"The Pope is the symbol of reconciliation and understanding and in few places is that message as important and necessary as in Sarajevo."
Carl Bildt, international community High Representative in Bosnia, on the eve of the Pope's visit to Sarajevo in April 1997
"It was a very good discussion. I found that we were talking to each other in a very open way and from both points of view, I think, we found it a fruitful and interesting discussion. We were on the same wavelength on many issues . . ."
President Mary Robinson, after an audience in March 1977 with the Pope
"The events of the summer of 1980 in Poland went beyond the limits separating religion from politics . . . Perhaps the Holy See itself does not fully realise what strength it possesses."
Andrei Gromyko, long serving USSR Foreign Minister, who met the Pope in 1979 and 1985
"Lolek, don't let anyone get you down."
Lolek is the Pope's nickname: this was shouted to him by an former fellow worker from a chemical plant, during his episcopal ordination in Poland.
"On the brink of a new millennium, convinced he has a providential mission to lead the Church into the 21st century, the 261st successor of St Peter commands a papacy whose credibility has been damaged in some quarters by its recurrent hostility to modern opinion and modern mores, yet it has a spiritual status and prestige greater than at any time since the high Middle Ages."
Prof Eamon Duffy, College of St Mary Magdalene, Cambridge
"Long time residence in Rome, under three Popes, and growing familiarity with the Vatican and with Karol Wojtyla and his retinue during their worldwide peregrinations, have left me simultaneously fascinated and appalled by his Universal Church."
Resident BBC Vatican expert David Willey
"I grew up there (Poland) and therefore have brought with me the history, the culture, the experience and the language of Poland. Even now when I write something, I write it in Polish. Having lived in a country which had to struggle for its freedom, in a country vulnerable to the aggression and dictates of its neighbours, I have been led to sympathise with the plight of the countries of the developing world . . . I have understood what exploitation is, and I have sided unequivocally with the poor, with the disinherited, the oppressed, the marginalised and the defenceless."
Pope John Paul II in a rare interview with an Italian newspaper, La Stampa, in November 1993
"While exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a representative democracy, moral teaching cannot depend upon respect for a process; indeed, it is no way established by following the rules and deliberative principles typical of a democracy." Pope John Paul II in the Encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, one of the key documents of his pontificate.