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"What in the tumultuous history of the 20th century could have led anyone to predict that the most visible of its extraordinary galaxy of leaders would be the 246th bishop of Rome?" Elizabeth Fox-Genovese asks. "That amidst the generals, presidents, monarchs, and dictators, a Catholic priest might emerge as the most influential of the century's leaders?"

In a century that produced some of the world's deadliest atrocities combined with the deadening ideology of consumerism, who would have suspected that the greatest world force opposing this "culture of death" would be John Paul II? Perhaps that's why a Baptist friend told Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus, "you guys have a pope that sure knows how to pope."

To show how many non-Catholics appreciated this pope, look at the presidential response. The funerals of the two popes previous to John Paul II were attended by Jimmy Carter's wife and his mother. Nearly 30 years later, the United States has formed diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and three Presidents attended John Paul II's funeral. His influence is not just diplomatic—though John Paul visited more countries than any other pope. The most explicitly evangelical U.S. President in history is attempting to build—in the pope's all-encompassing phrase—"a culture of life."

Obituaries cover the pope's wide range of struggles—from the Nazi occupation to the Soviet occupation of Poland, to his personal struggle with Parkinson's disease. But John Paul II—or as Neuhaus believes he will be called, John Paul the Great—was more than a fighter. He was a theologian, philosopher, and poet before he became pope. Fox-Genovese notes that this pope, the first non-Italian in 455 years, was so unique partly because of his Polish past. In her review of George Weigel's Witness to Hope, she says that growing up in an independent Poland "taught him that 'the Polish experience was a metaphor for the human condition in the 20th century: the quest for freedom was a universal aspiration.'"

Karol Wojtyla worked in a limestone quarry while attending an underground seminary during Nazi occupation. During communist oppression after the end of World War II, he, in Weigel's words, "deliberately chose the power of resistance through culture, through the power of the word, in the conviction that the 'word' (and in Christian terms, the Word) is that on which the world turns." Of course, the pope's struggle was proven successful, when a decade after he left Poland, the Berlin Wall tumbled down.

The pope's fight against communism in Poland and Eastern Europe did not mean he took the side of capitalism. Fox-Genovese says, "The 'culture of death' that the pope so often deplores is the monopoly of no single political system." In fact, "Wojtyla would never have narrowed the great confrontation of the age to one between communism and democracy. A visit to the United States in 1976 left Cardinal Wojtyla 'disappointed by American culture and its tendency to dissipate freedom into shallow license.'" It was not democracy verses totalitarianism, according to the pope, but humanity's struggle between the gospel and the anti-gospel.

That is perhaps why non-Catholics appreciate the pope's poping. Neuhaus says John Paul II fought for absolute truth in a world that refuses to see beyond individual experience. "Freedom standing by itself inevitably degenerates into license. License, which is unbridled freedom, quickly becomes the enemy of freedom."

The answer, according to the pope and Protestant Christians, is the Truth. So, when John Paul II declared that not all religions are equal, he said, "We must insist on the definitive and complete character of Christ's revelation. … The theory of the limited character of the revelation of Christ, which can be complemented by other religions, is contrary to the faith of the church."

John Paul argued for the essential difference between men and women, yet he also fought against the subjugation of women. "As far as personal rights are concerned, there is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area: equality of spouses with regard to family rights and the recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic state."

And though youth loved Pope John Paul II, he continued to challenge their sexual behavior. Daniel Philpott says in a Re:generation Quarterly article following the pope's visit to St. Louis, that many commentators likened his youth rally to a rock concert. But the pope was anything but a rock star. "He speaks with a Parkinson's slur and with a Polish accent, not the cool English kind. He admonishes kids to abstain from sex until marriage, and he stoops, squints, shuffles, preaches, and moralizes like a didactic schoolmarm. But . . . 20,000 teens packed out a St. Louis concert hall and screamed for him."

Not only did young people flock to hear the pope, so did politicians, even though John Paul regularly spoke against many of those politicians' policies. "The pope's presence unsettles," Philpott says. The state of Missouri postponed an execution that had been scheduled during the pope's visit. "The governor wanted to avoid public awkwardness, for the pope . . . strongly condemned the death penalty." President Clinton and Vice President Gore met the pope during his St. Louis visit, and they heard from him his opposition to abortion.

The pope stood for truth, as revealed in God's Word and his creation. Protestants disagree with how that revelation is interpreted and applied, but we can agree on some fundamentals. Ironically, evangelicals who sometimes opposed Catholic influence decades ago, now often find themselves closer to Catholics than other Protestants who have disregarded God's specific revelation. So, no matter who the next pope is, we can pray for someone who will continue to stand for God's truth.