Gravity’s Volkswagen

Four

The Pope’s Revisions

I don’t suppose the Pope, any Pope, does a great deal of driving. Possibly some Popes have been motoring enthusiasts in their earlier life, but once they become Supreme Pontiff the opportunities for putting the pedal to the metal must surely be severely limited.

I think we can safely say that Pope John Paul II, ne Karol Wojtyla, was no great fan of German automobile technology. Not least of the indignities he had to endure under the Nazi occupation of his native Poland was being run down and seriously injured by a German truck in 1944 in the town of Wodawici. It’s thought the accident may well have had some bearing on his decision to become a priest. He was ordained in 1946, and became Pope thirty-two years later in 1978.

That was the same year that Volkswagen stopped producing the Beetle in its European factories, though production continued in Latin America — in Brazil and especially in Mexico — right through into the next millennium; just.

Pope John Paul II visited Mexico five times, in 1979,1990,1997, 1999 and 2002. The last three trips were made after he’d already been diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson’s disease, but that didn’t get in the way of an enormous mutual affection between John Paul and the Mexican People. He even developed a catch phrase ‘Mexico — Siempre Fiel’ (Mexico, Ever Faithful).

In 2004, a large delegation of autoworkers from the Mexican Volkswagen plant in Puebla decided to show their own affection, and specifically their gratitude for the Pope’s canonisation of Juan Diego in 2002. At a General Audience at the Vatican, this delegation presented the Pope with an ‘Aquarius blue’ Volkswagen Beetle. It was no ordinary Beetle. It was one of a limited edition, named the Ultima Edicion, the last three thousand genuine Beetles ever to be made anywhere in the world. It had actually been produced the previous year: Beetle production officially ended worldwide on 30 July 2003.

The Ultima Edicion had a higher spec than most Beetles: 1600cc engine, electronic fuel injection, halogen headlights, front disc brakes, factory-installed immobiliser. By some accounts (though not all) the car presented to the Pope was the very last Beetle ever made, which would make in number 21,529,464: other accounts place that particular car in the Volkswagen museum in Wolfsburg, which strikes me as far more likely. Either way, what better gift for an eighty-four-year-old man, by then suffering from a plethora of other illnesses in addition to Parkinson’s disease, than a car he could never possibly drive? He was good enough to bless it anyway.