A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

For a journalist, covering the travels of a major figure in the news is a coveted assignment. It can also be a fairly brutal experience. Although there are exhilarating moments of spectacle or significance, there are also logistical nightmares, frustrating stretches of tedium and constant weariness. John Paul II's ten-day U.S. tour was among the most demanding ever for TIME journalists. A five-member TIME team began shadowing the Pope upon his arrival in Miami on Sept. 10. Rome Bureau Chief Sam Allis, who will have traveled 18,000 miles with the Pope in twelve days, is groggy and impressed. "I spent 14 months on the road in the 1984 presidential campaign. The Pope's schedule is even more arduous than a presidential candidate's." Says Photographer Dirck Halstead: "For me, this tour has been the most exhausting since Richard Nixon first went to China in 1972."

Allis has reported John Paul's travels before. He has been stationed in Rome, where his duties include covering the Vatican, since 1985, and he accompanied the Pontiff's entourage to India in 1986 and to Poland this year. But this trip had some especially grueling conditions. First, following the eleven-hour flight from Rome, there was the blast-furnace Florida heat. Then there was the pace. Allis often found himself asking, "How do you attend the Mass and the background briefing at the same time?" Then there was the unusually tight security around the Holy Father. To cover a papal Mass at 10 a.m. in Miami, reporters had to muster at 7 a.m. before being bused to and from the event.

For Photographers Halstead, Dennis Brack, Antonio Suarez and Ken Jarecke, there were hair-raising incidents. Cameras and lenses were put out of action by the rain. During a torrential downpour in Miami, lightning began to flash around the tower that Suarez was perched on to photograph the papal Mass below. He was unhurt, though a TV cameraman was later injured when a bolt struck the tower. In New Orleans, Suarez and Jarecke had to lug 50 lbs. of camera equipment more than two miles in 90 degrees-plus heat from the press buses to a security checkpoint. "Despite all the problems," says Halstead, "the sight of hundreds of thousands of people gathered together is still a photographer's dream. Even smaller events, like seeing the Pope in a classroom in Los Angeles answering children's questions, those are the moments we live for."