Word: xxiii
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...modern Roman Catholic Church has been shaped by two men: Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, and Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II. The enormous changes that have swept Catholicism over the past 36 years cannot be understood without grasping the characters, beliefs and work of these two men -- both great Popes but very different Popes. John XXIII, TIME's 1962 Man of the Year, was nearly 77 when he came to the throne of St. Peter, and his reign lasted less than five years, from 1958 to 1963. John Paul II was by papal standards a comparatively young man when...
John Paul II has never repudiated the legacy of John XXIII. On the contrary, no senior prelate had taken more pains to implement the decisions of Vatican II in his archdiocese than Wojtyla. Moreover, he had worked very closely with Paul VI, to whose memory he has remained conspicuously loyal, in trying to enforce what the council had actually decided, as opposed to what the ultraliberals claimed it had decided. But coming as he did from a church that had been notably successful in maintaining congregations, recruiting clergy, building churches and enforcing discipline, he was appalled by what was happening...
What John Paul proceeded to do amounted to a restoration of the church on the scale of that carried out by the Council of Trent in the 16th century but in this case put through by the willpower of a single personality. Unlike John XXIII, who had led a sheltered life in seminaries and nunciatures, John Paul was a man of the world who had suffered under Nazism and communism. He was a philosopher, poet and dramatist, but also a very experienced fund raiser and administrator. His pastoral experience was determinative. In Poland he had founded and run perhaps...
...light of eternity, the work of John XXIII and of John Paul II is of comparable importance. Both men will be treated by history as great Popes. John has a more humane face, in some ways a more attractive face: a Pope for the home and the fireside and joyous festivals of the church. John Paul is a Pope for the public forum, for the vast congregation and the open battlefield, where the forces of Christianity fight for survival in an often hostile world. He is an intellectual Pope and a warrior Pope. But he is also, and increasingly...
Essay: John Paul II and the legacy of John XXIII...