Yeager: Gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight on this discussion.  Mr. Quinn, I want to ask your role with the World Food Prize and your role as someone who was there in 1979 as part of the planning of this trip, why was it that the Pope chose Iowa?

Quinn: Well, I think it was an inspired choice.  I don't know all of the details but I think the thing that strikes me is that it was one person who reached out to him, a farmer.  It wasn't some thought about oh, this is a great place to come and have the Pope be seen or anything, it was this one person reaching out, sort of like Roswell Garst reaching out to Khrushchev.  It's amazing the role that one person can play.

Yeager: There was a couple of parts on why Iowa.  He were on a U.S. trip and the letter to the Pope but it was also about Iowa's role in agriculture and feeding the world.

Quinn: Of course, here is Iowa, the state that had produced so much food, the state, the land of Henry Wallace and hybrid corn, the state that had produced Herbert Hoover who brought food to hundreds of millions of starving people.  And so in a way Iowa was a natural choice.  But also it was improbable as well so it was dramatic and to come to the countryside and be here in the rolling hills at Living History Farm, it wasn't Yankee Stadium, it wasn't a place that we would traditionally think that we're going to see the Pope or St. Patrick's Cathedral and yet it was magisterial.  Here is the Pope out there and 350,000 people arrayed around him, I can't imagine anything more wonderful or magnificent.

Yeager: Fast forward thirty years, have we progressed enough in his mission?

Quinn: Well, if you look back and think the Pope was so far ahead of his time, now today the question of the environment and sustainable agriculture, lots of people are talking about that, lots of leaders, there's going to be meetings but who was talking about it in 1979.  The Holy Father comes and he's talking about preserving God's gifts to us.  So, his message has finally gotten through and to think of him and that message that he brought so impactful.

Yeager: Tom, is that the message that's written in the history books about this visit?

Morain: I think the message that often comes -- this was the largest gathering that had ever occurred in the state.  It holds the record for that.  I think the memory is what a wonderful event it was.  No one remembers hassles, nobody remembers it being a difficult day.  They may say we walked a long way to get there but it was almost pilgrimage.  I think the aura of a wonderful community event and the way it was structured as an ecumenical event everyone was welcome and they stretched to make it an inclusive event.  I think that's the way it's probably being remembered as an event.

Yeager: You've got students, freshmen who are going to Graceland or any university born in about 1988, 1989, 1990, nowhere near born when this happened.  When you ask students about this visit, I'm sure it's come up this week in class, what do they know about this visit?

Morain: Probably very little.  At Graceland, for one thing, we have students from all over the country so the idea of an Iowa event is not as great.  We are not good on preserving our history.  The awareness of current events is not good and if it was before they were born and not on ITunes it may be a little stretch.

Yeager: Monsignor, what should they know about this trip?

Monsignor Bognanno: I like what Ken said, that the Pope really was in a way prophetic about the need we have now to preserve the land.  One interesting little part there as you were talking, Ken, I thought about the fact that the Pope was acquainted already with the need for agriculture, good agriculture and food throughout the world through a friend of his at the Vatican, Monsignor Luigi Legudi who is in charge of that type of thing to bring food to countries, Africa, countries people were starving and he and Monsignor Legudi became close friends at the second Vatican council when the Pope was a bishop from Poland.  So, I think that along with Joe Hays' letter that you mentioned I think maybe he was thinking, wait a minute, my friend Luigi Legudi, he's from Des Moines, I think I'm going to go to Des Moines because he's interested in food and he's feeding people around the world.  What do you think about that?

Quinn: That's terrific, I didn't know that story.  That's such an important part of history.

Monsignor Orr: Monsignor Legudi was so proud and he couldn't come to Des Moines but he was so proud that Des Moines was chosen for the Holy Father to come here.

Morain: I think Legudi is mentioned as the Pope's extension agent, such a good characteristic. 

Yeager: So, have we progressed then in the Pope's mission of this trip?  Are Iowans doing enough, not just those on the farm but those off the farm?

Monsignor Orr: I think our awareness is growing.  I'm not sure that all of our actions are following our awareness yet but the whole idea of respect for creation, stewardship of the land, environmental issues, they are coming more to the forefront.  Not everybody agrees on them, not everybody agrees how to deal with them but they are certainly much more in the public view now and, again, if you go back and read the Homely of the Holy Father when he came it was like, whoa, he was ahead of his time.

Morain: I'd also mention the ground was prepared for the Pope's message when he talked about the primacy of agriculture, the people who are in agriculture closer to the land, the moral stability of the farming community.  That has been a tradition that we have heard in the United States for a long time, agrarian fundamentalism that people close to the land have a special quality to their occupation and to hear it affirmed by the Pope, this isn't coming from American tradition, this is coming from the Pope, but there was a receptiveness to that message that had been longstanding in American history and now it is affirmed and I think that helped to bolster the response, that immediate response, yes, we can say yes to that.

Quinn: Two great challenges that the world is looking at now is in the 21st century the population is going to grow another 3 billion.  Are we going to be able to provide enough food to feed all these people around the world?  Secondly, are we able to do that while at the same time conserving our resources, making it sustainable and dealing with energy efficiently?  And the Pope was the only leader I know of certainly who was talking about that at all.  Now it's at the top of the agenda of the presidents and prime ministers whether you're at the G8 or the G20 and it's going to be even more so there.

Yeager: So, who leads this charge?  We just had the passing of Norman Borlaug who was well known around the world and an Iowan and Ken is very involved with that organization.  Are we going to see the church continue to take a role regardless if it's the Catholic Church, any church take a role in feeding the world?  Or does this have to come from somewhere else?

Monsignor Orr: I think the faith communities can and should have a very strong role in all of this because as the Holy Father said in his homely, this is a real act of faith when you put your trust in God in terms of creation and God is the one that helps to make their crops grow and everything we have.  So, I think if we don't come at it from a faith basis that this is really God's gift to us we might not take the right approach to getting some answers to these questions.

Monsignor Bognanno: To add onto that I think to me part of that faith that Monsignor Orr just mentioned is also the motivation of justice and love of neighbor.  Now, that motivation has to come from within.  The other motivation would be just simply greed or I'm going to help myself.  The faith makes it different, it changes the perspective, I'm doing this for myself and my family but I have a responsibility to my neighbor as well.  That is something that comes from believing that God wants me to respond to his love by loving him and by loving my neighbor in this particular way.

Yeager: Is that part of the doctrine of the Catholic Church or is that kind of your own ecumenical molding together?

Monsignor Bognanno: I think it's fundamental theology to all the churches that God loves us and in response we love God back and we love our neighbor and in gratitude we work with what we have to help our neighbor.  This is the will of God, this is what God expects of us and I think that's all churches.

Yeager: Ken, do you want them helping out in feeding the world?

Quinn: Oh my goodness, absolutely.  Who has done more to reach out to hungry people in the world, and not just the Catholic Church, but almost every religion you can think of has a fundamental part of alleviating human suffering.  Whether you talk about Pope John Paul It’s visit or Norman Borlaug I think the message is the same, that when people are suffering, when people need food, when human life is at stake that's when we put all our other differences aside, that's when we come together, that is the spirit of Iowa, it's the spirit of Iowa Shares that was created right after the Pope's visit to bring food to starving Cambodians and if we are going to succeed in the 21st century and keep our world at peace over food and water it will only be because we have risen above these things that separate us.

Morain: I think sometimes we forget how blessed we are.  In Iowa our agriculture problem is surplus, how do we hold down the surplus so that we can manage the crop?  How rare that is in any other country that surplus is the problem.  I think the idea of living in bounty, living in abundance has shaped our perspective that no one needs to starve, somehow it's a moral affront when someone is without food and we have a long, century long tradition of sharing and coming to the aid of people who are in need and often doing it very quietly.  We don't make a big deal about it but we can go back to Russian famines in the early 20th century where Iowans donated car loads of food because people were starving and without asking what their beliefs were or who they were we have been shaped by a culture of abundance and I think that is reflected in our world perspective.

Monsignor Orr: Going back to Monsignor Legudi, he was known all around the globe as the advocate for farmers and advocate for feeding the world but he would always say, it's not just a matter of feeding them, he says, you have to give them dignity by teaching them how to feed themselves.  So, a lot of his efforts always was to get equipment and to get people that would come over as missionary kinds of folks to teach them how to also have that kind of dignity to say, I grew this, we grew this.  So, it kind of works hand in hand, we help feed them but we also have to help them get their own dignity for the fact that we can do this for ourselves.

Yeager: I seem to remember some scripture that is very similar to that.  When you look back, Tom, you went to work for Living History Farms about ten months, twelve months after?

Morain: About a year and a half.

Yeager: A year and a half after that -- when people interacted, when you would call or when people would talk about it did they still remember initially that?  How did that change since then?

Morain: For many people the Living History Farms is now sacred ground because the Pope was there.  Of course, that is a very positive thing for the institution.  Sometimes it creates logistical problems when what they want to do on their holy spot may not mesh well with what the Pontiff's is and I would point this out because we always joked about this at the farms -- some people said Living History Farms built a church on the spot that the Pope was, the master plan for Living History Farms had a church marked out on the spot where the Pope came.  So, we raised our sites, if we can get the Pope for the church who do we want for the bank and who do we want for the law office.  But it was hard to do a follow up to that one.  But for many people what the Farms is now will be forever this is where the Pope came.  And when you're trying to tell the story of American agriculture that is certainly a part of it but it can't be the only thing and the Pontiff was delighted to be at that spot and that's a very important message in the farms and it certainly gave a boost to the farm's visibility.  All over the world people saw these spots, it was a wonderful thing for, at that time, a young museum.

Monsignor Orr: If I recall correctly our original thought was that the mass would take place in front of the Flynn Mansion because that was wide open space because the fields were growing to crops and Archbishop Martinkas from Rome when he came all of a sudden we lost him, he was out walking and he got on top of the knoll and he said, the mass will be up here.  He said, it's got to be in the middle of the field and he was absolutely right.

Yeager: Let's go back thirty years and the phone rings, we're going to have the Pope come, what is the initial thought that went through for young priests like the two of you?

Monsignor Bognanno: I think Monsignor Orr knew about it before I did.  I just landed at the Des Moines Airport, I had been out east and got a call to come to the bishop's office immediately so I got there and Monsignor Orr and a few others were sitting there and they had this kind of a pale look on their faces and they said, the Pope may come here for four hours, we have to create a plan for him and then the bishop said, you're in charge of creating the plan, he looked at me.  So, I said, okay, let's all pray.  Well, actually I wanted to pray but I wanted to think.  So, we got that organized very nicely and then a week or two later you got the call, the bishop got the call that Archbishop Martinkas from the Vatican was in the air on the way to Des Moines to look at the plan and to see where we were going which made us all panic, especially me, because it was kind of a heady plan and so we were working real hard to make sure that we had the right answers to these different spots.

Yeager: So, there was a lot to do at that point.  Ken, you were saying you were working for Governor Ray at the time.  What was it like when you find out on a government end that this is happening?

Quinn: Well, I was on loan from the State Department working in the governor's office.  I was the public safety and disaster coordinator and I thought, disaster, how are we going to do this?  I'm sure we were praying too in an appropriate way in the governor's office because we thought, how many hundreds of thousands of people are going to show up?  How can we handle a crowd like that?  What can we do?  How can we make it work?  It will be a nightmare.  It turned out to be this remarkably orderly event and crowd and I like to say it's something that the Pope instilled in everybody such as spirit that it wasn't usually what you see when people are leaving Iowa State or Iowa football games and you have to sit for several hours in your car.  So, it was a challenge beyond anything we had ever undertaken.

Yeager: I think you said the crowd left in a hurry.  In fact, Tom what is your line about the crown?

Morain: I arrived a year and a half later and they were gone.  They dispersed quickly afterwards, it was just like clockwork.

Morain: I can add a follow up to that, our executive director Steve Green who had been the farm's point person for the arrangement was executive director about eight years after and a young woman from the diocese called up one day about some other business and explained that she was from the diocese and there was a pause and she says, it's okay Steve, he's not coming back.  So, wondering what panic that was going to cause.

Quinn: You have to remember we shut down the Interstate highways and we made them parking lots.  So, hard to imagine doing that.

Yeager: Because you brought people by bus and some people walked.

Monsignor Bognanno: They were worried about what they call extracting Colonel Thompson, how can we extract 250,000 people before sunset?  They knew the exact second the sun was going to set, the military folks did but they had them out of there -- that's why we had lights put up.  I think we spent $60,000 for these light poles that were never used but because we thought there would be people milling around lost, not knowing where they were but as a matter of fact, everyone was gone by sunset.  Amazing.

Morain: I had a point here that when we're talking about the after effect and the impact because I was doing some chronology and where did this come in relation to other events at the time?  I found two or three months after the Pope's visit the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, sent troops into Afghanistan and in response President Carter invoked the grain embargo which then blitzed the corn prices and grain prices and so forth.  Following that we went into the farm crisis of the 1980s and the tenor shifted, the conservation effort, the feed the world effort and it was a decade of stress and strife and changing.  As we came out of that, though, and then looked back on the Pope's message we could see it in a distance that we couldn't at the time.  When you were talking about now we're coming back and seeing the significance of what we were seeing that was sort of blocked by that next decade that came almost exactly on the heels of where he was coming.  Now when we look back and can see what that message was, it was ahead of its time, we got sidetracked with the economic crunch that was hitting rural America.

Monsignor Orr: You see the pictures of the celebration there is a young seminarian standing right by the Holy Father doing most of the mass named Bud Grant, now Father Robert Grant who is a professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport.  Because of that he went on to get his doctorate in environmental ethics and claims to this day that the Holy Father's message here in Iowa that day was prophetic and was one of the first voices, just like you said, and part of the presentation this weekend that he gave at the symposium was about his being convinced that the Holy Father's message just had all kinds of prophetic tones to it.

Yeager: 20 seconds, hard to believe that we've got this done.  I'm just going to ask, would you take part in any of this again?  Would you volunteer to help at all?

Quinn: Absolutely.

Morain: Yes.

Monsignor Orr: Yes.

Monsignor Bognanno: Yes, do you know something?

Yeager: No, I know nothing, we're not breaking any news here.  If we were that would be the biggest coup this show has had in its history.  Thank you very much.  I appreciate everybody coming in tonight.  Monsignor Stephen Orr, he is out of Ankeny and was there that day and also Ken Quinn with the World Food Prize, Tom Morain is next to him from Graceland University and Monsignor Frank Bognanno.  Thank you very much for discussing.