<p> He is Roman Pontiff and Polish priest, philosopher and autocrat,
sovereign, servant, aging idealist
</p>
<p>By John Elson--Reported by Greg Burke, Thomas Sancton and Wilton Wynn/Rome
and John Moody/Cracow
</p>
<p> "Behold the Slavic pope is coming, a brother of the people; He
already pours the world's balm into our breasts, And the angel
choirs sweep the throne for him, with flowers..."
</p>
<p> So wrote the Romantic-era Polish poet Juliusz Slowacki in 1848,
lines so visionary and improbable--a Pole as Supreme Pontiff!--that few, even in long-suffering Poland, believed they would
ever come true. In 1938, however, a Polish teenager would be
singled out for what would eventually be an appointment with
prophecy. In that year, Karol Wojtyla was a student--and an
actor of considerable promise--at a secondary school in the
grimy industrial town of Wadowice. As the school's prize orator,
he was asked to deliver a speech welcoming a grand visitor,
the princely Adam Sapieha, scion of a noble house and, more
important, Archbishop of nearby Cracow. Sapieha was clearly
impressed, so much so that he inquired after Wojtyla, asking
what he hoped to do with his life. The answer: the pursuit of
philology or an actor's life. "A pity," the Archbishop said
in response. But he decided to keep an eye on the charismatic
young man, for the greater glory of the church.
</p>
<p> When the spirit did call Wojtyla, however, it was not the way
Sapieha wanted. The young man had become enamored of the mystical
writings of the great Carmelite saint John of the Cross and
wanted to become a contemplative friar. Wojtyla petitioned Sapieha
three times for permission to enter a monastery; each time,
the Archbishop would hear none of it. He did not want Wojtyla
walled in as a mystical recluse. Could not the young man see
what God really wanted him to do? Wojtyla got the message. He
would become a diocesan priest, serving the people directly,
a pastor ministering to the immediate needs of the faithful
in Poland. Sapieha ordained him in 1946. And thus, it began
to come to pass...
</p>
<p> For 16 years now, Karol Wojtyla--once actor, then priest,
then Archbishop and Cardinal--has been Pope John Paul II,
the Supreme Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, leader of a church of nearly
1 billion souls. "It's curious," an Italian Archbishop once
said, "you'd think he had always been Pope." And yet to understand
the man and his papacy, one must look not only to the Vatican,
from which he issues spiritual guidelines, but also to the almost
mystical Poland he holds in his heart. Indeed, though the Pope's
corner bedroom on the third floor of the Vatican's Apostolic
Palace has a view of the baroque wonder of St. Peter's Square,
it is almost as spare as a monk's. The room contains a single
bed, two straight-backed upholstered chairs, a desk. There is
a small carpet near the bed, but otherwise the parquet floor
is bare. The walls too are unembellished except for a few souvenirs,
mostly icons. But these are eloquent by their very presence.
They are from Poland.
</p>
<p> The great paradox is that this most universal of Pontiffs, this
most traveled and most global of Popes, is, at the same time,
a loyal son of Poland. He is ever mindful of its painful legacies--repeated partition, Nazi occupation, communist oppression--and that vision suffuses his view of the church and its mission
in the world. As he told Polish journalist Jas Gawronski last
year, "I have carried with me the history, culture, experience
and language of Poland. Having lived in a country that had to
fight for its existence in the face of the aggressions of its
neighbors, I have understood what exploitation is. I put myself
immediately on the side of the poor, the disinherited, the oppressed,
the marginalized and the defenseless."
</p>
<p> To some dissident liberal Catholics, of course, John Paul's
Polish heritage is a mixed blessing. They see him as the product
of a conservative, patriarchal church, which helps explain his
increasingly autocratic and negative pronouncements on such
subjects as the ordination of women and artificial birth control.
For all his manifest charisma and personal compassion, these
critics charge, John Paul rules with an iron hand--and there
is no velvet glove to soften it.
</p>
<p> In his homeland, John Paul is still regarded as a kind of uncrowned
king. The yellow stone house where he was born in Wadowice--appropriately on Koscielna, or "Church," Street--is now a
museum that receives 180,000 visitors a year. Six families were
relocated to make way for this monument to the city's favorite
son. In the second-floor flat, Sister Magdalena, a knowledgeable
if sometimes stern tour guide, shows off memorabilia such as
the young Karol's favorite canoe paddle, his hickory skis and
the three papal robes John Paul donated as exhibits. Please
stop by the gift shop before you leave, she advises visitors.
And please do pick up a copy of the Pope's new book. When that
volume was first published in Poland this year, copies were
so scarce--the publisher had severely underestimated demand--that they were selling at double the cover price.
</p>
<p> In Italy, the Pope must plow through daily scheduled meetings
and audiences, prayers and Masses, visits to Rome's 320 parishes
and deep philosophical debates. Yet he remains intensely interested
in anything involving the church in Poland. John Paul reads
the Cracow Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny as soon as it
arrives at the Vatican. Indeed, bishops around the world have
caught on to this habit and compete fiercely to have their latest
works published in what editor Father Andrzej Bardecki calls
"our little weekly."
</p>
<p> In the past, John Paul has not hesitated to involve himself
in Polish politics, albeit surreptitiously. His friend Tadeusz
Mazowiecki, a Solidarity intellectual who was Poland's first
postcommunist Prime Minister, this month told TIME something
that church officials in the past frequently denied. After the
communist regime imposed martial law in 1981, the Pope wrote
letters of counsel to Solidarity activists interned by the communists;
priests and bishops served as couriers because they were not
subject to body searches. Said Mazowiecki: "Their robes carried
more mail than many workers in our postal service."
</p>
<p> Today a fervent Polish fealty--part feudal, fiercely loyal--attends John Paul in the Vatican. The five black-robed nuns
who cook his meals and do his laundry are members of the Servants
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is based in Cracow. More
important, one of the Pope's two secretaries--and the one
who controls all access to his boss--is Monsignor Stanislaw
Dziwisz, 55, also of Cracow. (The other secretary is not Italian,
as one might expect, but Vietnamese, Monsignor Vincent Tran
Ngoc Thu.)
</p>
<p> Utterly loyal and discreet, Dziwisz (pronounced Gee-vish) served
as Wojtyla's secretary and chaplain when the future Pope was
still Archbishop and Cardinal of Cracow. Today he is the gatekeeper:
no one--neither papal friend nor foe--comes to the Holy
Father save through the humble monsignor. Says a close papal
aide: "Whoever the Pope is, he's going to be someone who feels
very much alone. You need someone by your side, a kind of soul
mate, and that's what Don Stanislaw is."
</p>
<p> The Pope's day begins while Rome still sleeps, around 5:30,
and does not end until 11:30 p.m. By 6:15 he is in his private
chapel, praying and meditating before its altar, over which
hangs a large bronze crucifix. Within sight is a copy of Poland's
most cherished icon, the Black Virgin of Czestochowa, from whose
image Poles historically drew strength as they battled against
their oppressors.
</p>
<p> The testimony is universal that prayer, more than food or liquid,
is the sustaining force of this Pope's life. He makes decisions
"on his knees," says Monsignor Diarmuid Martin, secretary of
the Vatican's Justice and Peace Commission. Sometimes John Paul
will prostrate himself before the altar. At other times he will
sit or kneel with eyes closed, his forehead cradled in his left
hand, his face contorted intensely, as if in pain. At this time,
too, he brings to his God the prayer requests of others. His
prie-dieu, at the front center of the chapel, has a padded armrest.
It lifts up, and underneath there is a small container for a
couple of prayer books and a big stack of intentions, written
on yellow sheets. Last month the stack was 200 sheets thick,
and the one on the top had nine different names written on it,
including that of a 17-year-old Italian boy with cancer, an
Italian mother of three who was very sick and an American child.
</p>
<p> The prayers nowadays may also concern the decline of his own
health, the result of age and the lingering effects of wounds
suffered in the 1981 assassination attempt by Mehmet Ali Agca.
John Paul has written an apostolic letter on the supernatural
value of human suffering in which he teaches, "Each man, in
his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering
of Christ." Though he does not mortify his flesh with a hair
shirt--as Paul VI sometimes did--he clearly sees his own
physical ailments in this light.
</p>
<p> "The Pope's youth wasn't happy," says Father Joseph Vandrisse,
a former French missionary in the Middle East who now covers
the Vatican for the French daily Le Figaro. Wojtyla lost his
mother when he was nine, his father when he was 21, and his
only brother, a doctor, died during a scarlet-fever epidemic.
"He has meditated a lot on the meaning of suffering. Now that
he is weakened in a world that is horrified by sickness and
death, he thinks that the image of someone who is suffering
is important for the church." To the sick whom he visits, the
Pope has a request: "Pray for me. Pray for me." Still, his friend
and confidant, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger of Paris, advises
the Pope's critics not to underestimate the aging Pontiff: "This
is perhaps the most decisive moment of the whole pontificate."
</p>
<p> Every morning, before his private and general audiences, John
Paul devotes an hour or so to writing or--increasingly, as
age and injuries have taken their toll--to dictation. When
he can, he composes quickly, in Polish, with a neat, flowing
hand, using a black felt-tipped pen. On the top left of every
page he prints the letters AMDG (initials for Ad Majorem Dei
Gloriam--To the Greater Glory of God). On the top right of
the first page he inscribes Tuus Totus (All Thine), the opening
words of a short prayer to the Virgin whose text he continues
on subsequent pages. The Pope's literary output is staggering.
His letters, sermons and speeches fill nearly 150 volumes. In
addition to 10 encyclicals, two are in the works, on ecumenism
and the sanctity of life.
</p>
<p> His goal, says his spokesman and intimate adviser Joaquin Navarro-Valls,
is nothing less than the establishment of a completely Christian
alternative to the humanistic philosophies of the 20th century--Marxism, structuralism, the atheistic ideas of the post-Enlightenment.
"They were simply among the tools of the age. Wojtyla said no,
we have something new, we don't have to copy. Let us humbly
build a new sociology, a new anthropology, that is based on
something genuinely Christian." The Pope, says his spokesman,
believes he has at least laid the groundwork for this task.
</p>
<p> Thus he writes and thinks as well as discusses and debates--even through mealtimes. For the Pope, meals are occasions to
bounce ideas off friends from Poland, bureaucrats and theologians
who want to discuss policy and liturgy, young seminarians, ordinary
people who are invited for his 7 a.m. Mass and breakfast. There
is a kind of hierarchy of meals. Says Marek Skwarnicki, a Polish
journalist and papal friend: "Lunch is for bishops, dinner is
for friends."
</p>
<p> If his companions are Vatican aides, Sister Tobiana, one of
the Pope's Polish nuns-in-waiting, will serve family-style.
With guests from outside the city-state, Angelo Gugel, the chief
papal valet, dons a waiter's jacket for formal service. The
menu is Italian: pasta or antipasto, followed by a meat dish
with vegetables and salad, and either fruit with cheese or a
Polish pastry for dessert. Asked if the papal cuisine was any
good, a French Cardinal once responded: "Coming from Lyons,
that's hard for me to say--but there are a sufficient number
of calories."
</p>
<p> Yet, says Navarro, the papal spokesman and confidant: "If you
say, `Holy Father, did you enjoy your lunch?' he will say yes.
But if you ask him what he just ate, he couldn't tell you."
John Paul is often too engrossed in talk and thought to pay
attention to food. Amid intense conversation, he may push his
plate away and fiddle with the cutlery, eyes closed, while concentrating
on the speaker's words. He listens and responds. At lunch one
day, some of the Pope's advisers started talking about the violence
of the Serbs in Bosnia. The Pope interjected: "And the Croats--you think they're angels?"
</p>
<p> Fluent in eight languages, the Pope chooses his idiom to suit
his dinner companions. Says a Vatican aide: "He listens, talks
directly, asks questions, puts you at ease. After five minutes
you forget you are talking to the Pope." For visiting bishops
with problems to share, he can turn on the charm, singing and
joking--although his humor runs more to irony and good-natured
kidding. After the dissident Swiss theologian Hans Kung was
censured for a book questioning papal infallibility, John Paul
commented, without malice, "And I'm sure Kung wrote that infallibly."
</p>
<p> The Pope's reading is eclectic: philosophy, history, sociology--all in the original languages. He will take time for serious
fiction and poetry: he knows Dostoyevsky and the other great
Russians and has a special fondness for the poet Rainer Maria
Rilke. He rarely watches TV--except for a brief glance at
a soccer match--or reads a newspaper other than Cracow's weekly
Catholic paper; he relies instead on a daily summary of the
news prepared by aides to Angelo Cardinal Sodano, 67, the Vatican's
Secretary of State.
</p>
<p> Sodano is, in effect, the Pope's Prime Minister and the only
curial official with instant access to John Paul. But there
are other Cardinals the Pope confers with regularly. Every Friday
evening, the Pontiff meets with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 67,
the austere German theologian whose title is prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (once known as the
Holy Office). "Ratzinger is a theologian and John Paul is a
philosopher, but they basically see eye to eye," says a veteran
Vaticanologist. The two became friends at the Second Vatican
Council, when both were young bishops. On Saturday evenings,
the Pope has another standing appointment, with Bernardin Cardinal
Gantin, 72, of Benin, head of the Vatican's Congregation for
the Bishops, to discuss episcopal appointments. Naming heads
of dioceses is one of the Pope's most effective weapons in maintaining
doctrinal discipline within a church that he believes became
dangerously fragmented after the Second Vatican Council.
</p>
<p> John Paul also consults frequently with bishops outside Rome
whose judgment he trusts. The Pope has relied heavily for advice
on the synod of bishops that meets in Rome every three years.
He has attended all their sessions--including the most recent
ones in October--listening with his usual intensity. But there
is never a joint final communique. Indeed, the Pope may be advised,
but to the private dismay of many bishops, any decision on issues
discussed will be made by the Pope, and the Pope alone. As John
Paul once told TIME's Wilton Wynn: "It is a mistake to apply
American democratic procedures to the faith and the truth. You
cannot take a vote on the truth. You must not confuse the sensus
fidei ((sense of the faith)) with `consensus.'"
</p>
<p> As for those who do not agree? John Paul's most recent encyclical,
Veritatis splendor--The Splendor of Truth--makes it clear
that clerics and theologians are bound to a "loyal assent."
He has imposed the equivalent of ecclesiastical gag orders on
those who, he feels, have challenged church teaching, including
Kung, American moral theologian Charles Curran and Brazil's
Leonardo Boff, an exponent of Liberation Theology.
</p>
<p> John Paul's dissatisfaction with some of the church's traditional
priestly operatives--like the Jesuits, whom he perceived until
recently as becoming too liberal--has led him to encourage
lay Catholic movements such as Opus Dei. (Papal spokesman Navarro
is a member.) He has declared this controversial organization
a personal prelature, which means that it is exempt from the
jurisdiction of local bishops and reports directly to Rome.
The Pope has also given warm encouragement to a new religious
order, the Legionaries of Christ, which some conservatives see
as a replacement for the Jesuits of old. Members are in training
for up to 14 years (even longer than Jesuits) and have proved
themselves to be more personally committed to supporting the
papacy. With more than 300 priests and nearly 3,000 more in
training, the Legionaries are on track to become a major force
in the Catholic Church.
</p>
<p> John Paul can be moved to wrath--and not just over theology.
In 1985 he defrocked four Nicaraguan priests for not quitting
the Sandinista government, including Minister of Culture Ernesto
Cardenal, a Trappist monk. That same year the Pope, after returning
from his second trip to Poland, was ired by an article in L'Osservatore
