Man Of The Year: Others Who Stood in the Spotlight

The Winning Ways of John Paul, Superstar

Just back from the last of his international journeys in 1979, the Pope strode to the window of his Vatican apartment and addressed the waiting crowd in the chill night air of St. Peter's Square. "As Jean-Paul Sartre says, 'You have to know when to stay home,' " John Paul II told the throng, his face creasing with the luminous smile that has become his trademark. "We have earned a good rest, both you and I."

So he had. For John Paul, a vigorous 59, his first full year in Peter's Chair had been marked by a swirl of activity, a blizzard of words and a sure sense of how to work crowds that numbered in the millions. Even in Italy, the people fondly embraced this "foreign" Pontiff as one of their own. In a supposedly secular age, he became the West's most impressive leader, and already he must be ranked as one of history's most popular Popes.

John Paul combined the talents of showbiz superstar and avuncular, if stern, pastor. Despite his unyielding stands in matters of dogma and discipline, he proved wildly popular in human terms. Everywhere, he uncompromisingly addressed the key issues troubling the Roman Catholic Church. In Puebla, Mexico, he told Latin American bishops that while the church must preach social justice, it can never accommodate theologies that are inspired as much by Marx as by Jesus. In his homeland of Poland, during the first visit by a Pope to a Communist-ruled land, he encouraged East bloc Christians to persist in their struggle for religious liberty.

In the U.S., where he became the first Pope to be received at the White House, he was an inspiring preacher of good will and compassion, but also a firm advocate of strict church discipline. Though his doctrinal positions against birth control, divorce, and married and women priests are opposed or ignored by many U.S. Catholics, his visit was still a huge success. In overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, his long-range goal was restoration of harmony between the world's 700 million Roman Catholics and the 125 million adherents of the Eastern Orthodox faith, who have been divided since the 11th century.

If anything marks the 264th Pontiff more than his magnetic appeal it is his steely determination to reassert the powers of his office after the experimentation that followed the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s. Thus, though John Paul is concerned about the growing shortage of priests, he insists that controls on their conduct must be tightened, not eased. In September he called in the superior general of the Jesuit order and demanded that its members correct "regrettable shortcomings" in discipline and faith. With John Paul's approval, the Vatican has also grown more critical of liberal theologians; last month the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared that Hans Kung of West Germany had diverged too far from church doctrine to be considered fit to teach Catholic theology.

Whatever the disputes within the church, however, John Paul is a surefire drawing card on the road. In 1980 the Pontiff can look forward to visiting the Philippines, Brazil and some of the other 23 nations that have asked him to drop in.

Under the Gloves, Solid Carborundum