As captivating in death as he was in life

BLESSED John Paul II was a colossus for more than 26 years both in the Catholic Church and in the wider world.

Perhaps more than any other pope in history he lived his uncompromising faith in the public gaze and challenged Catholics and non-Catholics alike to take up the gauntlet of building a world based on what he described as the civilisation of love.

His beatification in Rome just six years after his death marks another milestone on a remarkable life journey from repression under Nazi and communist totalitarianism in his native Poland to becoming one the best-known figures in the world.

From the moment of his election in 1978, Karol Wojtyla signalled that things were going to be different. Breaking with tradition, he addressed the huge congregation in Italian rather than Latin, thus assuring the people of Rome that while he was to be the first non-Italian to lead the Church since 1523, he would not neglect the locals.

John Paul II was, in many ways, a sign of contradiction. He constantly defied attempts to capture him in a narrow category like “conservative” or “liberal”. He was traditional and orthodox on matters of moral theology, while at the same time progressive and almost revolutionary on issues of social justice and workers’ rights, honed, no doubt, during his four years as a factory worker.

He infuriated liberal elements by insisting on the Church’s traditional ban on artificial birth control and the inadmissibility of women to the priesthood. He enraged conservatives — particularly in the US — with his strong denunciation of the unregulated free market. His insistence on a consistent ethic of life saw him challenge supporters of the death penalty as vociferously as he did proponents of abortion. His stance against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — he declared the war “a defeat for humanity” — was a rallying-point for world leaders seeking to give a theological and philosophical articulation to their opposition to the conflict.

He consistently refused to bow to cynicism. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US, when a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West seemed inevitable, John Paul II called all religious leaders together for a meeting of peace and dialogue. He urged Catholics to join Muslims in their Ramadan fast as a sign of solidarity between the two faiths.

It was that same message of peace and reconciliation he brought around the world. He was the first pope to visit a mosque, the first pope to enter a synagogue since Peter and the first pope to circle the globe. Immediately upon his election, he took to the roads visiting 129 countries, including Ireland, in a bid to energise global Catholicism. His message had a particular resonance in central and eastern Europe, where Catholics were regularly persecuted from their faith. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev credits the pontiff’s 1979 visit to Poland with ushering in the eventual collapse of communism in the entire region. At the same time, his stubborn denunciation of the US embargo on Cuba assured him a heroes’ welcome from Fidel Castro in 1998. In thanksgiving Castro, an avowed atheist, institutionalised Christmas as a national holiday.

John Paul provoked the ire of some conservative Catholics in 2000 when he held a ceremony to atone and apologise for the sins of the Church down the centuries. Defying warnings from some theologians that the apology would undermine the Church’s authority, he asked God to forgive the persecution of the Jews, the excesses of the Crusades and the Inquisition, and sins against women.

There was no mention at the ceremony of atonement of the Church’s cover-up of child abuse, admittedly a scandal that did not fully emerge until several years later. Where he did address the issue of child sexual abuse by priests it was in the strongest possible terms, insisting there was no place in the Church for abusers.

Critics, however, point to the late pope’s friendship and support for charismatic Mexican priest Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado. Despite allegations of abuse against Fr Maciel going back to the 1950s, John Paul consistently refused to believe the detractors. It was up to his successor Benedict XVI to dismiss Fr Maciel just months after taking over in 2005. In fairness to John Paul II, Mexican police consistently denied there was any credible evidence against the priest. Following his death in 2008, however, evidence of sexual misconduct with both men and women and abuse of minors — including at least two children the priest had himself fathered — was confirmed.

Critics aside, John Paul II continues to captivate in death as in life, drawing more than two million pilgrims to yesterday’s ceremony. Within minutes of his death in 2005, the chant went up in Rome: “santo Subito” (sainthood now). Pope Benedict has gone part of the way in granting that request and, if the crowds in Rome are anything to go by, canonisation will surely soon follow.

* Michael Kelly is Deputy Editor of The Irish Catholic newspaper. [e-mail]