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DVD-JPII Mar-21-2006 (520 words) xxxi
New DVD series documents athletic side of Pope John Paul II
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- The Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport will mark the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II's death by distributing a special DVD series documenting the pope's 26-year pontificate.
While this was the first time the paper was promoting a collection that was not exclusively about sports, the paper's editor in chief, Carlo Verdelli, told journalists March 21 that he expected readers would snatch up the DVDs.
"Everyone remembers (Karol) Wojtyla, the pope who skied, swam, walked, hiked in the mountains. He was a pope who paid particular attention, very paternal and affectionate attention, to all those who did sports," he said at a press conference promoting the new DVD collection.
People in the sports world see Pope John Paul, who was a goalkeeper during his boyhood in Poland, as the pope who was closest to athletes, Verdelli said.
The DVD series, called "John Paul II: The Man Who Changed the World, a Pope on the Road to Sainthood," was produced by the Italian television production companies RAI Trade and RAI Vatican.
The project's creators sifted through thousands of hours of archived footage contained on more than 5,000 videocassettes from the state television network, RAI, and the Vatican's Television Center, CTV. They pulled together a seven-disc series offering more than five hours of original sound and images that span Pope John Paul's life from the first moments of his papal election in 1978 to his funeral April 8, 2005.
Special bonus tracks include the Oct. 29, 2000, soccer match Pope John Paul attended at Rome's Olympic stadium in which the Italian national team and foreigners playing in Italy's premier Serie A league tied, 0-0.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said, "John Paul II's was the first pontificate in the history of the church that has been documented almost in its entirety."
Such extensive coverage of the Polish pope exists for two reasons, he said: the vitality of modern communications media and the vitality of the pope himself.
"He was young, he came from a different part of the world ... he skied and, therefore, he created interest" in both the mass media and the people who tuned in to watch, said Navarro-Valls, who attended the March 21 press conference.
The Polish pope had a magnetic charm that was picked up on television even though the pope ignored everyone's suggestions on how to speak to the different television cameras during his public gatherings, he said.
"John Paul II conquered television by ignoring it," the Vatican spokesman said.
Another conference participant, Msgr. Slawomir Oder, the Rome-based postulator of Pope John Paul's cause for sainthood, said even televised broadcasts of the late pope are "a part of the archive for (the pope's) beatification."
Footage of the pope forcefully denouncing the Mafia in Sicily, hugging a child or speaking to the faithful from his hospital window "lets the truth about this man shine forth, as being someone who didn't hide anything," whether it was his affection for others or his fragility and weakness as an aging and ailing human being, he said.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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