George Weigel

While significant theological advances were made in the ecumenical dialogue with Protestants

— notably the 1999 Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation — it became clear throughout the pontificate that new, Church-dividing issues had emerged since the sixteenth century. Yet despite these frustrations, John Paul II secured the quest for Christian unity in the heart of the Catholic Church. Seeds he has planted will germinate in the third millennium.

The dialogue with Judaism saw more concrete accomplishments. After John Paul’s 1986 visit to the Synagogue of Rome, his repeated condemnations of anti-Semitism, his multiple apologies for centuries of Christian prejudice and persecution of the Jews, and his Jubilee year pilgrimage to Israel, Jews and Catholics stood on the edge of a new conversation, of a depth and range unseen for more than nineteen hundred years.

Similar conviction about the abundance of grace inspired John Paul’s endorsement of a host of lay renewal movements in the Church. These movements — Focolare, Regnum Christi, the Neo-Catechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation, among others — make some bishops and Church officials nervous; where did these movements of radical discipleship “fit” in the organisation chart? John Paul II was content to leave that question to the future. He was a Pope of surprises. French scribe André Frossard understood that when, shortly after John Paul’s election, he wired his newspaper, “This is not a Pope from Poland. This is a Pope from Galilee.” And that was the greatest surprise of all. — Beliefnet.com, concluded