More from this week's Word from Rome.
Being pope used to mean the world came to you, yet John Paul took104 foreign trips to 129 nations. From a cost/efficiency point of view, some seemed almost absurd. We went to Azerbaijan in 2003, for example, despite the fact that there are all of 120 Catholics there. I did the math, and it would have been four times less expensive to fly all of them to Rome. Yet John Paul felt it was important to meet people where they lived, to confirm them in the faith.
