"IT IS AS IT WAS."

The above is Pope John Paul II's commentary upon screening the upcoming release The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson.

For a man who has written stacks of encyclicals, and has made thousands of speeches on hundreds of trips, John Paul II is generally not a quotable guy. He hasn't generated a lot of pithy lines that have become part of the cutural lexicon. Mother Teresa has lots of greeting cards and holy cards and calendar quotes out there, but this Pope doesn't. Part of his "problem" is his PHD in philosophy, which makes every question too big to reduce to a soundbite.

I have a feeling the above comment will become one of JPII's most oft-quoted lines.