Born 84 years ago in Krakow, Poland, Karol Wojtyla became in 1978 the first Slavic pope. He took the name John Paul II.

The data of his papacy stagger the mind:

- The 20th century's longest-tenured pope (26 years) - indeed he served longer than just two of his 263 predecessors, one of whom was St. Peter.

- The first pope even to enter a synagogue or mosque.

- The most traveled pope: He journeyed the equivalent of 30 times around the world, or three times to the moon.

- The most prolific pope: He gave 19,000 addresses, a heavy percentage of which he wrote; he authored dicta, bestsellers, and poetry.

- The pope who beatified and canonized more individuals than the total for all the popes during the preceding half-millennium.

Yet beyond the data, what manner of man was this Karol Wojtyla?

The first words out of his mouth to milling throngs awaiting the name of the new pope outside St. Peter's were: "Be not afraid." By several accounts he ended his papacy, and his life, with "Amen!" - the thus-it-is word, the so-be-it word, the all-encompassing "Yes!"

Prior to his papacy he had endured three evils - Nazism, communism, and a Marxist "liberation theology." With Nazism (fascism) destroyed by arms decades before, John Paul lit the spark that imploded the Soviet bloc. The collapse of communism meant necessarily the unmasking of liberation theology as the empty, secular, God-is-dead humanism that it is - and thereby a homeless beggar (one hand extended in supplication, the other clutching a badly concealed bottle) in a godly realm.

In blowing taps for communism, John Paul played in a formidable geopolitical quartet comprising Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Without their harmony, their music would have been far less compelling and The Wall - the walls - likely would not have come tumbling down. Continued...