With tens of thousands of people crowding around him, Sen. Joe Biden said he would always remember Pope John Paul II’s courage and charisma.

Biden spoke to members of Delaware’s media on a conference call from the Vatican shortly after viewing the late pontiff April 7. Part of a 12-person Senate delegation, Biden will attend funeral services for the pope April 8.

“I apologize for the noise in the background,” Biden said on a cell phone. “I’m literally standing outside the Vatican. There are tens of thousands of people here. It is absolutely an incredible sight to see the diversity of the people here.”

“You see a group walking down the street, 75, 100 people led by two people who are holding a Polish flag,” he said. “The people walking around with the Polish flags - there is a combination in their eyes … pride and sadness. But it’s not a sad occasion.”

“It’s an eclectic group,” Biden said. “There are people who obviously are, by the way they are dressed, very well off, and there’re also some beggars here. It kind of represents all that he touched. It’s not a somber mood, in the sense that people are crying. But it’s not a festive mood.”

Biden said viewing the pope brought back memories of when he met him more than two decades ago. “As I looked at the pope, lying in state, my mind immediately raced back to … when I had seen him 25 years earlier at his request to discuss Poland and the Soviet Union alone with him in his library.” The pope wanted to talk about Biden’s views on the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.

“What else I most remember is sitting alone with him in the Vatican library, and for an hour talking with him about the details of Poland and communist Russia,” Biden said. “As we walked toward the fireplace [for a photo], he put his arm on my arm and said, ‘Senator, remember I spoke to you today, not as your spiritual leader, but as a Pole, a proud Pole.’ It sent chills through me. I never pictured a pope with that kind of energy and that sense of nationalism.”

The late pope’s legacy is one of changing the world, Biden said. “This guy has had a monumental effect on the world,” he said. “For example, when I met Lech Walesa right after he was elected president. He put his arms around me and said, … ‘Radio Free Europe and the holy father brought the wall down.’ This guy has literally changed the world.”
Biden, a practicing Catholic, said John Paul II’s religious legacy is different.

“There are folks like me who were raised in the tradition of John XXIII, who was more expansive and had a less centralized role for the Vatican, and some people are more adherents to the direction that John Paul II carried the church.”

Even though he rarely speaks about his religious beliefs, Biden said he would make an exception in this case. “Most of you on the line know me pretty well,” Biden said to the representatives of Delaware media. “I don’t think you’ve ever heard me publicly reference my faith and discuss my views on my faith, because I think it’s private. But on this most public of occasions, I’ll divert this one time.”

He hopes that the new pope will be able to combine the best aspects of two previous pontiffs. “I hope that we can find someone, if I can write the script, I don’t know who that would be, somebody who turns out to have John Paul II’s courage and charisma and John XXIII’s wisdom and expansiveness. That would be the ideal combination for me. … It’s going to be interesting to see which way we go.”

Biden said in the four times he met John Paul II, he was able to learn a great deal from him. “What I learned the most from him was that ideas matter and one man’s conviction can be contagious,” Biden said. “You had the Polish communist leadership at the time saying ‘Okay, the pope can come and say a mass here - it’s not going to mean much.” And a couple of million Poles showed up. The mass stunned, absolutely stunned the communist leadership. Then he said words that reverberated through all of Eastern Europe. He said, ‘Be not afraid.’ It was clear he wasn’t afraid. It was clear he wasn’t going to back down. That’s what I most remember about him.”