Some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. In the case of Karol Josef Wojtyla born 1920 in a small village of Poland there was no question of being born great. His father was a soldier-cum-tailor and mother a school teacher. Whether he achieved greatness or it was thrust upon him is debatable. He grew up to be a priest and would have passed his life as one of the many thousands of votaries of God. However he happened to get elected as head of the Catholic Church in 1978 and greatness was thrust upon him as Pope John Paul II. It is another matter that he acquitted himself creditably in his assignment.
The ceremony which anoints a priest to assume the office of Pope is called coronation. And rightly so because he becomes the monarch of the state of Vatican, one of the smallest in the world-territory wise - but immensely rich and powerful. The Pope commands allegiance of over one billion Catholics in the world. He is the lord and master of the religious realm and his word is law.
The deceased Pope John Paul II was the longest ruling (1978 to 2005) Pope in the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church. He also had the distinction of being an outsider in the hierarchy as he happened to be from Poland. Apart form his qualifications as a religious scholar of distinction, he had educational background in the subjects of art, literature, philosophy and politics at university level.
In his young days he was an athlete, actor and a poet. Later he excelled as an orator, author, philosopher and a politician. Thus equipped he excelled in his duties and responsibilities shepherding his flock in the changing times when science, technology and material pursuits held sway over faith.
As the Holy Father he personified belief in God and the tenets of religion to enhance, strengthen and fortify the faith of his followers. He stuck to the fundamentals, but preached without stern rigidity of fire and brimstones. On the contrary he made allowance for human weakness and did not come down hard on those who erred and strayed. He travelled all over the world with the message of peace and goodness.
He genuinely respected other religions and was the first Pope to remove the repugnance of the Christian world towards the Jews. He paid homage to Islam as a great and good religion and condemned the crusades as also the present day conflicts. In Pakistan Christians are a minuscule minority but when touring Asia on way to Philippines he visited Pakistan in 1981 when a fundamentalist like General Zia-ul-Haq was head of the state.
When Mahmet Ai Agca a Turkish Muslim, made an assassination attempt, the Pope was seriously wounded but survived to call on the jailed young man to forgive him for the crime. It is difficult to believe that an unknown individual took tremendous risk on his own to kill Pope in St. Peters his extremely well guarded home. Many stories are therefore going around about USSR and particularly Andropove of KGB having masterminded the plot to eliminate the leader of the Chritistian world considered responsible for driving the first nail in the coffin of communism.
There is no doubt that it was Karol Wojtyla who prompted Poles to revolt against Soviet tyrannical control of their country, which spelled the beginning of the end of the ungodly communist empire. It is customary to use hyperbole while paying tribute on the death of a distinguished personality.
However in case of Pope John Paul II the praises showered upon him are well deserved. The very fact that his funeral was attended by 2 million (including 200 heads of states) and watched by 2 Billion on T. V. is the testimony to his popularity and greatness. There are cynics who differ and question his role in the downfall of communism and criticise his laxity in the governance of the Catholic Church but such people are in minority.
The fact remains that he has left behind a legacy of great achievements which would be difficult to emulate by Popes to succeed him in the future. In the background of the sanctity and gravity of the obituary I hope it would not be irreverent on my part to narrate a joke which I consider pertinent. Karol Wojtyla was very fond of driving but as Pope John Paul II he was not allowed to have the pleasure.
Once in the middle of the night he sneaked out of Vatican, sat at the wheel of a Mercedes and drove into the city of Rome. In his excitement he started speeding and was stopped by a traffic constable who approached the window to issue a ticket but was taken aback to see that it was His Holiness himself. When relating the incident later at the station to his colleagues he was asked who was in the back seat? He replied, "It was dark and I could not see. But if Pope was the Chauffeur, who else could have been the passenger, but God".