Energy, action were hallmarks of pontificate

VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II assailed moral perils as he traveled the world, a crowd-pleasing superpastor whose 26-year papacy carried the Roman Catholic Church into Christianity's third millennium and emboldened Eastern Europeans to bring down the communist system.

As the first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years and the first from Poland, John Paul brought a back-to-basics conservatism infused with a common touch and a longing to heal ancient religious wounds. And he survived an assassination attempt to become the third-longest-serving pope.

In his final days, the 84-year-old pontiff sought to set an example of a dignified death. A letter released on Good Friday reflected on his hospitalization as "a patient alongside other patients, uniting in the Eucharist my own sufferings with those of Christ."

John Paul's Polish roots nourished a doctrinal conservatism — opposition to contraception, abortion, women priests — that rankled liberal Catholics in the United States and Western Europe.

A sex-abuse scandal among clergy plunged his church into moral crisis, with allegations that he didn't react to it swiftly enough. And while championing the world's poor, he rebuked Latin American priests who sought to involve the church politically through "liberation theology."

No pope ever traveled so much or so far: He visited more than 120 nations during the third-longest papacy in history.

No pope delivered so many speeches: He warned in vain against wars in Iraq and the Balkans, deplored the fate of Palestinians and called for reconciliation with Jews.

No pope wrote so much, or so popularly: He produced 14 encyclicals and the best-selling book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope." He recited the rosary on a best-selling CD.

And no pope celebrated so many Masses for so many of what are now the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics: his open-air ceremonies drew tens of thousands to St. Peter's Square and became a hallmark of papal visits abroad.

In his later years, although stooped and frail from a variety of ailments that included Parkinson's disease, John Paul realized his dream of bringing his church into the new millennium. He marked it by making pilgrimages to the very roots of Western faith, Mount Sinai and the Holy Land.

Fulfilling another goal, he took the unprecedented step of asking God's forgiveness for the sins of Catholics through the ages in an apology intended to cleanse and reinvigorate his religion.