The Legacy Of John Paul II
John Paul II made a lasting imprint on the Roman Catholic Church during his 26-year papacy.
He visited 116 countries, promoting church teaching on personal behavior and public morality and condemning what he said was a decline of spiritual values brought about by the rising materialism of the twentieth century. The most traveled pope in history was also the first non-Italian to lead the church in more than four and a-half centuries.
He died in his Vatican apartment on Saturday.
Born in Poland, he secretly trained for the priesthood under Nazi occupation, lived under Communism, and contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain by denouncing the oppression of Christians.
John Paul II unequivocally opposed pre- and extra-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion, and the use of contraception.
His opposition to the ordination of women as priests was a major point of contention for many liberal Catholics, as was the Vatican's slow response under his leadership to sex scandals around the world, especially in the United States.
At the same time he won praise, especially but not exclusively among conservatives, for his unwavering position that Catholic beliefs - for example on the sanctity of life - are not subject to popular opinion.
John Paul was the first pope to publicly ask forgiveness for the Church's past sins - including mistreatment of Jews and other non-believers.
"For the role that each one of us has had, with his behavior, in these evils, contributing to a disfigurement of the face of the Church, we humbly ask forgiveness," said the pontiff on the altar at St. Peter's five years ago, in remarks some hailed as a landmark but others thought fell short of the mark in not specifically mentioning the Holocaust.
Elected to the papacy in October 1978, an energetic figure at age 58, John Paul II was welcomed by Catholics who thought the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years might also be the one whose papacy would usher in a more open era in the Church.
He was the most visible of popes, hitting the road soon after choosing his name - in memory of 20th century pontiffs Paul VI and John XXIII - the latter particularly and deliberately evocative, as John XXIII was the one to usher in dramatic reforms involving ordinary Catholics in the affairs of the Church.
Among his travels, in 1998 he made a highly publicized visit to Cuba, during which he helped to negotiate the release of 300 political prisoners.
A priest nearly all his adult life, John Paul had a remarkably varied resume. As a young man, he worked in a quarry for a chemical company and was a playwright and actor accustomed to rehearsing in secret, to avoid reprisals from Nazi security police.
A pope who had been a manual laborer was a change of pace for the Catholic Church, as was his love of soccer, swimming, canoeing and skiing, pastimes shelved as he stepped into the limelight at the Vatican, but characteristics which endeared him to many, making him seem more like a man of the people.
The future pontiff's studies for the priesthood were done underground, because of the German occupation, and some of his fellow students were carted off to firing squads or sent to concentration camps.
Ordained in 1946, Karol Wojtyla was a parish priest, a professor of ethics, and became a bishop in only 12 years, the first of many appointments that eventually led him to the Vatican.
In addition to his lifelong the study of theology, John Paul II was proficient in Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, Latin, and his native Polish. He is the author of numerous best selling works, including Pilgrimage of Peace (1980), A Year with Mary (1986), and The Jeweler's Shop (1992).
All of the major themes of John Paul II's papacy can be traced to the defining events of his life, including most prominently the experience of living under the Nazis and the Communists. Born Karol Jozef Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, Poland, his Christian vision, his vocation and his emotions all drew their depth and intensity from the country he left to become the Holy Father of the Catholic Church in Rome.
In a PBS Frontline documentary, Jane Barnes described John Paul as "the pope who brought down Communism; the pope who worked ceaselessly towards Christian reconciliation with the Jews; the pope who raised his voice against the contemporary evil in our 'culture of death.' He has never consulted pollsters, but marched to a stern, unyielding drummer. So John Paul II has also been the infuriating pope, the retrograde pope, the silencing pope, the pope who has ignored the revolutionary changes in the status of women."
In 1995, he dismissed a French bishop for advocating the use of condoms by those infected with the AIDS virus.
Throughout his 25 years as leader of the world's Roman Catholics, John Paul made a point of reaching out to young people, appearing at many events especially for teenagers and children.
Tens of thousands of young people gave him a rock star welcome in 2004 in Lourdes, France, seemingly hanging onto his every labored word, as they stood and prayed with sick and elderly pilgrims at a shrine for the Virgin Mary - to whom the pontiff was especially dedicated.
John Paul's message there and throughout his papacy was what you would expect from a robustly conservative Polish pope: Life is precious and must be defended from the moment of conception.
"I appeal urgently to all of you, dear brothers and sisters, to do everything in your power to ensure that life, each and every life, will be respected from conception to its natural end," the pope told the faithful gathered at Lourdes, receiving a roar of applause at the spot where Mary is believed to have appeared to a young girl in 1858.
On his third and final visit to Lourdes, known to believers as a place for miraculous cures, the pontiff had a lot in common with many other pilgrims: aches and pains - in his case, severe arthritis in his left knee - which made walking very difficult.
John Paul made his first visit to Lourdes when he was just a bishop and no one imagined he would ever become pope.
On his second visit in 1983, he denounced the oppression of Christians behind the Iron Curtain. Nearly a decade later, as communism died, John Paul was viewed as having played a major role in consigning it to the trashcan of history. In that sense, his greatest mission was accomplished, says Tom Fenton, who covered the pope for many years as a CBS News correspondent.
While the Pope was fond of Lourdes, the story behind another shrine dedicated to Mary affected his thinking even more - that of Our Lady of Fatima, who the Church believes appeared to three children in Portugal in 1917, warning of the dangers of the spread of communism and delivering prophecies whose exact contents became closely guarded Vatican secrets.
In one of the most dramatic points of his papacy, John Paul was shot by a Turkish gunman in St. Peter's Square. Reflecting on his survival of that assassination attempt, the pontiff later said that it was his firm belief that he owed his life to Mary having "guided" the bullet to a less deadly path.
In his final years as pope, John Paul returned again and again to the theme of transforming the pain of human suffering into something noble and good.
His often spoke of the importance of valuing the aged and respecting the sick, subjects the pope knew only too well personally as he battled Parkinson's disease and crippling knee and hip ailments.
In his final weeks, the pope underwent a tracheotomy that left him unable to speak, although he continued to appear at his window, blessing the faithful waiting below.
The pope's last battle began with a heart attack on March 31. He was revived, but the Vatican said he suffered from septic shock, a urinary tract infection and a high fever.
He was not shy about anticipating his own death, saying in a "Letter to the Elderly" issued in 1999: "I find great peace in thinking of the time when the Lord will call me: from life to life!"
"When the moment of our definitive 'passage' comes," said the pontiff, "grant that we may face it with serenity, without regret for what we shall leave behind."
