Twenty years ago next weekend, 111 cardinal electors entered a papal conclave that was to produce one of the most unexpected electoral results in Church history. When the cardinals elected 58-year-old Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Cracow, they knew quite well they had chosen the first non-Italian to sit on the seat of Peter since 1522. What they could not know, however, was that they had elected a man destined to become a colossus on the late-20th-century international stage, a man whose moral authority was to command respect and whose tireless voice was to make itself heard far beyond the confines of the worldwide Roman Catholic family.
Like him or not, you have to acknowledge that Pope John Paul II is a towering figure. Like him or not, he is an influential and charismatic Pope whose pontificate seems certain to rank as one of the most significant in all Church history.
Now clearly old and enfeebled, his health battered by a succession of serious problems, apparently suffering from Parkinson's Disease, Pope John Paul II continues nonetheless to fulfill his evangelical mission, armed with an urgent sense of his undoubtedly enigmatic vocation. His reduced programme did not stop him visiting Croatia last weekend for a typically controversial pastoral visit (the beatification of an alleged Ustashe sympathiser, Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac), nor has it stopped him writing his 13th Encyclical, due to be released shortly, on a typically complex question - the relationship between science and faith.
His figure is as complex and at times mysterious as the issues of faith on which he is such an unapologetic teacher. There is no simple yardstick by which to assess the man. Western liberals who abhor his ultra-conservative teaching on sexual morality, priestly celibacy, divorce and abortion, who reject his ban on women priests and his condemnation of homosexuality as a sin, may well agree wholeheartedly with his calls for an end to Third World Debt, for serious curbs on the worldwide armaments industry, for social justice and for the privileged West to finally face up to its moral responsibilities to the developing world and the growing North-South, rich-poor gap. They may have been delighted when he issued a stinging condemnation of the US-Allied invasion of Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war.
Karol Wojtyla is an enigma. An arch-conservative in theological terms, he has been 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", (St Mark Ch 16, v 15).
At the last count, he has made 84 pastoral visits outside Italy, visiting 117 countries and travelling more than 1 million kilometres since 1978. In that same time, he has issued 12 Encyclicals, 11 Apostolic Exhortations, 11 Apostolic Constitutions, 81 Apostolic Letters and 84 Messages or Appeals. From President Bill Clinton to President Nelson Mandela and from President Mikhael Gorbachov to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, from the Dalai Lama to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has met with (and influenced) many of the most authoritative political and religious leaders of the day. The doors of the Holy See, he claims, are always open for dialogue.
Furthermore, his pontificate has been marked by a willingness to speak out and act in relation to social tensions or armed combat in troubled zones such as the Lebanon, former Yugoslavia, Iran and even Northern Ireland. Papal envoys have travelled to all of these places, sometimes at great personal risk and at the height of the various conflagrations. The Pope's willingness to live up to his role of "God's Politician" is further reflected in the expansion of the Vatican's diplomatic service over the past 20 years. When the Pope 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 United Nations. Currently, more than 160 countries have accredited diplomatic representation at the Vatican.
Amid all this, Pope John Paul II remains an enigma. His sympathy with and understanding of the oppressed "Church of Silence" of the former East Bloc communist regimes enabled him to play a major (perhaps indeed the major) role in the downfall of those totalitarian regimes. Yet he has never been able to extend the same sympathy and understanding to the Liberation theologians of Latin America, those priests in open conflict with repressive regimes.
Having lived his formative years under Communist repression, he has never really understood liberation theologians such as the Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez or Brazilian Leonardo Boff since he suspected them of working from a Marxist agenda. THIS pontificate has been marked by 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, this pontificate has also seen the Vatican's theological watch-dog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office), sternly reprimand such as Boff and Gutierrez, not to mention liberal European theologians such as Hans Kung. 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), the Pope tends to consider him as merely "zealous" while, as recently as 1992, he removed a reference to Romero's "martyrdom" from the agreed text of a speech to the Conference of Latin American Bishops.
The "Wojtyla Enigma" lies also in the vision of a Pope whose copious writings make constant references to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. Many critics would argue that the indications to emerge from the Council were in the direction of greater cultural and theological pluralism, of more lay participation and more dialogue, and less hierarchy in Church affairs. But despite his constant references to the Council, John Paul II has seemed to follow another path in this pontificate, reinforcing the central authority of Rome and the power and influence of the hierarchy. Under John Paul II, the Catholic Church has been many things but it has never moved in the direction of becoming a democratic institution.
Nowhere does 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) 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 comes from God, not the people.
The "Wojtyla Enigma" also relates to his pastoral role at the head of an expanding church, now a billion strong. While Western, developed-world believers imagine he has done great damage to the Church - primarily through his conservative teachings on sexual mores - they tend to forget that questions such as the ordination of women are not major issues in much of the developing world, where the majority of Catholics now live.
There are many Vatican insiders who suggest that, rather than damage the Church by flying in the face of a Western liberal agenda, John Paul II has worked a minor miracle in holding the whole vast organisation together, presiding over a period of growth and cultural expansion (especially in Africa).
When it comes to an assessment of the complex issue of ecumenical relations in this pontificate, again we are 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, are simply waiting for his death before meaningful ecumenical dialogue can resume. On the other hand, this Pope has done much to reverse the trends of 1,000-year-old anti-Semetic 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: formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican were established only in 1993.
Furthermore, he has prompted the whole process of mea culpa within the Church, resulting in a Vatican document earlier this year expressing regret for the failure of individual Catholics to live up to the tenets of their faith in combating antiSemetism in general and Nazism in particular. (Even this latter Vatican mea culpa was not without controversy since many Jews were enraged by the Pope's defence of wartime Pope Pius XII, accused by Jews of having remained silent in the face of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust).
Despite his advancing years and obvious physical frailty, the Pope refuses to accept that his mission is over. He would still dearly like to visit Moscow, Beijing and Jerusalem. He desperately wants to lead his Church into the next millennium. It could well be that this pontificate's contribution to the affairs of men and to the teaching of the Gospel has not yet ended.