In 25 years, pope has shaped events, inspired millions

By John Thavis, Catholic News Service
October 9, 2003

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - As Pope John Paul II celebrates 25 years in office, the world is taking stock of a pontificate that has helped shape political events, set new directions for the Catholic Church and offered spiritual inspiration to millions of people around the globe.

By any measure, this is a papacy for the ages. Since his election Oct. 16, 1978, Pope John Paul has delivered more speeches, met with more world leaders, canonized more saints and kissed more babies than any previous pontiff.

Visiting 129 countries - from the steppes of Asia to the Rocky Mountains - he has implemented the church's own form of globalization.

And in more than 50 major documents, on themes ranging from economics to the rosary, he has brought the Gospel and church teachings to bear on nearly every aspect of modern life.

Everyone agrees this pope already has left a moral legacy, inside and outside the church. But the pope also has weathered his share of disappointments in recent years, including the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, the ecumenical rupture with Orthodox leaders, legislative defeats on pro-life issues in many countries and the frustration of not being able to visit Russia and China.

Vatican officials are focusing on the accomplishments, but are going out of their way to make sure the anniversary celebration does not take on the tone of a retirement party.

"The pope still has an important message to deliver, and people are listening - perhaps more than ever," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in an interview with Catholic News Service.

"He is the only global leader who is worried about the spiritual well-being of today's men and women, as opposed to their material well-being. He asks, 'Who are you?' instead of 'What do you want to do?' or 'What do you want to buy?' And people understand this and respond to it," he said.

At the start of the 21st century, a time of rapid changes in technology and biology, the pope has hewed closer to this dominant theme, Navarro-Valls said.

For papal biographer George Weigel, the pope has had tremendous impact on the world and the church precisely because "he's been the great Christian witness of our time, the man who has most persuasively embodied the liberating power of Christian faith."

"That had concrete, measurable political results in east central Europe in the revolution of 1989; but it has also had an immeasurable impact on innumerable lives throughout the world," Weigel told CNS.

As the analyses and accolades rolled in ahead of the 25th anniversary celebration, the pope was busy keeping a low profile. He purposely upstaged himself by scheduling the beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta for Oct. 19 - a Sunday that falls between the anniversary of his election and his inaugural Mass.

Whether for Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul, tens of thousands of Catholics are planning to converge on Rome and join in the festivities. The world's cardinals have been invited, too.

So far, the pope has avoided great retrospective speeches or documents on his first quarter-century. In fact, he has spoken more about Mary, to whom he's dedicated this year in a special way, than about his own accomplishments.

At 83, he is frail and hobbled by Parkinson's disease and other ailments. He no longer walks in public; instead, he sits and rides on a variety of newfangled mechanisms that allow him to keep celebrating liturgies and meeting with groups.

But, thanks in part to a new regime of therapy, he has regained strength in his voice and seems to breathe easier than he did a year ago. Those improvements have encouraged aides and put an end to speculation over papal retirement - at least for now.

Many at the Vatican believe the pope's infirmities have added a new dimension to his message.

"When the Mass is celebrated by someone in his condition, the sacrifice of Christ becomes even more evident," Cardinal Jozef Tomko, a longtime friend and retired Vatican official, said in an interview with CNS.

"What comes through is a deep spirituality and the acceptance of his limitations. I think in these conditions he is winning even more people to Christ than before," Cardinal Tomko said.

The first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years, Pope John Paul II declared early on that the Second Vatican Council had set his agenda. In particular, his global ministry quickly focused on Vatican II's engagement of modern culture.

At the teaching level, the pope has penned three major encyclicals on economic and social justice issues and has addressed the rich-poor imbalance continent-by-continent in post-synodal documents.

Over the last 10 years, he also has authored three other encyclicals that strongly challenge what he sees as a prevailing moral relativism in post-modern society. "Veritatis Splendor" spoke of the truth of the church's moral teachings, "Evangelium Vitae" defended the inviolability of human life against what the pope calls a "culture of death," and "Fides et Ratio" argued that human reason cannot be detached from faith in God.

Meanwhile, under his guidance, Vatican agencies have issued important instructions on such specific questions as foreign debt, in vitro fertilization, the arms industry, the role of the mass media and the impact of the Internet.

Through all these pronouncements runs a central theme: that human freedom becomes destructive when people forget they are created in God's image. Whether an unborn child, an impoverished African or an elderly shut-in, the pope says, every human being has a value that goes beyond earthly advantages and accomplishments.

While pushing Catholic teaching into virtually every area of modern life, the pope also has taken the measure of the church's past mistakes. At his insistence, the church acknowledged historical errors in condemning 16th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei, in participating in European religious wars, and even in its missionary approach in some New World territories.

Against considerable resistance within his own Vatican hierarchy, the pope commissioned critical studies on the church's role in the Inquisition and the Crusades and on the failings of Christians during the Holocaust.

On an interreligious level, Pope John Paul has reached out in ways that were once considered impossible or even heretical. In 1986 he visited a Jewish synagogue in Rome, then in 2000 prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem -- a gesture that won the hearts of many Jews worldwide.

In Syria, he became the first pope to visit a mosque, and in Morocco he spoke to thousands of cheering Muslim youths.

Twice he convened leaders of other religions and other churches for prayer meetings in Assisi, where participants denounced all acts of war and terrorism carried out in the name of religion.

Within the church, the pope has been no less dynamic. He has disciplined dissenting theologians and self-styled "traditionalists," promulgated a new Code of Canon Law, issued new directives calling for clearer Catholic identity in church universities, and defended with the full weight of his authority the church's all-male priesthood.

Some critics have said that in dealing with in-the-field church problems, the pope's management style is too detached. They cited the clerical sex abuse crisis as an example of where the pontiff should have called bishops and others to closer accountability.

Vatican officials reject that criticism, pointing out that the pope has several times pronounced prophetically against sex abuse and other moral failings by church ministers. The pope's job is not to pore over dossiers but to set clear directions, they say.

"This is not a pontificate that acts in a crisis management style. He goes beyond crisis management, to the root of the problem. And in the case of sex abuse, the real problem is in formation," said Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman.

As a teacher of the faith, the pope has been exhaustive, demanding and authoritative. The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" is his longest document and will no doubt be seen as one of the great accomplishments of this pontificate; a shorter compendium of church teaching is also in the works.

The pope brooks no dissent among the faithful, and in a 1998 document he invoked penalties against Catholics who reject the church's wide range of "definitive" positions, including those on human sexuality.

That has prompted criticism by some groups of laity and theologians, especially in Europe and the United States. Such groups say the pope has presided over an excessive centralization of church power and authority at the expense of local churches.

While supporting Vatican II's promotion of the laity in the church, the pope has warned against confusing the roles of lay Catholics and ordained priests. He has supported clerically managed lay organizations like Opus Dei, which has grown in influence.

As opposed to models of power-sharing in the church, Pope John Paul has proposed models of holiness to the world's 1.1 billion Catholics. He has canonized more than 470 people from dozens of countries and beatified more than 1,300 - including the first lay couple.

At the 25-year mark, the pope's record on ecumenism contains a long list of agreements, joint declarations and mutual gestures of good will, especially with some ancient Eastern churches.

But as common ground has been staked out among the churches, the remaining obstacles have stood in even higher relief. The Vatican's clear injunction against shared Eucharist with Protestant churches may seem arbitrary to critics, but the pope views it as a painful reminder of the distance yet to travel in ecumenical dialogue.

In recent years, relations with the Russian Orthodox Church have sharply deteriorated as a result of the pope's determination to rebuild Catholic communities in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. Surely one of the pope's biggest disappointments after 25 years has been the failure to visit Moscow, which he would undertake only with the Orthodox Church's blessing.

Pope John Paul's pontificate is the fourth-longest in history, and perhaps more than any of his predecessors he has shaped the hierarchy in his image. He has named more than three-fourths of the world's active bishops and 96 percent of the cardinals who will elect his successor.

During his papacy, the church has expanded greatly in Africa and made significant advances in Asia and Oceania. This distinctly Third World tilt has been spotlighted during the pope's more than 100 foreign trips, when he has used local customs in his liturgies, spoken the native language and praised indigenous writers and thinkers.

But the trips have enormous missionary objectives, as well. While respectful of the non-Catholic or non-Christian majorities along his itinerary, the pope has always presented the figure of Christ and the Gospel message to any and all of his listeners.

That's in keeping with the pope's conviction that while all people can be saved Christ is the unique savior for all people -- a point made forcefully in the controversial document "Dominus Iesus," which emphasized proclamation of Christ over dialogue.

Visiting India in 1999, the pope delineated the church's approach on the Asian continent, where he predicted "a great harvest of faith" in the years to come. He praised his hosts' non-Christian spiritual traditions but also preached the Gospel, and said the best way for Christians to evangelize was by living the Gospel values.

As the pope has aged, his rapport with young people has remained consistently - and sometimes amazingly - fresh and energetic. World Youth Day celebrations, like the last one in Toronto in 2002, seem to bring out the pope's good humor and vigor. He jokes more easily with the young, but there is a serious side to all this, too.

Papal biographer Weigel, who has attended the youth day celebrations and spoken extensively on Catholic college campuses, said it is striking how young people welcome the pope's challenge "not to settle for anything less than the religious and moral grandeur that they're capable of, under grace."

"He's had a tremendous impact on the young, not by pandering to them, but by holding the bar of expectation high, all the time letting them know that he loves them and that Christ loves them," Weigel said.

As the years of this pontificate roll by, the encyclicals and teaching documents have become fewer and the speeches shorter. Those close to him say the pope has clearly not run out of things to say, however - he's just saying them in different ways.

"At the start of the 21st century, the pope continues to open people up to the transcendent, telling them that we're more than genetics, we're more than psychology, we're more than DNA," said Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman.

This is a message that is resonating with Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, he said.

The pope is also finding time for more reflective writing. Earlier this year, he published a small book of poetry, meditations that were inspired by the Sistine Chapel frescoes.

As his 25th anniversary approached, the pope was in the final phase of writing a book on his 20 years as a bishop in Poland. He authored a similar volume in 1996 on his life as a priest, an intensely personal review of the spiritual path that eventually led to the papacy.