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That carefully limited response recognized not only the Vatican's diplomatic position as a non-state, but distantly echoed the historic antipathy between established Protestant Americans and immigrant Catholics.

Before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Catholics were forbidden to attend Sunday services in a Protestant church and were discouraged from taking up personal Bible study.

Evangelicals, meanwhile, still honored the furious rhetoric of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley, founders of the Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist churches, respectively, all denounced contemporary popes as the anti-Christ.

"In the early 1940s, the director of this office used the terms Catholic and communist in the same breath, describing both as threats to the religious freedom of evangelicals," said Cizik, who heads his association's office of government affairs.

Important differences between the two communities remain, from the doctrinal to the hard-boiled. Evangelicals still generally disapprove of Catholics' devotion to Mary and abhor hierarchy. And they have remained conspicuously aloof from Catholic bishops' growing effort to end the death penalty in the United States.

But over time, the shift of Catholics out of immigrant status matched up nicely with growing prosperity among evangelicals to narrow old class differences, Eskridge said. That set the stage for mutual support through decades of cultural conflict over abortion and other issues, Cizik said.

John Paul's comprehensive "culture of life" arguments helped provide an important intellectual framework knitting together Bush's own positions on abortion and other life issues, said Deal Hudson, a former Southern Baptist who converted to Catholicism and helped lead the White House's political outreach to Catholics in 2004.

Evangelicals and Catholics quickly linked up on related life issues: euthanasia, embryo research, gay marriage, and doctor-assisted suicide. "Then it became the overall issue of moral decline in the United States," Hudson said. "The symbol for that became Hollywood. This is something that really energized the evangelical community, as it energizes grass-roots conservative Catholics."

"John Paul's emphasis on the role of media, that they can play more positive roles in the nurturing of families and children, really brought those communities together," he said.

Cizik, however, emphasized that evangelical regard for John Paul was focused on him individually, and his record of leadership. "It's not necessarily that evangelicals feel this way about popes. It's just this one," he said. "We'll have to see who comes next."

Bruce Nolan is a staff writer for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, where an earlier version of this story first appeared.

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Weblog earlier rounded up evangelical responses to the pope's death.

Focus on the Family Broadcast a program remembering the legacy of John Paul II.

Evangelicals and Catholics Together has released several statements regarding theological areas in which evangelicals and Catholics are also on the same side. Our coverage includes:

A Distinctive People | A new document from Evangelicals and Catholics Together challenges narcissism, individualism, and spiritual sloth. (March 03, 2005)

Churchly Holiness: An Evangelical Response | Even as Jesus loves all human beings, he will judge all human works. (March 03, 2005)

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April (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49