The death of Pope John Paul II leaves the whole world in mourning for one of the great leaders of our time. He was an inspirational figure who practised what he preached, even if his pleas for social justice, strict standards of sexual morality and the rejection of unbridled capitalism were more often than not ignored. He was an outstanding pastor who visibly wore himself out in his mission to make this a better world and convince men and women of all faiths and none that their ultimate destiny transcends the joys and sorrows of everyday life.
Even for those who did not share his strongly held Christian beliefs, there was inspiration in itself to watch him defy debilitating illnesses to preach a unifying message of solidarity to a world divided between differing creeds. It was an impossible task humanly speaking but he never shirked it.
He was consistent in his pro-life stance which not only condemned abortion but also the death penalty and war as an instrument of foreign policy. He believed the medieval concept of the "just war" was outmoded and he spoke out against the two Gulf wars in spite of US displeasure. He campaigned with some success for the cancellation of official debts incurred by the poorest countries.
He saw himself as Christ's representative on earth and reached out to people of all religions and cultures in a way none of his predecessors would have dreamed of. He seemed to be indeed a Man of Destiny as he inspired, first his native Poland during the Solidarity rebellion, and then the rest of central and eastern Europe under communist domination, to struggle non-violently to replace the harsh regimes controlled from Moscow. He was arguably the single most important figure in reuniting Europe and bringing the Cold War to an end.
His vision of a Christian Europe to replace the division of the Cold War period, in which east and west would unite under a vaguely defined slogan of "solidarity", has not come to pass. He saw the enlarged European Union which has become a reality as a poor substitute imbued with materialistic and godless values. But he believed it still has the potential to rise to its true vocation.
He narrowly survived an assassination attempt in St Peter's Square and later visited his would-be murderer in prison to offer forgiveness in the true Christian spirit. He did more than any other pope to try to undo centuries of anti-semitism which tainted official Catholicism for far too long. He apologised humbly in the name of the Catholic Church for its historical wrongs. He was the first to visit a Muslim country and open a dialogue with that religion. In this he was an inspiring figure in an age which had seen the depths to which so-called civilised man could descend and which wondered was there any place for a loving God.
Behind this charismatic figure who had once been a poet, an actor and an athlete before he dedicated his life to God, there was a strict moralist whose conservatism disappointed many Catholics hoping for a greater understanding of what it is to live in the real world of broken marriages, dwindling clergy, sexual freedom and Aids-stricken African countries. In this area of Catholic morality, Pope John Paul would brook no dissent. Theologians who tried to re-interpret traditional Catholic teaching on sexual matters to accommodate these developments in the world of the 20th and 21st centuries and in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council were silenced.
Where Pope Paul VI had shown compassion to priests seeking release from their vows and permission to marry, Pope John Paul for years set his face against what he saw as betrayal. Even to discuss priestly celibacy or the ordaining of women priests would not be tolerated under a pope who had once written plays about the tenderness of human love.
He was capable of change, however, in other matters. At first in his long pontificate, he showed little sympathy for the dilemma of the clergy in Latin American countries ministering to a peasantry and urban proletariat shamefully exploited by nominally Catholic dictators or plutocrats who often had the favour of the official Church. Liberation theology which drew on Marxist philosophy to illustrate the class divisions in Latin America gradually became more acceptable to him. As he put it, "if there is no hope for the poor, there will be no hope for anyone, not even for the so-called rich".
Pope John Paul's dream of a reconciliation, or "common house", between Rome and the Orthodox churches of eastern Europe - a split in Christianity which long pre-dated the Reformation - was one of his most painful failures. Centuries of mutual distrust and even antagonism would take more than the sudden collapse of the communist regimes of central and eastern Europe to heal.
As with any human endeavour, Pope John Paul's life and work was a mixture of success and failure, but with him it was on a heroic scale across the world. He saw his latter years as a final phase where, in his own words, "the Pope has to suffer so that every family and the world may see that there is a higher gospel, the gospel of suffering by which the future is prepared".