The world mourns

A quick study with exceptional linguistic ability, he had a passion for philosophy, literature and drama, earning a fistful of degrees, including two doctorates. Though he wrote prolifically on a scholarly level, he also wrote poems and plays, and as a young priest enjoyed groups of young students, joining them at soccer, hiking, canoeing, camping and skiing in his native Poland.

Both his scholarly side and his love for and understanding of young people played out on the world stage, most often in the native tongue of those who gathered to hear him and marvel at his ability to speak multiple languages. He traveled more miles — over 700,000 — to more nations — 129 — than any of his predecessors after narrowly escaping with his life during an assassination attempt only three years into his papacy.

Two years after the shooting, he visited the would-be Turkish assassin in his prison cell, forgiving the man in a public display of what many would come to love him for most: his willingness to not only forgive but to apologize — publicly and sincerely — for wrongs and omissions of courage committed by the church over the centuries.

He was the first Catholic pontiff to enter both a mosque and a synagogue, banishing centuries-old stereotypes and prejudices that had figured, often deeply, into world events down through the ages.

Conversant in the offsetting languages of politics and faith, he was both lauded and criticized for promulgating and defending conservative Christian values, despite a shift in First World nations toward liberalism and political correctness, particularly among the majority of American Catholics.

A 2002 New York Times survey found that even among Catholic lay teachers, 53 percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic, and 65 percent believe a Catholic may divorce and remarry — all contradicting direct papal statements on those issues. Last fall's cultural clash over whether presidential candidate John Kerry could take communion because he favored abortion highlighted the rift within the American church.

Yet John Paul made five papal visits to the United States, with multicity tours in 1979 and 1987, to Denver in 1993, an October 1995 visit to New York, New Jersey and Baltimore, and finally to St. Louis in 1999.

Several Utahns were among the tens of thousands who turned out to greet him on some of those visits.

The Rev. James Blaine, American Fork, led a local group of youths to see the pope in Denver on World Youth Day. "I was one of several hundred priests; we got front-row seats," Father Blaine said. "He walked by to do the Mass, and I could almost touch him. . . . That's one of the things you never forget."