{"id":3443,"date":"2007-09-18T10:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-18T10:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/my-favorite-pope-john-paul-moment-ever.html"},"modified":"2007-09-18T10:29:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-18T10:29:00","slug":"my-favorite-pope-john-paul-moment-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/my-favorite-pope-john-paul-moment-ever.html","title":{"rendered":"My favorite Pope John Paul moment. Ever."},"content":{"rendered":"

Rocco over at Whispers in the Loggia<\/a> has taken the trouble to remind us that this marks the 20-year anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s monumental and memorable trip to the United States, an 11-day visit that left an indelible impression on so many. <\/p>\n

One emotional highpoint came in Los Angeles, when Tony Melendez, born without arms, sang for the pontiff. In the video below, he recalls that event, and it’s replayed. The performance, is a stunner — even more so for the pope’s extraordinary and beautiful response. Watch it and weep. It reminds me of what a journalist covering John Paul’s election in 1979 said: “They haven’t elected a man from Rome. They’ve elected one from Galilee.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rocco over at Whispers in the Loggia has taken the trouble to remind us that this marks the 20-year anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s monumental and memorable trip to the United States, an 11-day visit that left an indelible impression on so many. One emotional highpoint came in Los Angeles, when Tony Melendez, born…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMy favorite Pope John Paul moment. Ever. - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/09\/my-favorite-pope-john-paul-moment-ever.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My favorite Pope John Paul moment. Ever. - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rocco over at Whispers in the Loggia has taken the trouble to remind us that this marks the 20-year anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s monumental and memorable trip to the United States, an 11-day visit that left an indelible impression on so many. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}