Me and the Pope. Fate brought us together on Monday, Oct. 16, 1978, though we were oceans apart.

That's because, the day of Pope John Paul II's election was also my first day as a full-time reporter for a suburban daily newspaper that served the Hudson River towns north of New York City.

I learned, as I got ready for my first day on the job, that, after two ballots, we still had no pope. This was of note because recent papal elections had been decided on the first ballot I wondered how long it might take and if this “story” might have a local angle.

It was a cool morning, but, as happens this time of year, it would turn into a sunny, warm afternoon. The foliage was just reaching its seasonal peak.

The morning was filled by meeting new colleagues and settling into my new desk. As lunch started, we heard over the radio that a new pope had been elected, an unknown Polish cardinal.

We scurried around and found a Polish woman (a Baptist, unusually enough) and I interviewed her about how the surprise election was likely to play back home. I also did a “roundup” of local clergy reaction. The next day, I had two page-one stories in The Citizen-Register of Ossining, N.Y., that appeared above the fold on either side of the now-familiar photo of John Paul II extending his arms in greeting to his new diocese.

I spent my whole first day on the job describing some aspects of the Pope's first day on his new job! It was a good start, I thought, for two rookies.

John Paul has now been the leader of the Roman Catholic Church for my entire working life, for all of my adulthood. I did not “grow up” during his papacy but I did mature into manhood with this Holy Father as a constant presence and guide. Starting on that day in 1978, he began to model the qualities that I would need for work and, even more so, for a meaningful life.

Building on a natural and appropriate manliness, those virtues include humility, charity and simplicity.

The Pope is also pious, but without ever giving piety a bad name, and without using it to avoid the hard work for which he is also justly known. His spirituality evokes romantic adventure, the kind that the young always find appealing.

If there is certain mystery about the man, it is the good kind, the sort that tells you he's a thinker. It only makes you want to learn more about him and his ideas.

Yet, John Paul is also transparent, and this is the quality that has served him best as Pope because it makes him accessible, known and admired by people everywhere.

On that first evening, as he stood before the people of Rome and broke with tradition by briefly speaking with them in a conversational manner, even the Eternal City's atheists and communists took him for a good man. As did some newsroom cynics.

In the autumn of 1978, I spent little time thinking about virtue, much less desiring it. I was beginning a journalistic career, on my way to a Pulitzer Prize, or something. Many disappointments and failures would have to be endured before the important lessons of life would be learned, and then only gradually.

John Paul II, the first subject of my first day's work as a cub reporter, attracted my attention and respect. I thought and wondered about the new bishop of Rome as I did my interviews, reviewed wire stories, and filed my copy during that first hectic afternoon of real, full-time news reporting.

He had, I thought, “something,” and I wanted it too.

For a while, I thought it was the priesthood. This is not unusual, as John Paul has probably inspired thousands of men the world over to test this vocation. A stint in seminary taught me a great deal, including that marriage and a family is my true vocation.

I was not drawn to greater faith by the Holy Father's philosophical erudition, and my checkered following of Catholic moral teaching would not be erased by his encyclicals and sermons. But John Paul has helped me achieve a stronger faith, and to embrace the Church's teachings fully.

It all has to do with those virtues of the Pope that, even on that first day, were not without an impact. A man gifted with character, intelligence and many natural talents, Pope John Paul displayed an array of deeper qualities — infused virtues — that are attained only through God's action through prayer, and the person's compliance and obedience.

And God is generous with these virtues, if we seek them. You can tell that he is starting to impart them when you find yourself suddenly drawn to things like Gospel charity, humility and simplicity, and just plain liking them. It seems as though you had never heard of these ideas before.

We had an inkling on Oct. 16, 1978, that the Church would now be led by an especially holy pastor, a dynamic missionary who was also a contemplative. His is the kind of holiness that ordinary people can see and appreciate because it really comes from God. John Paul made this possible by cooperating with grace, by going to God in prayer and by following wherever that prayer led him, including the Chair of Peter.

I did not realize it at the time, but, as I watched the sun set over the western bank of the Hudson on my drive home, I was longing to pray. I wanted to learn to pray, but for what? The prayer welling up in me was for change, for conversion, so as to become new. Somehow, I wanted to be like this man from the East, this novice Pope “from a far country.”

Former associate editor

Joe Cullen writes from New York.