After 25 years, a changed papacy

In a period of religious conflict, John Paul II has also taken bold initiatives to strengthen interreligious ties, apologizing for past church actions toward Muslims and Jews. Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee credits him with doing "more to strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations than any other pope in history."

He is the first pope to visit a mosque, and his visible, persistent efforts to head off the war in Iraq, though unsuccessful, are seen as key to convincing Muslim leaders that it was not a Christian campaign against Islam.

His greatest disappointment lies in his failure to end the schism with Eastern Orthodoxy.

Not all the pope's efforts have won widespread plaudits. The church has been criticized, for example, for its successful intervention at the 1994 UN population conference to keep abortion from being considered as a family-planning method, and for its continuing rejection of contraceptive measures that could protect people from AIDS and reduce demand for abortion.

Within the Catholic Church itself, the impact of this fourth-longest pontificate in history is also mixed. The pope's personal piety, compassionate outreach, and global stature have won him tremendous affection. "This is a man who truly lives what he believes," says Marion Gaworecki, of Lynwood, N. Y. "He's renewed my faith and that of other Catholics."

He has always had a special rapport with youths, and some see evidence on Catholic campuses of growing identification with his teachings.

Sandra Yocum Mize, who teaches religion at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, says many young people are being "attracted to the challenges the pope issues - to chastity, to bring Christ into the world, to stand against abortion, to stand for the poor and against other kinds of social injustice."

Yet the church also faces serious problems, Catholics say, including the conservative-liberal split and a legacy of increasingly centralized power. The failure of church leaders, including the pope, to act swiftly to address the crisis of clergy sexual abuse and embrace the victims weakened the moral authority of the church in the eyes of many, particularly in the US. It led some Catholics to reduce or withhold contributions or even to stop attending altogether.

The pope is criticized, too, for prohibiting discussion about married priests and women's ordination, both of which have strong support from Catholics in many countries. Many Catholics say this makes no sense because of the serious lack of priests worldwide, which threatens the essence of Catholic worship, the Eucharist.

During John Paul's papacy, the number of Catholics has grown by 40 percent, from 750 million to more than 1 billion, according to church statistics. The total number of diocesan priests has gone up by only 8,000, and those in religious orders have declined.

Most serious for the future of the church, observers say, may be the fact that millions of Catholics are no longer paying attention to basic teachings, such as those on contraception, divorce, and abortion.

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