John Paul the Great proved a study in contrasts and a man of contagious courage

KAROL Wojtyla's position as the world's leading statesman in the last quarter of the 20th century is unchallenged. He has been the leader of one billion Catholics and Christianity's best-known spokesman. His story is extraordinary, his gifts many and various. While he is above all a man of faith whose ambitions have been overwhelmingly religious, the political consequences of his leadership have been greater than those of any other religious leader since Mohammed.

His life has been a study in contrasts and the verdicts inside and outside the church on his achievements will continue to conflict.

Elected at age 58 in 1978, John Paul II was young by papal standards, energetic, virile, a striking figure who used his theatrical gifts to startling effect in his public appearances. Listening in Ballarat to the sermon at his inaugural Mass in St Peter's Square, I was so heartened, indeed thrilled, by his message and style that I turned off the radio and went to sleep. I needed to hear no more. We were in good hands. In Rome they sold more pictures of him in six months than they sold in the entire pontificate of Paul VI.

Later in his life the images were different. The rich baritone voice was replaced by an often unintelligible slur, the fine features by an expressionless, podgy mask of a face. He found it increasingly difficult to breathe; finally he could not walk, even if the hand tremors subsided. He dribbled. He has not been afraid to let the world see him suffering to exemplify the constant Christian teaching that all humans have an intrinsic dignity. But the love and devotion of young Catholics for this old, sick man has been greater in the past few months than in the days of his prime more than 20 years earlier.

Wojtyla was not born with any silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a soldier, his mother died when he was eight and his only brother when was 12. He was 19 when the Nazis invaded Poland, and was condemned to forced labour in a chemical factory and a quarry during the war years. He was knocked down by a German truck in 1944. Nazi tyranny was replaced by communist oppression. As Pope he was shot in 1981 and had an intestinal tumour removed in 1992. All of this before Parkinson's disease took hold.

Many would have been destroyed by such a set of misfortunes.

Because of the miracles of contemporary travel and communications, the Pope has been seen by more people than any other person in history. No pope has enjoyed such a mass following with many enthusiasts outside the Catholic flock. But he has had many critics within the church, too. Unlike the false prophets, he has not worked to universal acclaim.

He wrote of Christ as a sign of contradiction and on many occasions the pope has had to sail into the wind. He is hated by the hardline liberal secularists. Some of his critics claim that his pontificate has been a failure, at least in the Western world, because he hasn't been able to halt the decline of religious practice. They never add the fact that where his directions have been followed Catholic life has fared much better. Whenever militant liberalism took over the church, Catholic life was devastated, as in the Netherlands and Quebec. In Australian dioceses, where most clergy admire John Paul II, Catholic life is stronger. In fact, there are no militant liberals among young Australian Catholics.

For the Pope, the person of Christ has been central to his life and to his teaching. He has echoed Christ's call to repent and believe, called again and again for prayer and sacrifice. He might be a mystic. This primary interest in following Christ explains why he canonised 500 saints to emphasise the importance of holiness today among many local traditions. Saints do not belong only in ancient, distant cultures.

Yet this religious figure played a pivotal role in the collapse of European and Russian communism, an achievement recognised more by the communists than by many of their secular Western opponents. Leonid Brezhnev objected to General Wojciech Jaruzelski when the Polish government was issuing permits for new churches. The church was the enemy. "Sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us" he warned. He was right.

As a priest, bishop and Pope, John Paul II has lived his life unmarried and childless, following the example of Christ. He has also been the most effective spokesman in the world for the causes of life and love; certainly the most formidable opponent of the culture of death (a phrase he coined) exemplified by the collapse of the birthrate in the Western world below replacement levels, the pandemic of abortions and the push to legalise euthanasia.

He was right to continue mandatory celibacy for the clergy. It was the enforcement of celibacy of the parish clergy under a reinvigorated papacy, the Cluniac reform of the Benedictine monks and the new orders of Franciscans and Dominicans (all unmarried) that brought western Europe out of the Dark Ages. Just as it was the celibate priests, nuns and brothers who transformed civically and religiously the Irish-Australians during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

But no pope has written so eloquently in defence of marriage and the family, while his theology of the body, probably his most important theological contribution, has provided spiritual sustenance for tens of thousands of young Catholics struggling to follow Christian sexual ideals in an age that regards them as foolish and anachronistic.

The Second Vatican Council document on the church in the modern world urged Catholics to engage in a dialogue with the surrounding cultures. No bishop has been more assiduous on this score than this Pope. He has been in constant dialogue with modernity, even as he never compromised essential elements of faith and morals. He has continued to defend moral truths rather than a fashionable relativism, repeated that the ordination of women is impossible, insisted that sexual activity is legitimate only within the institution of heterosexual marriage. Both abortion and euthanasia have been constantly rejected. He has defended reason as well as faith.

While he is acknowledged as the champion of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in the Western culture wars, he has always expounded his case with courtesy and restraint, and refused the role of crusader-in-chief. Unlike some of his medieval predecessors, he has refused to call the West to arms against Islamic terrorists and extremists. He has opposed the use of force and refused to commend not only the second Iraq war but the first as well.

While dialogue between the Vatican and communist intellectuals continued until after the fall of the Berlin Wall (with the communists increasingly open about their disbelief in basic Marxism), the Pope consistently opposed communism in Europe and Asia, and in Latin America, where it had infiltrated the church as liberation theology.

As a central European, the Pope has been typically clear-headed about the beguiling charms of Western life. He dislikes our philistine materialism and individualism, as well as what he has called consumerism and pervasive sexual irresponsibility, which we Westerners tend to take as givens, unchangeables, even when regretted.

He has been outspoken for social justice, explicitly condemnatory of capitalist excess, but no previous pope so explicitly recognised the capacity of free markets to increase prosperity or praised democratic governments for their fostering of the good life. He has resisted enculturation, or accommodation with the prevailing secularism that would have eased the Catholic Church's disappearance into the liberal consensus. But he has been truly a great bridge builder (the literal meaning of pontifex maximus) to all Christian denominations and to the great non-Christian religious traditions. His work with the Jewish people was groundbreaking, while the lack of progress in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue and negotiations has been a sadness and disappointment. He has not been able to visit Russia or China.

John Paul II has brought courage to all those who are oppressed and compassion to those who are suffering. He has defended human rights. After the liberation, Czech president and poet Vaclav Havel welcomed him as a messenger of love "in a country devastated by the ideology of hatred".

He has been a genuine man of the spirit, a true priest. His example and teaching have encouraged orthodox Catholics everywhere to persevere. I personally can vouch for that. He has inspired thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, into the priesthood and religious life.

Even in the West he has steadied the ship. If many were still resolved to be irresolute, solid only for drift, there has been no doubt about where he is heading. He has never lacked courage and courage is contagious.

History will know him as John Paul the Great. He has earned that distinction.