The pope who changed the world

Probably every pope has the power to change the world, just as every president does. But it seems only a few of them are called to exercise that power.

Pope John Paul II changed the world.

His roots in Eastern Europe, which suffered so much in the 20th century, no doubt colored his views of power and of poverty. Growing up in Poland, the precocious boy who was known as Karol Jozef Wojtyla was an excellent student and athlete. He could have made his mark on the world in any number of different ways. But tragedy struck both his family and his country and changed the course of his life. By age 20, Wojtyla's only brother and both parents were dead, and Poland had been occupied by Hitler's Third Reich.

The future pope learned humility and compassion in those years. He watched many of his boyhood friends be sent to their deaths in concentration camps, and he reportedly helped many Jews escape as well.

What he saw of the evils of man perhaps inspired him to turn to God, and by 1942 he was studying for the priesthood. But the precocious boy was now an eclectic man - a professor of ethics, a poet and author, an avid outdoorsman, a proficient linguist.

All of these skills prepared him for the day in 1978 when he became the first non-Italian elected pope in 455 years. The Catholic Church was looking for something and someone new. At 58, John Paul II was the youngest pope in 125 years. He made it his special mission to reach out to young people, encouraging them to be emboldened by the power of Christ and walk without fear among the serpents of the world.

It seemed he was able to do that himself, and his example as a man of the cloth in godless, communist Poland no doubt inspired the cardinals to entrust him with the mantle of St. Peter. But even they must have been surprised by the power of this straight-talking man when he traveled to his homeland in 1979 and told the Polish people that God was with them. His visit was a catalyst to the creation of the Solidarity worker's union, which offered a viable alternative to the failed Communist Party and eventually brought down not just the Polish government, but also communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe and into the Soviet Union.

This alone would have cemented his place in history, but John Paul II - who died last week and will be honored by world leaders in Rome Friday - did not ever stop his energetic mission to evangelize all nations with the message of hope that Jesus first proclaimed nearly 2,000 years ago. By the end of his 26-year reign as pontiff, John Paul II had visited more than 120 nations.

Truly, he was a man of the world who envisioned a better world - and helped to bring it about.