Photo of the Day: John Paul II Bust, St. Matthew’s, DC

I took this photo nearly two years ago, in November 2013, while on vacation in DC. I stopped briefly at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle partly for spiritual and partly for historical reasons. This, after all, was where the funeral was held for John F. Kennedy before he was transported to Arlington National Cemetery, and the grand church was commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the assassination that week.

In an entrance corner to the Chapel of St. Anthony of Padua on the day I visited, I took this photograph of a bust of Pope John Paul II, created by Gordon Kray in remembrance of that pontiff’s visit to the cathedral on his first trip to the U.S. in 1979. Somehow, it did not enter my mind two years ago that another charismatic pontiff would set off similar wild expectations when he came to this country more than 35 years later.