Bishop Donald Wuerl discovered the Vatican Quick Weight Loss Program when he dined with John Paul II.

		An Apostle's Journey    This is one in a series of columns looking at how the life and death of John Paul II has touched his American congregation. Previous columns His visit to Polish Hill cherished but distant, (4/4/05) Simple creed crosses time to keep faith together, (4/5/05) How one filched rosary turned into 255 more (4/6/05)
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Between bites, the pope interrogated his guest with a priest's gentle ferocity: What was the state of the seminaries? Where did he visit? Were young priests learning what they needed to know? The questions just kept coming.

"They finally just took the plate away," Wuerl said.

Wuerl was in Rome to report on his investigation into the state of Roman Catholic seminaries, a job the pope himself had assigned. When a morning conference wasn't long enough for the pope, John Paul suggested lunch.

"Then he said, 'No -- supper. Supper.' What do you say? Well, let me check my social calendar?"

When a pope and a plate are at the same table, the plate is unlikely to get much attention.

"He listened a lot. He did not do much talking," Wuerl said. "He ate while he was in-between questions." To say that Wuerl's visit was a rarity would get things wrong. Wuerl knew John Paul, and, by all indications knew him fairly well, dating to the time he was Karol Wojtyla, cardinal-archbishop of Krakow, and Wuerl was aide to the late John Cardinal Wright, working out of a Vatican office in the 1960s.

When Wojtyla became John Paul II, he tapped Wuerl for one of the least pleasant duties available. Wuerl, then an auxiliary bishop in Pittsburgh, was sent to Seattle to take over liturgical and theological powers from the famously liberal and profoundly popular Bishop Raymond Hunthausen. Hunthausen was under attack for policies viewed as both liberal and counter to Catholic theology, ranging from his ministry to gays to the widespread use of general absolution instead of individual confession.

The Hunthausen affair riled liberal Catholics nationwide, although the powers pulled from the fiery social activist dealt with liturgical matters, mostly matters manifested by ritual and teaching.

Wuerl stayed for a little over a year, Hunthausen was later assigned a new auxiliary, and, an unsought task complete, Wuerl's bond with the pope was as undoubted as the forthcoming appointment to be bishop of his hometown, Pittsburgh.

In the 26 years of Wojtyla's papacy, Wuerl visited an estimated 50 times. There were the "ad limina" visits -- the kind bishops make as a regular obligation, to give an account of their stewardship. There was the visit in January 2004, where Wuerl presented a delegation from Pittsburgh that had come to hear the city's symphony perform at a papal concert.

The bishop surprised many in his diocese when, hours after John Paul had died, he announced that he would not go to Rome. Colleagues from neighboring dioceses had already booked flights. Wuerl, whom John Paul referred to simply as "Pittsburgh," had known this pope when few others outside Poland and Rome did.

"This is a time for cardinals to be in Rome. My place is here with the people this pope entrusted to my care," Wuerl said.

There was another reason, one he did not declare at the time.

Notwithstanding a stream of communiques in the past two years attesting to the resiliency of the pope, his mortality was becoming clearer with every passing day.

It is hard to reckon with the death of a friend who belongs more to the world than to himself. Wuerl was hesitant to speak of personal grief. He explained himself this way:

In October 2003, Wuerl flew to Rome to concelebrate -- as one of a phalanx of priests -- at a Mass marking Wojtyla's 25th year as John Paul II, vicar of Rome, successor to Peter.

"That was, in my mind and heart, my farewell," Wuerl said this week. "In a way, I felt I had said goodbye."

As an estimated 1 million people, many of them Catholics, lined up outside St. Peter's Basilica to view a body clad in red-and-white robes, a shepherd's crook resting against his arm, Donald Wuerl was in a fourth-floor office on the Boulevard of the Allies, the office that man had assigned him. He still sees Karol Wojtyla standing.