And when all was said and done, he said quite simply, "Do not be afraid".

From the moment he was appointed pope in 1978, Karol Wojtyla was its youngest at 58, a Pope who would straddle two centuries. He was also its first Pole. At the time he was virtually unknown outside of Poland.

For 26 years he ruled over a church that could have moved in several directions - with German liberals like Hans Kung nipping at Rome's ecclesiology, to ultra conservative archbishops like the French Marcel Lefebvre who opposed any liberalizing changes. And he held it together not with a rod of iron or by using raw naked power, but the open palm of authority and Jesus Christ on his lips.

The Pope's impact on interfaith relations and international affairs was immense and may well be his lasting legacy. His achievements and travels can only be judged as remarkable. Pope John Paul II was theologically conservative, but on social issues he was considered radical. He never succumbed to the siren call to ordain women priests nor allowing male priests to marry. A handful viewed him as a Neanderthal on these issues. He stood firm.

"Many people, especially those of faith, will revere him as a prophetic voice that stood firm against a tide of secularism that was threatening to consign traditional ethics in the western world to oblivion," wrote Ruth Gledhill of the London Times.

For over a quarter of a century, while the Catholic Church was losing millions of practicing Catholics in Western Europe and the Christian Faith was and continues to be in retreat against the forces of post modernism, he stood firm, though he seemed not to have an answer that persuaded Europeans to return to the church.

But the awakening Global South galvanized him to appoint more cardinals than any other pope and from those areas of the world where the gospel was expanding, thus swamping a long-dominated Italian run church and a spiritually dying Europe.

He reached out to Jews, asking for forgiveness, to Orthodox Christians looking for unity and to Muslims with the hand of peace, while refusing to compromise on what it is he and his church believed in. He was a lover of peace, arguing forcefully against all manner of tyranny.

He stood firmly against the world and the ravages of post modernity and the hedonism of Western culture when my church, The Episcopal Church was and is caving in on basic theology and time honored morality.

American evangelist Billy Graham spoke for me and for many when he said, "Pope John Paul II was unquestionably the most influential voice for morality and peace in the world during the last 100 years. His extraordinary gifts, his strong Catholic faith, and his experience of human tyranny and suffering in his native Poland all shaped him, and yet he was respected by men and women from every conceivable background across the world. He was truly one of those rare individuals whose legacy will endure long after he has gone."

Graham went on to say that in his own way, "he saw himself as an evangelist, traveling far more than any other Pope to rally the faithful and call non-believers to commitment. He was convinced that the complex problems of our world are ultimately moral and spiritual in nature, and only Christ can set us free from the shackles of sin and greed and violence."

How true, how true.

His concern for the unborn, for youth (World Youth Day) and then how to grow old gracefully and ultimately to die publicly, is a sight that we may never see again. Certainly no secular figure or noisy politician will offer up such a public death that we would care to remember. He placed the dignity of every human being as foremost among his utterances.

He canonized a record number of saints, and he will, in all likelihood, be made a saint himself, it will be one way to preserve his legacy.

But the terrible scandal of clergy abuse of children saw him surprisingly quiet despite multiple, ongoing revelations of children being sexually abused by priests in his own church, and he only recalled and accepted the resignation of Bernard Cardinal Law, America's top Catholic, when the scandal reached pandemic proportions. For someone who spoke so much about the poor, the weak and the vulnerable it is still incomprehensible that he did not speak more forcefully on this subject even after he summoned his cardinals to Rome. One is forced to wonder whether his increasing ill health made it impossible for him to see with clarity what was gong on in the US church or whether the American church's crisis in clergy vocations partly silenced the Pontiff. If the pope had been in full health he might have been a stronger voice for justice of the victims of clergy abuse in the US. We will never know.

I am not a Roman Catholic, there are too many doctrines like transubstantiation, the doctrines surrounding Mary, a mechanical view of grace as I perceive it to be and much more that I could not imbibe. The Pope's devotion to Mary, though incomprehensible to this writer, gave women a role model that few could fault. He himself lived an exemplary and holy life. As a Christian leader he had few peers. In some strange way he was a leader for all Christians throughout the world.

His word to the Polish people, "I plead with you never be discouraged" is indeed a word to those of us hanging on by our nails to a church that has so totally lost its way, mired in spiritual anarchy and to a culture devoted to narcissism and materialism. In the end that might be the most poignant and heartening word of all.

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