Pope John Paul II, Inside and Out

Known to the outside world as a globetrotter, an advocate for ecumenism, a peacemaker, how was he viewed inside his church?

BY: David Gibson

On April 2, 2005, the 27-year pontificate of Pope John Paul II ended when he died of heart and kidney failure.

How is one to reckon a balance sheet of his reign? His outreach to Judaism, his battles with Communism, his championing of the poor, his stand against women priests, his promotion of interfaith dialogue, his hard line on Catholic theologians-any one of his initiatives merits a book-length treatise.

One way to assess John Paul's pontificate is to consider the pope's track record outside the church and then inside as a leader of his own flock. Such an "inside-outside" prism helps explain why opinions about this pope differ so widely, and may also point towards the great challenge that will be left to his successor.

Viewing his accomplishments outside the walls of Roman Catholicism, we see the young Karol Wojtyla growing up in post-World War I Poland and living through the Nazi horrors of the Second World War that claimed millions of Poles, among them many Jewish friends from childhood, only to face down, as a priest and then a bishop, the Soviet overlords who kept his beloved church, and nation, under their heel.

Then, in a twist so novelistic that it was prefigured only in Morris West's 1963 novel, "Shoes of the Fisherman," Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow was elected pope, on Oct. 16, 1978, the first non-Italian in more than 450 years. John Paul II immediately embarked on the first of his more than 100 foreign visits, taking the Roman papacy to places most popes had never heard of, and drawing crowds no apostle could ever imagine.

No trips were more freighted than his visits to his native Poland. On his home turf, and facing down a still-formidable Soviet Union, John Paul attracted millions to his public masses and beyond of the grasp of Soviet control. His influence helped lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War that had menaced humanity with nuclear annihilation. In fact, many feel the shocking 1981 attempt on his life was inspired by Communist plotters afraid that he would single-handedly tear down the Iron Curtain.

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