Essay: John Paul II, Kitchen Pope, Warrior Pope

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The modern Roman Catholic Church has been shaped by two men: Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, and Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II. The enormous changes that have swept Catholicism over the past 36 years cannot be understood without grasping the characters, beliefs and work of these two men -- both great Popes but very different Popes. John XXIII, TIME's 1962 Man of the Year, was nearly 77 when he came to the throne of St. Peter, and his reign lasted less than five years, from 1958 to 1963. John Paul II was by papal standards a comparatively young man when he was elected in 1978 -- only 58, making him the youngest Pope in 132 years. He has already reigned a decade and a half and, despite his recent physical troubles, is making plans into the 21st century.

The opportunities to reshape the church enjoyed by these two men were thus conditioned by quite different time spans. Nonetheless, their main achievements -- John's in introducing the Catholic reformation and John Paul's in terminating it -- are similarly weighty. It is also vital to grasp that despite their huge differences in character and temperament, the two men have much in common.

Roncalli was born in the first ridge of mountains east of Lake Como, and looked to the great Renaissance city of Bergamo, not Rome, as his capital. He thought of himself all his life as Bergamese. Donizetti was his favorite composer; he got another Bergamese, Giacomo Manzu, to design one of the great bronze doors of St. Peter's, and he liked to surround himself, as Pope, with Bergamese clergy.

Wojtyla is another mountaineer, from the Carpathian foothills near Cracow. This splendid medieval and Renaissance city, with its ancient Jagiellonian University -- which Wojtyla attended -- was the center of his youthful universe. Warsaw, the modern capital of Poland, meant little to him, and the summit of his clerical ambition was reached when he became Cardinal-Archbishop of Cracow. As Pope, he is a Pole, as Roncalli was an Italian. But both men, as instinctive regionalists, have repudiated modern nationalism and have tended to see Europe as an amalgam of historic regions -- a microcosm of a world of peoples rather than of nations. A regionalist finds it much easier to develop true internationalism than a nationalist, and this is one reason why both men were at ease as head of a global organization, speaking urbi et orbi -- to the city and to the world.

Both men were by temperament religious traditionalists. It is true that Pope John under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit (this is the only way I can rationalize his decision to summon the Second Vatican Council) was capable of making startling and creative decisions. But his family background, training and career were totally unadventurous. He was steeped in old-style Catholicism. This made him, like the famous 19th century reformer W.E. Gladstone, a "conservative in everything but essentials." His spiritual diary reflects an almost childish simplicity in his devotions. The rosary was hardly ever out of his hands.