A Letter From the Publisher

By John A. Meyers

"Reporting on the Vatican is one of the busiest and most productive assignments available to a correspondent," says TIME Rome Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn. He should know: for all but five of the past 22 years he has been on that beat (from 1974 to 1979, Wynn was based in Cairo). He has contributed to eleven cover stories on the Roman Catholic Church and on four Popes, beginning with John XXIII. "But covering Pope John Paul II has been especially gratifying," says Wynn. "He has a real knack for getting into the news. Altogether, TIME has done eight cover stories on him since he was chosen in 1978; we did only three on Pope Paul VI during his entire 15-year papacy." The Vatican assignment has taken Wynn around the world with this most peripatetic of Pontiffs. In the past six years, he has accompanied John Paul on 16 trips abroad, logging 150,000 miles and visiting 38 countries on six continents. Says he: "I have done some tough work covering local wars and ^ upheavals in the Middle East and Africa, but no assignment has been so exhausting--or worthwhile--as covering John Paul on the road."

Normally the Pope gives neither interviews nor press conferences, but during the long flights on the papal plane, John Paul usually takes time not only to greet reporters but to listen carefully to their questions and provide remarkably direct and thoroughgoing answers. "During our 1979 flight to Mexico," Wynn recalls, "John Paul told me that he planned to visit the U.S., the first time this had been revealed. On subsequent trips, he gave me meaty answers about keeping priests out of politics and on his plans to visit Poland in 1983 in spite of the country's state of martial law."

Wynn has been able to supplement such papal encounters with background information from an array of well-placed Vatican sources. "There is one advantage to getting older," says Wynn. "If you hang around long enough, your lower-echelon contacts eventually move up to positions of eminence." Says Associate Editor Richard Ostling, TIME's Religion writer since 1975 and the author of this week's cover story on the state of the church: "Wilton Wynn is one of the finest reporters of this generation, and a key part of TIME's Vatican coverage." Ostling is not alone in that view. During the return flight from Argentina in 1982, as Wynn approached with a question, John Paul grabbed both his hands and, with a broad smile, said, "You are a good journalist." Turning the tables, the Pope asked for Wynn's view of a previous trip to Britain. "I know that he reads TIME regularly, and so he already knew what I thought," says Wynn. "But he wanted to hear it from me directly." One good reporter to another.