Tutu: a man of empathy, moral ardor, and some silly jokes
Associated PressOne Christmas Day in the 1980s, Desmond Tutu led a packed church service in Soweto, the Black Johannesburg township and fulcrum of protest against white racist rule in South Africa. Something like: “So, it really is a white Christmas.” Evoking the Irving Berlin song ‘’White Christmas,’’ famously crooned by Bing Crosby, in tense, dusty Soweto was quintessential Tutu. When Tutu died Sunday at age 90, he was remembered as a Nobel laureate, a spiritual compass, a champion of the anti-apartheid struggle who turned to other global causes after Nelson Mandela, another moral heavyweight, became South Africa’s first Black president. God bless you.’’ In time, I became a journalist and also worked for the AP in South Africa, sometimes covering Tutu’s post-apartheid commentary on corruption and other challenges, as well as his hospitalizations for the prostate cancer that afflicted him for nearly a quarter century.
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