Pope John Paul II, Leader of World's 1 Billion Roman Catholics, Is Dead at 84
Third-longest papacy marked by a passion to evangelize the whole world.
By Peggy Polk and Kevin Eckstrom, Religion News Service | posted 4/04/2005 12:00AM
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On three occasions — at the height of the Cold War, during the Balkans conflicts and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — the pope led leaders of the Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Zoroastrian, Tenrikyo, Shinto and traditional African faiths on inter-faith peace pilgrimages to the medieval hill town of Assisi, home of St. Francis.
During the landmark Holy Year of 2000, John Paul rebuffed the advice of Vatican bureaucrats in seeking a "purification of memory" by formally asking forgiveness at a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica for the errors committed by Catholics over the past 2,000 years and especially in the 20th century.
A Holy Year pilgrimage in March 2000 took him to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. He visited a Palestinian refugee camp and Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust and prayed at the Western Wall, Judaism's most sacred site.
Now, in every corner of the world touched by John Paul, people are mourning the loss of the priest Italian biographer Luigi Accatolli refers to in the title of his book as "Man of the Millennium."
David Briggs and Bruce Nolan contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
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