Defender of the Faith

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And the world was a stage every last inch of which the Pope appeared determined to tread. Three months after his election, he boarded a plane for the Dominican Republic and Mexico on the first of scores of global pilgrimages that established the exultant rhythm of his papacy. People expected the youngest Pope in 132 years--a 58-year-old outdoorsman described by an Australian newspaper as "built like a rugby front-row forward"--to be energetic. Yet even St. Paul, the archetypal evangelist, might have wondered at John Paul's 1989, a fairly typical year, featuring stops in Madagascar, Reunion, Zambia, Malawi, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, Indonesia, East Timor and Mauritius. His visits, especially to the Third World's farthest outposts, projected a sense of a true church universal. The Pope would arrive at each destination and kiss the airport tarmac. With his square jaw, actor's timing and facility with languages, he established an electrical connection with hundreds of millions of people. "He transmits hope," explained Philadelphia Archbishop Justin Rigali. John Paul's friend Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete told PBS's Frontline in 1999, "John Paul II knows that no one reads the encyclicals of a dead Pope ... That is why he has taken to the streets. It can only last a minute, but you'd think people had 10 hours of the most intimate mystical experience. For many people, it is that one moment when they say, 'I saw another possibility in life.'"

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The Path of Pope Benedict XVI

As his travels propelled the papacy out of what had effectively been its First World ghetto, tens of thousands of believers joined the church in countries where its potential for growth is the greatest. Worldwide, there has been a 41% increase in the number of Catholics (from 757 million in 1978 to 1.09 billion in 2003). Africa has seen the most rapid growth, a 168% jump in members. Similarly, while the overall number of diocesan priests rose a mere 2.5% during the Pope's reign, that count in Africa went up 237%.

THE MYSTICAL BELIEVER

One more incident beyond John Paul's control burnished his aura as someone of more than religious prominence and, indeed, beyond mankind's lower passions. On May 13, 1981, during his weekly audience in St. Peter's Square, shots rang out, and he toppled back, his white cassock stained red. Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish rightist and a murderer who had earlier written a letter threatening to kill John Paul, was trying to follow through. The bullet passed within millimeters of a major artery and within inches of several vital organs. "Mary, my mother," John Paul gasped as he collapsed. Doctors removed part of his intestine and, over the next few days, replaced almost all his blood with transfusions.

Agca's motives remain shrouded. Italian police believed he was working at the behest of a Bulgarian government trying to satisfy a Soviet wish to be rid of Solidarity's patron. Italian journalists recently claimed to have seen East German files on Soviet involvement in a plot to kill the Pope.