Pope John Paul II: 1920-2005
The Guardian UK has a good obituary for Pope John Paul II:
Pope John Paul II, who has died at the age of 84, was seen in the flesh by more people than any other pope in history. He made more than 100 international journeys, each of them a marathon which left his suite limp and made his adrenaline flow.
Some said these trips were more show and ceremony than substance, but they had real political significance. In 1989, he went to Paraguay, where he publicly rebuked the long-serving dictator Alfredo Stroessner and greeted opposition leaders; months later, the regime fell.
In 1998, on one of his most highly publicised journeys to Cuba, he had Fidel Castro eating out of his hand, even as he publicly challenged the Cuban president to grant "freedom of conscience - the basis and foundation of all other human rights". After the visit there followed the release of political prisoners, the easing of restrictions on religious liberty, and a softening of the US economic embargo.
The Polish-born Karol Wojtyla had almost become an actor before he became a priest, and he always retained his talent for creating a rapport with crowds. A bishop at 38, a cardinal at 47, and pope at 58, he was the outstanding outsider, his faith tested by decades of communist persecution, to break the 455-year tradition of Italian popes.
On his first visit home as Pope, in June 1979, he stood before a million well-disciplined people in Victory Square, Warsaw, where a 60ft-high cross had been specially erected. No communist country had seen anything like it before.
In Poland, John Paul acted as a tribune of the people, a true populist, articulating the nation's deepest aspirations.
He gave Poles the self-confidence they needed to found Solidarnosc as a unique alliance of workers and intellectuals. The dismantling of communism began there. Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that without John Paul the end of communism would not have come so swiftly; it was his greatest achievement, done without violence - history's first great "spiritual revolution".
