Requiescat in pace

Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II 1920-2005

When writing the obituary of a man as significant as a Pope--particularly this one, the longest serving, most well-travelled Pope in history--I think it important to disclose bias, pro or con, right up front.
According to the Catholic Church, I am a Catholic, by virtue of being baptized in the faith. Catholicism is like Scientology or alcoholism that way: once a Catholic, always a Catholic.
I don't hold the Church's view on this...or much of anything else, for that matter. I have a jaded view of organized religion in general and the Holy Roman Catholic Church in particular. But it's hard not to respect the man who has headed that Church for over a quarter century.
Before being elected Pope, Karol Wojtyla was an actor, a scholar, a member of the Resistance in Poland, a labourer, and always, always, a man drawn to the holy. Fiercely intelligent but utterly without pretense, John Paul II fully embraced the responsibilities of the Office of the Pope in a way that few if any men before him ever did.
It's hard to think of a man more complex. He was the most highly visible Pope in history and he valued his privacy and felt uncomfortable discussing his communion with God one-on-one. He made a supreme effort to connect with the individual, but emasculated individuals within his Church. He's been arguably the most liberal and most conservative of Popes.
John Paul II reached out to other faiths, and for this I applaud him. He was the first Pope to visit a mosque. He apologized on behalf of his Church for the monstrous indignities visited on the Jews in the years of Hitler. He made some half-hearted attempts to reconcile the old split between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. I think it fair to say he didn't regard non-Catholics as bestial.
This Pope preached against communism and rampant capitalism with equal fervour. He was a major instigator of events that eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. John Paul II used his Church to spread freedom to the wider world, to offer hope to the poor and disenfranchised, to proclaim his vision of the power of Christ.
My respect for the man catapulted when I read about the Papal Audience of July 28, 1999, at which he proclaimed that "improper use of Biblical pictures [of Hell] must not create psychosis or anxiety"; that Hell was a state of separation from God, not caused by God, but self-induced. Imagine, the head of the Catholic Church saying such a thing! Literally millions of young Catholics have been scared out of their wits by visions of sulfur and brimstone just waiting to claim them if they took even the smallest step off the straight and narrow.
(There are still untold millions who claim to believe in a God who is all-loving, all-powerful, and yet endlessly demanding and ultimately endlessly punishing: much work remains to be done.)
The picture John Paul II presented to the world and that which he presented to his Church were of two wildly divergent people. To the world, he was democratic in the extreme; within the hierachies of the Church he was extremely autocratic, almost totalitarian. Out in the world, Jews could practice their faith without question; the Pope demanded Catholics practice their faith without question...of Rome. One of this Pope's favourite sayings was Roma locuta, causa finita est: "Rome has spoken, the matter is closed".
A champion of the poor to the world, John Paul II insisted on perpetuating poverty through his bullheaded resistance to birth control. He stated in his 1960 work Love and Responsibility that women were equal to men in marriage--a shocking proposition for the time--but equality within the Church will have to wait for someone else. He spoke often of his disdain for homosexuals, but pedophiles within his Church didn't overly faze him. An acute and global shortage of priests is due in no small part to the Pope's demand of lifelong celibacy, a demand, like all others, that was not to be questioned. John Paul II did appoint more bishops than every other Pope combined, though most of them are in his own conservative image.
There are many practicing Catholics who pick and choose amongst the dictates of Rome, either unaware or uncaring that Rome takes an extremely dim view of "buffet Catholicism". There are many others who have left the Faith entirely. Yet this Pope persevered, touching the young, the old and everyone in between with extraordinary charisma and magnetism, even through debilitating illness. The power of the man was undeniable and awesome to behold.
In the end, John Paul II was a man of principles, however contradictory they may appear. I respect the sizeable contribution he made to the world. I respect his manner of dying, which silently shouted an echo of the first three words he spoke after being elected to the papacy:
"BE NOT AFRAID!"