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Especially in later years,
his pontificate reflected personal trial and suffering. An athletic and
energetic 58-year-old when elected, he gradually lost his ability to
walk, to stand and to express himself clearly the result of a nervous
system disorder believed to be Parkinson's disease. By the time he
celebrated his silver jubilee as pope in October 2003, aides were
routinely wheeling him on a chair and reading his speeches for him. Yet
he rejected suggestions of retirement and pushed himself to the limits
of his declining physical capabilities, convinced that such suffering
was a form of spiritual leadership.
The first non-Italian pope
in 455 years, Pope John Paul became a spiritual protagonist in two
global transitions: the fall of European communism, which began in his
native Poland in 1989, and the passage to the third millennium of
Christianity. The start of the new millennium brought a surge in global
terrorism, which the pope saw as a threat to interfaith harmony. He
invited world religions to renounce violence and the logic of "religious
warfare." He condemned the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as
"inhuman" but urged the United States to react with restraint, and he
sharply criticised the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.
As pastor of the universal church, he jetted around the world, taking his
message to 129 countries in 104 trips outside Italy, including seven to the
United States. A linguist by training, he surprised and pleased millions by
communicating with them in their own languages -- which made it all the more
poignant when his speaking abilities declined in later years.
At times, he used the world as a pulpit: in Africa, to decry hunger; in
Hiroshima, Japan, to denounce the arms race; in Calcutta, India, to praise the
generosity of Mother Teresa. Whether at home or on the road, he aimed to be the
church's most active evangeliser, trying to open every corner of human society
to Christian values.
Within the church, the pope was just as vigorous and no less controversial. He
disciplined dissenting theologians, excommunicated self-styled "traditionalists"
and upheld unpopular church positions like the pronouncement against birth
control. At the same time, he pushed Catholic social teaching into relatively
new areas such as bioethics, international economics, racism and ecology.
He looked frail but determined as he led the church through a heavy program of
soul-searching events during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, fulfilling a
dream of his pontificate. His long-awaited pilgrimage to the Holy Land that year
took him to the roots of the faith and dramatically illustrated the church's
improved relations with Jews. He also presided over an unprecedented public
apology for the sins of Christians during darker chapters of church history,
such as the Inquisition and the Crusades.
In a landmark document in 2001, the pope laid out his vision of the church's
future. The apostolic letter, "Novo Millennio Ineunte" ("At the Beginning of the
New Millennium"), called for a "new sense of mission" to take Gospel values into
every area of social and economic life. Over the years, public reaction to the
pope's message and his decisions was mixed. He was hailed as a daring social
critic, chided as the "last socialist," cheered by millions and caricatured as
an inquisitor.
The pope never paid much attention to his popularity ratings. Pope John Paul's
personality was powerful and complicated. In his prime, he could work a crowd
and banter with young and old, but spontaneity was not his specialty. As a
manager, he set directions but often left policy details to top aides.
His reaction to the mushrooming clerical sex abuse scandal in the United States
in 2001-02 underscored his governing style: He suffered deeply, prayed at length
and made brief but forceful statements emphasising the gravity of such a sin by
priests. He convened a Vatican-U.S. summit to address the problem, but let his
Vatican advisers and U.S. church leaders work out the answers. In the end, he
approved changes that made it easier to defrock abusive priests.
The pope was essentially a private person, with a deep spiritual life --
something not easily translated by the media. Yet in earlier years, this pope
seemed made for modern media, and his pontificate was captured in some lasting
images. Who can forget the pope wagging his finger sternly at a Sandinista
priest in Nicaragua, hugging a young AIDS victim in California or huddling in a
prison-cell conversation with his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca?
Early years. Pope John Paul's
early life was marked by personal hardship and by Poland's suffering during
World War II. Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, a small
town near Krakow, in southern Poland. His mother died when he was 9, and three
years later he lost his only brother to scarlet fever. When he was 20, his
father died, and friends said Wojtyla knelt for 12 hours in prayer and sorrow at
his bedside.
Remembered in high school as a bright, athletic youth with a contemplative side,
Wojtyla excelled in religion, philosophy and languages. In 1938, he began
working toward a philosophy degree at the University of Krakow, joining speech
and drama clubs and writing his own poetry.
The Nazi blitzkrieg of Poland Sept. 1, 1939, left the country in ruins and
opened a new chapter in Wojtyla's life. During the German occupation he helped
set up an underground university and the clandestine "Rhapsodic Theatre & Arts." At the
same time he found work in a stone quarry and a chemical factory -- experiences
he later analysed in poems and papal writings.
Walking home one day after working a double shift at the Solvay chemical plant,
he was struck by a truck and hospitalised for 12 days -- the first in a lifelong
series of physical hardships. Wojtyla continued work after he entered Krakow's
clandestine theological seminary in 1942. He had tried to join the Carmelite
order but reportedly was turned away with the comment: "You are destined for
greater things." He was ordained four years later, just as the new communist
regime was taking aim at the Polish church. He soon left for two years of study
at Rome's Angelicum University, where he earned a doctorate in ethics, writing
his thesis on the 16th-century mystic, St. John of the Cross.
When he returned to Poland in 1948, Father Wojtyla spent a year in a rural
parish, then was assigned to a Krakow church, where he devoted most of his time
to young people -- teaching religion, playing soccer and leading philosophical
discussions. He earned another doctorate in moral theology and began lecturing
at Lublin University in 1953. He wrote numerous articles and several books on
ethics, but still found time for hiking and camping in the nearby Carpathian
Mountains. His appointment as auxiliary of Krakow -- Poland's youngest bishop --
in 1958 caught him canoeing with friends. He travelled to Warsaw to formally
hear the news, but was back on the water the same day.
Krakow and Rome. The future pope
rose quickly through the ranks in Krakow, becoming archbishop in 1964. During
the Second Vatican Council, he helped draft documents on religious liberty and
the church in the modern world, and in 1967 Pope Paul VI named him a cardinal --
the second-youngest in the church.
He traveled widely, preached Pope Paul's Lenten retreat in 1976 and took a
leading role in the world Synod of Bishops. But despite his rapid ecclesiastical
ascent, Cardinal Wojtyla remained a virtual unknown to many in the church --
until the evening of Oct. 16, 1978, when his election as pope was announced to
some 200,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square and to the world at large.
Pope John Paul set his papal style on that first night. Instead of merely
blessing the crowd, he broke the "rules" and gave a heartfelt talk from the
central balcony of St. Peter's. To the consternation of aides, he told the world
that he felt "afraid to take on this appointment," but had done so in "a spirit
of obedience" to Christ and Christ's mother. He described himself as a pope
"from a faraway nation" - but won over the mostly Italian throng in the square
by speaking their language. He left them cheering loudly.
After the final years of Pope Paul and the brief, fragile term of Pope John Paul
I, this pope seemed to promise new energy for the church.
A fast pace. The pope's reign
began like a cyclone. He set off for Mexico and the Dominican Republic three
months after his election and waded into a crucial debate about the church's
social and political role in Latin America. On the way, he held the first of
many papal press conferences -- aboard his chartered jumbo jet.
That same year, 1979, he met with the Soviet foreign minister; published an
encyclical on redemption; strongly reaffirmed celibacy for priests; visited his
Polish homeland; named 14 new cardinals; made a major ecumenical visit to the
Orthodox in Turkey; and had a Swiss-born theologian, Father Hans Kung,
disciplined for questioning papal authority. It was the start of a remarkably
personal papacy.
The pope regularly drew crowds of more than a million people, and his popularity
was satirically compared to that of a rock star. But on May 13, 1981, an
assailant's bullets put his pontificate on hold. The pope, who was circling St.
Peter's Square in an open jeep during a weekly audience, suffered serious
intestinal wounds. He was rushed to surgery at a Rome hospital; his recovery
took several months, with a second hospitalisation for a blood infection.
Agca, a Turk who had threatened the pope in 1979, was arrested in St. Peter's
Square and sentenced to life in prison for the shooting. He later claimed that
Bulgarian agents had helped plan and carry out the attack, but his alleged
accomplices were acquitted in a second trial. The pope publicly forgave his
assailant, and in 1983 he visited Agca in a Rome prison cell for a quiet meeting
of reconciliation.
In 2000, with the pope's support, Italy pardoned Agca and returned him to
Turkey.
Pope John Paul credited Mary for having protected him, and on the first
anniversary of the shooting he made a thanksgiving pilgrimage to the Shrine of
Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal. There, he escaped injury when a knife-wielding,
illicitly ordained priest lunged at him.
Later in his pontificate, the pope published the "third secret" of Fatima, which
instead of predicting the end of the world, as many had believed, described a
period of suffering for the church and the shooting of a bishop in white -- a
figure the pope believed was linked to the attempt on his life. Soon after the
shooting, the pope dispelled worries that it would slow him down for long. He
went on the road about four times a year, eventually logging more than 700,000
miles.
In Catholic countries, the trips were his way of strengthening ties between the
local church and Rome. His 14 visits to Africa were part of a successful
strategy of church expansion in the Third World - in numbers of Catholics and
indigenous clergy, the African church doubled during Pope John Paul's term - and
in 1994 the pope called an African synod to celebrate the progress and map out
new pastoral strategies.
In predominantly non-Christian places like Asia and North Africa, he evangelised
gently, stressing the common values shared by Christianity and other faiths, yet
insisting that Jesus Christ alone can be seen as savior. The pope's U.S. trips
provided some historic and emotional moments. In 1979 he became the first pope
to be received at the White House. During the same visit, U.S. Mercy Sister
Theresa Kane gave a speech to the pontiff asking that women be allowed to
participate in "all ministries of the church." Throughout his papacy, however,
the pope insisted that the all-male priesthood was part of God's plan, and he
formalised that position in a 1994 apostolic letter.
His trips to Denver in 1993 and Toronto in 2002 for World Youth Day sparked
massive pilgrimages of young people in North America. In 1995, addressing the
U.N. General Assembly, he urged the organisation to give new moral meaning to
the phrase "family of nations."
Church tensions. The issue of
dissent brought out the determined side of Pope John Paul -- especially when it
involved theologians. During the 1980s the Vatican's doctrinal congregation,
headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, cracked down on several theologians whose
teachings were deemed incompatible with church positions. U.S. Father Charles
Curran, for one, was stripped of his permission to teach at The Catholic
University of America in 1986 because of his views on sexual morality and
divorce.
Advocates of liberation theology, like Brazil's Franciscan Father Leonardo Boff,
also found their writings closely monitored. In 1984, the Vatican warned
theologians against adopting Marxist concepts such as "class struggle." Pope
John Paul had seen how Marxism worked in Poland and did not trust it; moreover,
he was wary of any ideological contamination of the Gospel.
The pope also kept a keen eye on the social activity of religious orders, a
concern that led him to take the unprecedented step of naming his own delegate
to govern the Jesuit order from 1981 to 1983. These and other policies led 163
European theologians to denounce in 1989 what they called "exaggerated
hierarchical control" and "autocratic methods" in the church. The Vatican
accused the theologians of forming a pressure group and setting themselves up as
a parallel teaching authority.
In the 1990s, similar challenges were posed in petition drives by dissenting
Catholics in Europe and North America. To counter doctrinal confusion, the pope
was continually drawing - or highlighting - the line on difficult moral
questions. In a lengthy series of audience talks in 1984 he bolstered church
arguments against artificial birth control.
In the 1990s he urged the world's bishops to step up their fight against
abortion and euthanasia, saying the practices amounted to a modern-day
"slaughter of the innocents." Not everyone agreed, but his sharpened critique of
these and other "anti-family" policies helped make him Time magazine's choice
for Man of the Year in 1994.
In 1986, a Vatican document reiterated moral opposition to homosexual acts and
said homosexuality was an "objective disorder." It drew strong criticism,
especially in the United States. In 1987, a wide-ranging Vatican document on
bioethics said in vitro fertilisation, surrogate motherhood and embryo
manipulation were morally wrong.
Clearly, the pope expected Catholics to take these rules to heart. During his
1987 U.S. trip, the pope said it was a "grave error" to think dissent from
church teachings is "totally compatible with being a 'good Catholic' and poses
no obstacles to the reception of sacraments."
In one of the most ambitious projects of his pontificate, he presided over
publication of a new universal catechism in 1992, aimed at restoring clarity in
church teaching. It became a best seller in many countries, including the United
States. In his landmark encyclical the next year, "Veritatis Splendor" ("The
Splendour of Truth"), the pope delivered a wake-up call that went beyond church
membership.
In exploring the fundamentals of moral theology, the pope said the church's
teachings were urgently needed in a society that he described as absorbed in
self-gratification and drifting away from universal moral norms.
Soon afterward, he began a public crusade against parts of a U.N. draft document
on population and development, saying it promoted abortion, contraception and a
mistaken view of sexuality and the family. This use of the papal pulpit deeply
affected international debate on the issues.
His 1995 encyclical, "Evangelium Vitae," ("The Gospel of Life") not only
condemned the growing acceptance of abortion and euthanasia, but also carried a
strongly worded argument against capital punishment.
In 1998 the encyclical "Fides et Ratio" ("Faith and Reason") warned of a growing
separation between theology and philosophy, with dire consequences for society
and the church.
Vatican II. If many inside the
church saw the pope as a hard-liner, he saw himself as a reconciler between the
liberal and conservative wings of the church. Part of his job, he said in 1989,
was to introduce "an element of balance" in the implementation of Vatican II
reforms. He convened a 1985 Synod of Bishops, which strongly endorsed the
council's decisions but also said some "abuses" should be corrected. The pope
zeroed in on liturgy in a 1989 apostolic letter, saying the period of major
liturgical changes was over.
He urged bishops to root out "outlandish innovations" such as profane readings
in place of Scriptural texts, invented rites and inappropriate songs. He said
the roles of priests and lay people must not be confused -- even with the
dramatic shortage of priests in some areas. And he repeated his long-standing
warning against replacing individual confession with general absolution. In
1994, after years of study, the pope approved local use of altar girls.
Self-styled traditionalists like the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
thought the pope was too liberal. When Archbishop Lefebvre ordained bishops
against papal orders in 1988, thus provoking a schism, the pope excommunicated
him. At the same time, he brought some of the archbishop's followers back to the
fold with special concessions, including use of the preconciliar Tridentine-rite
Mass.
The pope insisted on priestly and religious identity, in things big and small.
Early in his term, he made clear that religious and clergy should wear their
habits and collars while in Rome. "Catholic identity" became a rallying cry. In
1990, the pope issued norms to guarantee orthodoxy and a Catholic perspective in
church-run universities.
Collegiality, a main thrust of Vatican II, was a thorny issue for Pope John
Paul. He tended to listen to the advice of his fellow bishops, then make his own
decisions. He brought bishops together frequently in synods that shored up
traditional church teaching -- on the family, penance, priests and laity.
Disappointment with the synod format led some, like Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria
Martini of Milan in 1999, to suggest that a church-wide council was needed to
deal with lingering controversies in the church.
In Rome and on the road, the pope constantly encouraged lay Catholics to live
the faith in their everyday lives. He favoured zealous lay movements such as
Opus Dei and in 2002 canonised its founder, Msgr. Josemaria Escriva, in the face
of some criticism. The pope also found new models of Catholic virtue in nearly
every part of the globe, declaring more saints than all his predecessors
combined.
Pope John Paul's pronouncements on women were deeply affected by his devotion to
Mary. His apostolic letter on women in 1988, using Mary as an example, affirmed
their equal social and cultural dignity with men, but restated the ban on women
priests. He asked for economic equality between men and women, but also for
programs that would allow women to stay at home and care for children rather
than seek jobs.
Pleas for social justice. Those
who pegged Pope John Paul as a conservative often were surprised at his repeated
appeals for social and economic justice and his warnings about globalisation.
His social teaching was distilled in three major encyclicals: -- "Laborem
Exercens" ("On Human Work") in 1981 criticised the abuses of a "rigid
capitalism" that values profit over the well-being of workers, but said
Marxism's class struggle was not the answer. -- "Sollicitudo Rei Socialis" ("On
Social Concerns") in 1987 warned of a widening gap between rich and poor
countries and condemned the transfer of the East-West conflict to the Third
World. -- "Centesimus Annus" ("The 100th Year") in 1991 called for reform of the
free-market system in the wake of communism's collapse, denouncing massive
poverty in the Third World and consumerism in the West.
The pope underlined these texts on his trips, taking a detour into a local
shantytown in Latin America or chiding the world for neglecting Africa's
drought-stricken Sahel region. He founded papal development foundations to show
that the Vatican practiced what it preached.
While insisting that priests steer clear of partisan political activities, the
pope did not expect church leaders to be mute on social questions. In 1980, for
example, he endorsed the Brazilian bishops' call for radical social reforms,
saying that if changes were not made, the door to violent revolution would be
opened.
Pope John Paul was a constant critic of war and an advocate of disarmament. His
aides successfully headed off a shooting war between Chile and Argentina in
1978, the one example of direct papal mediation. The pope's countless pleas for
negotiation went largely unheeded, however, in places like central Africa, the
Persian Gulf and the Balkans.
He was also a tireless defender of human rights and, first among them, religious
rights. During a trip to Cuba in 1998, he appealed for a wider church role in
society, and he stood up publicly for Catholics in places like China, Vietnam
and Sudan. On the pope's initiative, in 2004 the Vatican published a 523-page
compendium of Catholic social teachings.
Religious freedom and ecumenical trials.
The pope kept up the Vatican's "Ostpolitik" of negotiating with
communist countries, winning gradual concessions on church freedom. But the pope
was not always so diplomatic, especially during trips to his homeland, where he
hammered the human rights theme and embarrassed the regime.
Many in Poland said the papal visit in 1979 was the spiritual spark that lit the
fire of reform: The Polish labour movement Solidarity was formed in 1980, was
forced underground and later emerged to lead the first noncommunist government
in 1989. The rest of Eastern Europe soon followed suit. The pope found a major
ally in Mikhail Gorbachev, the first Soviet president to make serious
concessions to the church, and the two men made history when they met at the
Vatican in 1989.
The Vatican later moved to establish hierarchies and diplomatic ties throughout
the former Soviet empire. In his 2005 autobiographical book, "Memory and
Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums," the pope described the ideological
struggles of the 20th century as a battle between good and evil fought on a
global stage, offering valuable lessons for the new millennium. He said he was
worried, however, that the hopes kindled by the collapse of communism -- for a
Europe that could "rediscover its soul" and reunite around "human and Christian
values" -- were being frustrated by anti-religious trends across the continent.
The pope was particularly upset that the new European Constitution signed in
late 2004 made no mention of Christianity's cultural, historical and spiritual
role.
Ecumenical tensions also clouded the horizon in post-communist Europe. Disputes
over property and evangelising methods arose among local Catholic and Orthodox
churches in the former Soviet bloc.
The pope's decision to create four new dioceses in Russia in 2002 brought
Catholic-Orthodox dialogue to a standstill and ended realistic hopes of
travelling to Moscow for a meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II.
Still, the pope pressed on with a series of historic visits to predominantly
Orthodox countries, including Romania, Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria and Ukraine,
where he urged mutual forgiveness over past wrongs between Christian churches.
Pope John Paul's ecumenical and interreligious legacy was built largely on his
personal gestures. In 1979 he traveled to Turkey to meet Ecumenical Orthodox
Patriarch Dimitrios I and jointly announce the establishment of an international
dialogue commission. He became the first pontiff to visit a Lutheran church, in
1983, on the 500th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther. Later he hosted
150 world religious leaders in Assisi, Italy, at a "prayer summit" for peace.
Visiting a mosque in Damascus, Syria, in 2001, he became the first pontiff to
enter a Muslim place of worship.
In early 2002, determined to offer a united spiritual response to the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, the pope led a "peace train"
of more than 200 religious leaders back to Assisi, where participants condemned
all violence in the name of religion.
While continually promoting areas of interreligious cooperation, including
pro-life issues, the pope insisted that dialogue cannot interfere with the
church's duty to evangelise. That was a main point of the controversial Vatican
document, "Dominus Iesus," which said the church must announce to all people
"the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ." Issued during the Holy Year 2000,
it said non-Christians can be saved, but warned against attributing a divine
origin or saving quality to other religions.
The pope's unprecedented visit in 1986 to a Rome synagogue -- when he called
Jews Catholics' "elder brothers" in faith -- marked a breakthrough in
Catholic-Jewish relations. In 1994, he approved Vatican diplomatic relations
with the state of Israel. During his Holy Land pilgrimage in 2000, his historic
prayer at the Western Wall, Judaism's most sacred spot, touched Jews all over
the world. At the pope's request, in 1998 the Vatican issued an unprecedented
document on the Holocaust, expressing repentance for centuries of anti-Jewish
discrimination but defending the wartime Pope Pius XII; it drew mixed reaction
from Jews.
Pope John Paul's insistence on beatifying Pope Pius IX, who raised a Jewish boy
Catholic because he was "baptised" by a maid, also drew Jewish consternation.
Other official dialogues proceeded slowly.
In his 1995 encyclical, "Ut Unum Sint" ("That All May Be One"), the pope asked
theologians and leaders of other churches to help him find a way of exercising
papal primacy that could make it a ministry of unity to all Christians. An
Anglican-Catholic document in 1999 outlined a "collegial" model of papal
authority as potentially acceptable to both churches. But the Vatican's
doctrinal congregation issued its own paper, saying that, in the end, only the
pope has the authority to make changes in his universal ministry.
In 1999, Catholics and Lutherans approved an agreement on the doctrine of
justification, resolving the main doctrinal dispute that led to the Protestant
Reformation. But the Vatican insisted that it was still too early for shared
Eucharist.
Mark on the Church. Pope John Paul
changed the face of the Catholic hierarchy, naming most of the active bishops in
the world and more than 97 percent of voting-age cardinals. In a few places, his
appointees were unpopular, but the pope did not back down; as he told Catholics
in the Netherlands in 1985, "In the final analysis, the pope has to make the
decisions."
The pope gave the College of Cardinals a more active role in church government,
asking their collective advice on major administrative issues and on pastoral
topics like abortion, and convening them in 2001 for a far-reaching look at the
church's future.
He internationalised the Roman Curia, replacing many Italians as department
heads but keeping them in most middle-management positions. He approved new
codes of canon law for the Eastern and Western churches. Pope John Paul's term
was dogged by money matters. The Vatican went in the red under his pontificate,
managed to cover operating expenses through cutbacks and appeals to the
worldwide church, and finally began turning small surpluses in the mid-1990s.
The pope repeatedly stressed that the "riches of the Vatican" was a popular
myth. The fund-raising efforts were hurt by the Vatican bank's involvement in
the collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. While denying any wrongdoing,
the Vatican made a goodwill payment of about $240 million to creditors of the
failed bank. An Italian attempt to indict Vatican bank officials, including its
former president, U.S. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, was ruled unconstitutional.
While Pope John Paul conducted a highly personal papacy, his own personality was
not a simple one to understand. Those closest to him said the key was a deep
spiritual life, from which he drew his energy. He prayed everywhere he went --
morning, noon and night -- and recommended prayer as the first and basic
Christian response to problems.
In the later years of his pontificate, the pope gave two book-length interviews
and published two volumes of autobiographical reflections that offered a glimpse
into the personal decisions he made along his spiritual path. He recalled how
his priestly vocation cut him off from friends but opened up a whole new source
of inner strength.
In 2002, in a typical blend of the traditional and the innovative, he added five
new "Mysteries of Light" to the rosary and proclaimed a year dedicated to its
recital. He also gave universal church recognition to the Divine Mercy prayer
movement and canonised the Polish nun who founded it.
In his continuing effort to revitalise the roots of the faith, he declared a
"year of the Eucharist" from October 2004 to October 2005. The pope accepted
suffering as an opportunity for spiritual growth and wrote a deeply
philosophical letter on the subject in 1984.
His own hospital stays -- including operations for an intestinal tumour in 1992,
a separated shoulder in 1993, a broken thigh bone in 1994, an appendectomy in
1996, and flu and a tracheotomy in February - reinforced his sympathy for the
suffering of others. Wherever he went, he made sure the front row was reserved
for the sick and disabled in his audience.
Unlike his predecessors, he aged in public and made no attempt to hide his
infirmities, taking on what his aides called a ministry of suffering. Writing to
the world's elderly in 1999, the pope spoke movingly about the limitations he
experienced in old age, but said: "At the same time, I find great peace in
thinking of the time when the Lord will call me: from life to life!"
Young people always seemed to heighten the pope's energy and good humour, even
as his health and stamina failed in later years. In Bern, Switzerland, in 2004,
he delighted some 13,000 cheering youths when he struggled successfully to
pronounce his speech -- after chasing away an aide who wanted to read it for
him.
Beyond the mark he leaves on the institutional church, Pope John Paul will no
doubt be remembered by many as a very human pontiff: one who hiked in the
mountains in his early years and who had to be wheeled to the altar in later
years, who travelled the globe to meet the people and tend his flock, and who
lived each chapter of his papacy before the eyes of the world.
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