On the death of Pope John Paul I, Dutch Cardinal Willebrands said it was a disaster. He had a feeling that something fresh was going to happen to his church.

“How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways!” St. Paul’s words rang out across St. Peter’s Square in the genial, high-pitched voice of John Paul I on that happy day last month, Sept. 3, when he was…