he did this for the sake of human respect. One ought not commit even the smallest sin for the sake of human respect. From the sounds of it, the sheik intended no disrespect and had no reason to know. It is the archbishop’s job to know – it’s your average parish priest’s job to know – even an EMHC has the obligation to know this sort of thing, and act accordingly. It’s not bread, it’s God. Treat the Eucharist like it’s more precious than the universe, because it is.
This is no “precedent”. This is blasphemy. Neither the sheik or the protestant are Catholic believers with our understanding of the real presence in the Eucharist. In both cases these high churchmen who handed out communion like a party favor should have known better.The non-Catholic churchmen should never have moved up the aisle to receive to begin with.
I would suggest that at all events with “mixed” religion attendees, an announcement should be made about this, loud and clear. Non-Catholics are NOT to receive. Period. I have heard such done at weddings and funerals so there is no reason they cannot clarify this point. Mass is not a friendship tour and should not be treated as such.
How does that make it right? Only Catholics in good standing in the Catholic are to receive Holy Communion.
FIRST, we are groomed to think that “synodality” is a dialogue among the “baptized”—with the distinct sacrament of Holy Orders seemingly reduced to a “difference in degree” and no longer a “difference in kind” (this being a corruption of the Council’s Lumen Gentium).
So, SECOND, are we now to believe that a “pluralism” of religions erases another distinction? That is, (apart from the value of deep interpersonal attachments), is there still the difference between the revealed Catholic Faith and the beliefs of the followers of Islam? Islamic belief replaces the Incarnation of the Second Person of the eternal Trinity with the “uncreated” and dictated verses of the Qur’an. Under Islam, “The Word made flesh” is replaced by the “word made book.”
Is it still admissible to at least think about this, and about the categorical difference between ecumenical and interreligious dialogue? What, too, of sacramental incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ, versus the companionship of natural religions?
Another progressive roadkill? Two starting points for INQUIRY:
“Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is a monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive [!] and definitive [!] love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa, God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature” (Benedict XVI, Deus est Caritas, 2006, n. 11).
“In religions, this [non-monogamous] attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the ‘sacred’ prostitution which flourished in many temples . . . The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected eros as such; rather it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, this counterfeit divinization of eros [some versions of inclusivity?] actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it . . . It is part of love’s growth toward higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive [!], and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity [!] (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being ‘forever” (Deus Caritas Est, nn. 4,6.)
From Pope Benedict, the above thoughts about eros/inclusivity AND exclusivity….
Thoughts which seem, at least, to be sidestepped by possibly unilateral inclusivity—of either indiscriminate synodality, or an ideological pluralism of religions. But, who am I to judge?
When you don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, then the only remaining reality by default is that of a piece of bread. Maybe this Muslim shiek was hungry and the Archbishop thought he was “giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty.” (I do suppose the Archbishop might have refrained from giving the Precious Blood to the sheik if Communion was being distributed under both species. After all, inclusivism would have precluded giving offense to the sheik.)
“When you don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist…”
Bingo.
A further INQUIRY. Is this the Holy Spirit? The Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2 (verse 3), begins with the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and the “parted tongues as of fire,” i.e., fn. “Parted tongues: in Greek, ‘tongues distributing themselves’ as from a central source.”
A central source? Does the polyhedral Church (or polyhedral churches?) mean that there are neither coherent answers nor even coherent questions–as between the baptized and ordained, as between ecumenical and interreligious, as between universal natural law and locally accommodated?
In any event (now, are there only events?) does the polyhedral thing appeal to its own ersatz history for precedents…as already when President Clinton received the Eucharist in 1998 and when Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also did so in 2009? A tradition!
And decentralized sources (plural and pluralist) versus parted tongues from a “central source”? For want of a shoe, a battle was lost…problem, what problem?
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/bishops-not-told-clinton-was-to-take-communion-1.140573
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/harper-clinton-and-reception-of-communion
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=11-03-005-e
Can’t fault the Sheik for assuming his Bishop friends knew their Catechism and cared to live it. The Sheik comes off as well met. Praying for him.
As for some of our Bishops, one has to wonder if they would teach Scientology is they thought it pleased the Pope.
You know that something is so fundamentally broken with the clergy of the NO / Vatican 2 “church” when the sheik that took the precious body of Christ had more remorse for doing so than the cleric who disbursed him against all spiritual and lawful church teachings. The AB should be required to step down and re-enter basic seminary training again. THIS, folks is what is wrong with V2 and what is staged to be a disaster of unparalleled proportions post-synod. FIND the Catholic Church by getting to a Latin Mass now – one that has some protection and insulation from this madness. IT.MATERS. Full.stop.
what does V2 have to do with a AB making a wrong decision and then trying to find support through others. He was wrong in his actions. The Latin Mass while beautiful in its own right isn’t the cure for this madness, it is a matter of faith.
Joe, the priests catechized and educated in the old tradition, what the NO church dispensed with since 1962 (arguably even before that in the case of some hot beds of heresy/modernism in Europe) would never have so easily compromised the B&B of Christ in this manner. Many of the NO priests that actually believed in the B&B of Christ in the Eucharist have been “canceled” by this gaggle of modernists in this post-V2 world. The NO church is adrift. It’s dying in a fantastic manner and is, maybe, 1-2 generations from extinction. It can’t come soon enough. If you want to know the truth of the matter, the NO church was a willing and intentional break with the Catholic Church. What we have been experiencing is the fall out of that horrific decision for the last 50 years. So much for a “pastoral council” when pastoring becomes an exercise in the embrace of heresy and apostasy.
Absolutely agree with you.
And while we mention Vatican 11, it was put in place under the guidance of Almighty God. Those who “bad mouth” it do so at the peril of their immortal souls.
Before suggesting remedial seminary education, we might want to check that the seminaries have been fixed. From what I’ve heard, there has been significant, but insufficient improvement.
Part of the reason the TLM has priests that wouldn’t dream of doing what the Archbishop did is that the only men who offer it were either formed in seminaries with a high quality formation process (FSSP, ICKSP) or have put in a phenomenal effort to educate themselves. This contributes to the TLM being something of an oasis in the midst of madness – and of course, it’s a lot easier to remain sane when surrounded by people who are sane. Similarly, one should not send a child into a woke school and expect them to come out sane.
I would classify what the bishop said as more of an excuse than an “explanation”. So, we can just ignore almost 2,000 years of Church teaching, the Catechism and Canon Law, and go with some statements by Pope Francis. I am surprised that he didn’t use “everyone is welcome.”
At least he didn’t propose changing Church teaching, as some Bishops and Cardinals have done with regard to homosexual acts.
Beautiful and eloquent spin on Catholic teaching.
Mildly curious if the sheik would have similarly approached an altar rail, knelt down, and received Our Lord on the tongue—or would that have been too great an acknowledgment of the Reality.
Genevieve, that is an excellent question. If allowed to speculate, my guess would be the sheik would have said no thank you.
I can’t see a Muslim religious leader committing such “idolatry” in such a public way. I mean, Pope Francis wouldn’t tolerate a public act of idolatry, would he?
Wonderfully expressed and greatly appreciated!
Personnel is policy and praxis is no less so. In Catholic context praxis reflects magisterium. The Archbishop cites Francis. The Bergoglian “magisterium” is clearly a contradiction of 2000 years of Christian praxis and magisterium.
What is one to infer regarding the present occupant of the Chair of Saint Peter? What is a groundling to conclude?
This is plainly a news agency item.
The Holy Eucharist is not the body of Jesus it is the «Body of Christ», the Risen Lord.
The sheikh was entitled to a blessing from the celebrant, no more.
Dressed as he would be as a Muslim cleric he could not have been mistaken for a Catholic. even one of the many who never confess before receiving the Holy Eucharist.
This seems where «making a mess» gets us, deep into confusion even about the «basics».
What is the meaning of the binding and loosening given to Peter? Also, where in scripture are we given the right to judge? Perhaps we would be better taking the log out of our own eyes before we attempt to extract the mite out of others! 😂
James, the teaching of the Church is an objective reality. Too much gives way when we become the standard for what we judge to be right or wrong behavior. Sadly, your own comment is one that condemns you as much as anyone else in this matter. Let Church teachings, which are objective decide. Simple.
The Pope can make and unmake ecclesiastical law. He cannot make divine law. (See Galatians 1: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.”)
But even so, canon law forbids the distribution of Holy Communion to non-Catholics. That is the law the Pope made, and which he has not changed, in over 10 years of having the authority to do so.
The archbishop is not pope. He cannot alter or make an exception from this law: he is bound by it.
Giving Holy Communion to an unbaptized person is not a mite, it is sacrilege. If you think that there should be no reaction against it or punishment for it in the ecclesiastical sphere, feel free to advocate for legalizing murder in the civil sphere – that is approximately the same level of gravity.
From brother James we read: “…where in scripture are we given the right to judge?”
Indeed, where is scripture does it say that we do not have a moral conscience and the universal natural law, and therefore the obligation to make moral judgments?
Instead, this from St. Paul: “When the Gentiles who have no law do by nature what the Law prescribes, these having no law are a law unto themselves. They show the work of the Law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:14-15).
The conscience? It is by the moral conscience that we are obliged to make moral judgments about actions–quite different from presuming to judge the souls of others. The fallacy of replacing such objective judgments of conscience with merely subjective decisions is addressed in Veritatis Splendor:
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final DECISION [no longer a ‘MORAL JUDGMENT’] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not…]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
A bunch of nothing for an excuse and to think this guy is a prince of the Church.
Great comment James Conner! Thank you!
There is even more reason to be outraged by this outrage. Not believing in the real presence is sufficient to deny anyone Holy Communion. However, Muslims also believe that Christ was merely a prophet lesser than Muhammad, and that He did not die on the Cross. In fact, Muslim belief maintains that Allah allowed Christians to be duped into believing this.
In the Qur’an, Sura 4:157, the following is set forth in grammatically challenged phrases that are a prominent feature throughout the Qur’an:
“And because of their saying, We killed the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the messenger of Allah, they did not kill him or crucify him, but it seemed so to them, and indeed, those who disagree about this are in doubt about, they have no knowledge of it except pursuit of a supposition, they did not kill him for certain.”
___
Keeping the foregoing in mind, it can only be concluded that the primary purpose and reality of the Mass is one big show of blasphemy and ignorance to Muslims, so even more so than other Christians outside the Church, no bishop or priest should even consider allowing a Muslim to partake in Holy Communion which the Muslim deems to be a blasphemous and ignorant thing and action.
The article incorrectly cites cannon 844 as setting the rule for the universal church. It is the code applicable to the Latin Rite only. The Eastern Cade has a similar provision, so claiming universal application of the Latin code is incorrect. Further. In the Latin Code, Section 844 also provides as follows:
“§3. Catholic ministers administer the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick licitly to members of Eastern Churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church if they seek such on their own accord and are properly disposed. This is also valid for members of other Churches which in the judgment of the Apostolic See are in the same condition in regard to the sacraments as these Eastern Churches.“
Have these Church “leaders” lost their minds? The more I read about the strange utterances and actions by priests from the top down I wonder if the Catholic Church hierarchy has become or is becoming apostate.