Among the changes, none were more apparent than those he brought to the papacy itself. As a pastor and bishop in Krakow for many years, he came to Rome with a passion for ministry and little interest in the administrative chores required of a pope. Unlike two of his 20th-century pred-ecessors, Paul VI and Pius XII—both of whom immersed themselves in the managerial details of running the Vatican state—John Paul II devoted his energy to travel and diplomacy and to teaching and praying for his flock. "He saw himself as a pastor to the world," says the Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, head of the Jesuit order and a member of the Roman Curia.
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Our photo gallery spans the pope's youth to his last days at the vatican.
Yet some Vatican insiders say he neglected the papacy's managerial functions, allowing more leeway to Vatican bureaucrats in day-to-day operations. "It is yet to be determined if that was a positive or a negative," says one member of the Roman Curia. Nor is it clear whether the pope's final years, shaken by debilitating illness, gave Vatican bureaucrats enhanced power. But broadly speaking, says papal biographer George Weigel, "John Paul II broke the mold of the bureaucratic-managerial papacy." As a result, say Weigel and others, it is unlikely that any pope, for the foreseeable future, will revert to the CEO style of leadership that has characterized most modern pontificates.
Throughout his reign, both his critics and his admirers laid claim to the "true spirit" of reform under the Second Vatican Council as they evaluated his leadership. Liberals were disappointed that he didn't take what, in their minds, were the logical next steps in embracing modernity: lifting a church ban on use of contraceptives, which many Catholics disregard anyway, and opening the priesthood to women and married men. Conservatives, meanwhile, applauded his commitment to spiritual renewal and strengthening of the church's prophetic voice against moral relativism in modern culture. Whether John Paul will be remembered as a reformer who revitalized the church or an obstructionist who thwarted the goals of Vatican II will be left for historians to decide. The arguments have already begun, as the faithful and the skeptical sift through the considerable legacy of a remarkable life.
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