Pope John Paul II, who has died in the Vatican at the age of 84, will long be remembered as one of the most charismatic, dynamically evangelical and politically significant figures ever to sit on the seat of Peter.

Ironically, however, it is at least arguable that his enigmatic combination of rigid doctrinal orthodoxy and political activism means that he leaves behind him a world more united and a church more divided. Although future historians are likely to acknowledge the significance of his role in the downfall of Eastern Bloc communism, church commentators may also argue that his hard-line conservative teachings , especially on sexual mores, have left the Catholic Church caught up in a bitter struggle between "conservatives" and "progressives".

When the 58-year-old Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, was elected Pope in October 1978, the choice provoked immediate consternation since he was the first non-Italian Pope since 1522. Few could then have predicted that the Polish Cardinal, "The Man from the East", was to become a colossus on the late-20th-century international stage. He was a Pope whose moral authority commanded respect and whose tireless voice made itself heard far beyond the confines of the Roman Catholic family.

Though clearly old and enfeebled towards the end of his pontificate and with his health battered by a succession of serious problems including Parkinson's disease, Pope John Paul II nonetheless continued right up to his death to bring a tireless sense of urgency to the fulfilment of his evangelical mission.

The figure of John Paul II was as complex and at times mysterious as the issues of faith on which he was such an unapologetic teacher. There was no simple yardstick by which to assess the man. Western liberals were at odds with his ultra-conservative teaching on sexual morality, priestly celibacy, divorce and abortion. Freethinkers (even within the church) disagreed with his ban on women priests and his condemnation of homosexual practices as sinful.

Yet, those same liberals and freethinkers agreed wholeheartedly with his repeated calls for an end to Third World debt and for serious curbs on the world armaments industry. No one who attended the UN World Food Summit in Rome in November 1996 will ever forget the ironic parallels between John Paul II's speech and that of Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro. Both men made similar calls on the privileged West to face up to its moral responsibilities regarding the developing world and the growing North-South, rich-poor gap.

Karol Wojtyla was clearly an enigma. An arch-conservative in theological terms, he was ultra-modern in his willingness to harness the tools of the age - television, air travel, even the Internet - for the purposes of his evangelical mission. No Pope has ever taken Christ's final exhortation to the Apostles more seriously:

"And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." (Mark ch.16, v.15)

By the end of his pontificate, John Paul II had made 104 pastoral visits outside Italy, visiting 117 countries and travelling more than a million kilometres since 1978. He issued 14 encyclicals, 14 apostolic exhortations, 9 apostolic constitutions, and numerous apostolic letters and messages or appeals.

From President George Bush to President Nelson Mandela and from President Mikhail Gorbachev to Cuban leader Castro, from the Dalai Lama to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he met (and influenced) many of the most powerful political and religious leaders of the day. The doors of the Holy See, he claimed, were always open for dialogue.

The engines of the papal jet, too, were always on standby as the "globetrotting" Pope took his message to the four corners of the earth. Towards the end of his pontificate, when his clearly failing health argued against exhausting travel, John Paul's closest advisors tried in vain to curb his desire to take to the road. He, however, would have none of it.

He insisted on going ahead with visits to Cuba, the Holy Land, Syria, to Canada for World Youth Day in July 2002, to Slovakia,and in 2004 to the Marian Shrine at Lourdes and to Switzerland notwithstanding all the obvious logistical and political difficulties involved. Only when his failing health left him no option in his final years did he finally relent on a stern regime which saw his "working day" begin at 5.30 am and end around 10 pm, six days a week.

His pontificate was consistently marked by a willingness to speak out and act in relation to social tensions and/or armed conflict in troubled zones such as the Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Rwanda and Northern Ireland. Papal envoys travelled to all the above zones, sometimes at great personal risk and often at the height of the various conflagrations.

Many liberal Westerners, often virulently opposed to his orthodox moral teachings, ironically found themselves in agreement with John Paul II when he issued a stinging condemnation firstly of the American-led 1991 Gulf War and then of the US-led military intervention in Iraq 10 years later.

John Paul II's willingness to live up to his role of "God's politician" was further reflected in the expansion of the Vatican's diplomatic service throughout his pontificate. When he took office, the Holy See had 89 nunciatures and 21 apostolic delegations. At the last count, it had 164 nunciatures, plus another 15 delegations, as well as 24 permanent representatives at various international organisations such as the UN. Currently, more than 160 countries have accredited diplomatic representation at the Vatican.

Yet Pope John Paul II remained an enigma. His sympathy and understanding of the oppressed "Church of Silence" of the former Eastern Bloc communist regimes enabled him to play a major role in the downfall of those totalitarian regimes.

Yet he was never able to extend the same sympathy and understanding to the "liberation" theologians of Latin America, priests who found (and still find) themselves combating repressive regimes. The experience of having lived out his formative years under communist repression meant that he could never really understand liberation theologian like the Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez or the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, since he suspected them of working from a Marxist agenda.

One of the high points of his pontificate was the sight of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa signing an agreement with the Polish government to legalise his trade union with a souvenir pen from the Pope's historic 1979 visit to Poland. Yet his pontificate also saw the Vatican's theological watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (ex-Holy Office), sternly reprimand Boff and Gutierrez, not to mention liberal European theologians such as Hans Küng.

The "Wojtyla enigma" lies in the vision of a Pope willing to lead the shipyard workers of Gdansk in prayer and down the road to freedom from communist repression but unwilling to back the late Archbishop of Salvador, Oscar Romero, in his outspoken defence of the poor. While many Latin American Catholics consider Romero a modern saint (he was gunned down by government assassins while saying Mass in 1980), John Paul II tended to consider him as merely "zealous". In 1992, he removed a reference to his "martyrdom" from the agreed text of a speech to the Conference of Latin American Bishops.

The "Wojtyla enigma" is that of a Pope whose copious writings made constant references to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. Many critics would argue that the indications to emerge from that council were in the direction of greater cultural and theological pluralism, of more lay participation, more dialogue and less hierarchy in church affairs.

Yet despite his constant references to the council, John Paul II seemed to go down another path, re-enforcing the central authority of Rome and the power and influence of the hierarchy, especially the Rome Curia. Under John Paul II, the Catholic Church was many things but never moved in towards becoming a democratic institution.

Nowhere did this centralisation of church authority make itself more felt than in relation to the oft-vexed question of church appointments or dismissals. The removal in January 1995 of French bishop Jacques Gaillot (just one of many controversial decisions by Rome) prompted the collection of millions of signatures of protest in parishes throughout France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Austria. Such a mass movement of protest did not worry Karol Wojtyla one bit. His mandate came from God, not the people.

It can be argued that one of the great ironies of John Paul II's pontificate has been that of having united the world (his role in the downfall of Eastern Bloc communism) but of having bitterly divided his church by his conservative teachings on sexual mores. There are many Vatican insiders, however, who suggest that, rather than damage the Catholic Church by flying in the face of a Western liberal agenda, John Paul II worked a minor miracle in holding the whole vast organisation together, presiding over a period of growth and cultural expansion (especially in Africa).

Such pundits would argue that the Western liberal agenda (ordination of women, priestly celibacy, homosexuality, eucharistic concelebration) are not major issues in a developing world where Catholic teaching has to be dominated by hunger, health and poverty concerns.

Critics of John Paul II have also pointed to his apparent inability to predict, understand or indeed effectively deal with the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years in countries as far apart as Austria and Australia, Ireland and the USA. They would also argue that the Catholic Church's resolute ban on the use of condoms bordered on the irresponsible in the context of the fight against AIDS, especially in Africa.

On both those issues, John Paul II was perhaps hidebound by his age and background. His sincere but mystical faith made it difficult for him to imagine a world where Catholic priests could systematically abuse children, where African priests could rape African nuns and where every day in southern Africa 14,000 people are newly infected with the HIV virus.

When it comes to an assessment of the complex issue of ecumenical and inter-religious relations in his pontificate, we are again confronted with a divided, enigmatic picture. On the one hand, there are major churches such as the Eastern European Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Church which, frankly, came to believe that they would have to wait for John Paul II's death before meaningful ecumenical dialogue could be resumed.

Such were the tensions with the Russian Orthodox Church that he failed to realise one of his most cherished ambitions, namely that of an ecumenical visit to Moscow.

The negative direction taken in ecumenical and inter-religious matters in this pontificate was sharply outlined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's uncompromising Dominus Iesus document of September 2000. Among other things, this document stated that "there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church", adding that Anglican and Protestant churches were "not Churches in the proper sense" and that followers of religions other than Christianity were living in "a gravely deficient situation".

On the other hand, this Pope did much to reverse the trends of thousand-year-old anti-Semitic views and practices within the Catholic Church. He was the first Pope to visit the Roman Synagogue and the first to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp. He oversaw the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican in 1993.

Furthermore, (and against the desire of many senior Curia figures) he instigated the whole "Mea Culpa" process within the church, asking for forgiveness for the church's past "errors and failings" at a remarkable Holy Year service in March 2000.

With specific regard to Judaism, this policy produced a 1998 Vatican document, expressing "regret" for the failure of individual Catholics to live up to the tenets of their faith in combating anti-Semitism in general and Nazism in particular. (Even this latter document was not without controversy since many Jews were enraged by the Pope's defence of Pope Pius XII, accused by of having remained silent in the face of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust.)

It must not be forgotten, too, that at the age of nearly 81, he set out in May 2001 on a ground-breaking journey to both Greece and Syria, aimed at improving relations both with Islam and Orthodoxy. That trip not only saw him become the first Pope to visit Greece since the Great Schism of 1054 but also become the first pontiff to visit a mosque when he walked around the Umayyad mosque in Damascus with Syria's Grand Mufti.

Despite his advancing years and obvious physical frailty, the Pope refused to accept that his mission was over, refused to listen to thinly veiled suggestions that he might consider retirement. God put me on this Seat, he once said, and only God can take me off it. He died having realised some of his most cherished ambitions, such as his March 2000 trip to the Holy Land.

Above all, he desperately wanted to lead the church into the new millennium and this he did and more, not only presiding over countless exhausting ceremonies throughout the Holy Year 2000 but taking the church the first few steps of the way into the third millennium.

His teachings may not have met with universal approval but he was a man of such patent goodness and moral probity that the echoes of his contribution to the affairs of men and to the teaching of the Gospel will reverberate long after his death.