WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- The pope is dead.
The announcement of the pope's death, though expected, left millions of Catholics around the world in grief. The statement, delivered by the Vatican's spokesman Joaquin Navaro Valls, said "the Holy Father died this evening at 9.37 pm local time in Rome (2:37 EST) in his private apartment in the Vatican."
He was 84.
For more than one reason Pope John Paul II will be remembered as one of the great popes. He will also, most certainly, be remembered as one of the more politicized popes who helped shape the course of modern history.
He will enter history books as one of the Catholic Church's more conservative popes, something for which many Catholics have criticized him.
John Paul II tried to impose his conservative views regarding a number of major issues, among them, sexual morality and the all-male, celibate priesthood on the world's more than 1 billion Catholics. He opposed, and spoke out against the use of condoms, even though medical and political authorities -- particularly in the developing world -- tried to encourage their use in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Some have accused him of trying to backtrack on earlier Vatican reforms.
John Paul Ii will be remembered as the first Polish pope; he will be remembered as the first non-Italian pope in 455 years; and he will be remembered as the first pope to break with rigid Vatican traditions by taking his papacy to the world. He will be recalled as a pope who went to the people.
John Paul's papacy was a constant road show. Despite his fragile health and his age, the man who became Pope John Paul II was a man who never tired. Since becoming pontiff, he made 104 pastoral visits outside Italy and 146 within the country. As Rome's bishop he visited nearly every parish -- 317 of 333.
During World War II, he worked in a quarry and then a chemical factory to avoid deportation to Nazi Germany. He began studying for the priesthood in 1942, was ordained in 1946 and eventually rose to become archbishop of Krakow in 1964 and cardinal in 1967, and was elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978.
It can safely be said that as pope, John Paul II played a major role in bringing about the demise of communism.
In 1935 then French foreign minister Pierre Laval approached Soviet dictator Josef Stalin asking him to liberalize his views on religion, hoping to appease the church, which in turn would give the French government support from the pope. Stalin was reported to have responded, "The pope! How many divisions has he got?" The fact that this pope did not have military divisions under his command did not stop him from defeating communism.
Less than a year after being elected to the papacy, on June 2, 1979, the pope made his first visit back to his native Poland, then still under communist rule. In a landmark speech the pope told his fellow Poles, "Do not be afraid."
Analysts believe this was the trigger that encouraged mass resistance to communism and that began the unraveling of communist rule across Eastern Europe, eventually bringing down the Berlin Wall, reuniting the two Germanys and putting an end to Soviet domination over much of eastern Europe.
Polish police who were given orders to prevent Warsaw residents from reaching the site where the pope was to celebrate mass, instead helped broadcast his speech through loud-hailers mounted on their patrol cars.
In 1983, Pope John Paul visited Poland for a second time in defiance of martial law imposed by the pro-Moscow regime.
Two years earlier, on May 13, 1981, John Paul became the target of an assassination attempt when Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish national fired three shots at the pontiff in St. Peter's Square. The pope was hit in the abdomen, the left hand and the right arm. The pope was administered the last rites and rushed to hospital.
It is widely believed that the gunman, Agca, was acting under orders of the Bulgarian intelligence service, who in turn was most likely following directives from the Soviet KGB. The Soviets were beginning to feel the pressure from the Vatican. The pope later met with his would be killer, though details of the encounter in an Italian jail cell were never made public.
John Paul was also the first pope to reach out to other faiths. He became the first pope to enter a Jewish house of worship when he made an unannounced visit to Rome's main synagogue and joined Rabbi Elio Toaff in prayer. His actions helped bridge centuries of disaccord between the two faiths.
The pope also made history as the first pope to ever visit a mosque when he visited the Syrian capital, Damascus, in 2001.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement, "Muslims worldwide respected Pope John Paul II as an advocate for justice and human rights. His message of international peace and interfaith reconciliation is one that will reverberate for decades to come."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said of the pope "he dedicated his life and vocation as instruments of peace throughout the world. His was a constant voice for justice, nonviolence, and reconciliation for both individuals and nations."
Pope John Paul was born Karol Jozef Wojtyla near Kracow, Poland, on May 18, 1920, the second of two sons born to Karol Wojtyla and Emilia Kaczorowska.
