A human pope with the common touch
changed the face of history by
reaching out to people across the world

The Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican are international by their very nature. They have always been a force to be reckoned with but John Paul II changed that global role in a way that no one could have predicted at the start of his pontificate. As an ambassador alone, he did more than any other head of state or religion. There have been more than 100 visits to over 130 countries. Speaking eight languages (he learnt Spanish after his election), he was also able to present his message directly to more people than any other religious or political leader. Beyond the spoken language, he was an expert in getting his message across. Where John XXIII surprised Rome and captivated the world with his spontaneous gestures, Karol Wojtyla was a master of the modern mass media techniques. He used television, radio, print and the internet not only in a way that no previous pope had done but better than most secular leaders. When he kissed the ground at the beginning of a pastoral visit, it became a trademark; above all, both here in Rome and abroad, he was a pope who was human, who actually touched and embraced the faithful who came to him and did not just give them his ring to kiss.

His first and most striking foreign policy was towards his native Poland. As bishop of Krakow, he was a focus for opposition to the government. Within a few months of his election, in June 1979, he was back in Poland providing a massively greater opportunity for Poles to declare their faith and, not so implicitly, their dissatisfaction with their government. Less visible but equally important was his moral and financial support for Solidarity, Poland's first independent trade union under communist rule, and other opposition movements.

Nearly 20 years later, in 1998, he went to Cuba, calming Fidel Castro and charming the Cubans and, as in Poland, using "soft power" in laying foundations for his own version of change.

Sometimes his foreign policies looked contradictory. There were criticisms of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile during his visit in 1987, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, which some maintain encouraged the opposition movements which finally overthrew the dictators. These are Catholic countries where his word carried more weight than elsewhere but on other occasions when people who professed themselves to be Catholic were committing terrible crimes, John Paul II was less than explicit in his condemnation. In Northern Ireland, in Croatia and above all, in Rwanda, there was no threat of excommunication of the men and women of violence.

He spoke much of the importance of human rights but criticised liberation theology. He identified "humanitarian intervention" as a moral duty at an address to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1992 but did not define that "duty".

John Paul II reached out to other world religions, hosting ecumenical gatherings at Assisi and visiting the synagogue in Rome. He or his senior bishops made some apologies for the crimes committed against Jews and native peoples in the Americas, Africa and Asia. However, official statements reiterated Roman Catholicism as the only way to truth and salvation, implying that other Christian denominations and other religions were therefore not true.

From the beginning of the build-up to the American-led invasion of Iraq, John Paul II made his opposition to a military solution clear. He was trying to protect the interests of the small and declining Iraqi Christian community, which could ill afford instability and accentuation of religious divisions in the country. He was also using a suit that the Church is strongest in, diplomacy and negotiation. When Joseph Stalin sneered "how many divisions does the pope have?" he was pointing out the Vatican's manifest lack of military strength, but only 70 years later, the papacy is stronger than ever while Stalin's regime changed, then crumbled, and his successor's divisions are somewhat rusty and moth-eaten. In 2003, the flurry of Vatican diplomacy, here in Rome, in Baghdad, in Washington and at the United Nations, did not prevent the war but it showed the Church's position on the world stage.

Despite his fight against communism, John Paul II was a long way from being an unfettered free marketeer. Even in the 1980s when they were on the same side against the east, the pope was never a fan of the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the American president, Ronald Reagan. He was always critical of growing economic imbalance among the nations of the world and cautious about globalisation. During his first triumphal visit to the United States in 1979, he warned his hosts about the dangers of materialism, selfishness and secularism, and suggested lowering the standard of living and sharing the wealth with the third world. In 2003 he said "there can be little doubt of the need for guidelines that will place globalisation at the service of authentic human development."

As one of his biographers, George Weigel, has said: "The pope's impact demonstrates that non-state actors count in contemporary world politics, and sometimes in decisive ways. John Paul II did not shape the history of our times as the sovereign of the Vatican City micro-state, but as the Bishop of Rome and the universal pastor of the Catholic Church."

It will be a hard act to follow and the Vatican's position on the world stage is very different today thanks to Karol Wojtyla.