People's pope

VATICAN CITY -- At 58, John Paul II was the youngest pope in 125 years. He brought a new vitality to the Vatican, and quickly became the most accessible modern pope, sitting down for meals with factory workers, skiing and wading into crowds to embrace the faithful.

John Paul II became pontiff in 1978 -- the "year of the three popes." His predecessor, John Paul I, had been pope only 33 days, succeeding Paul VI, who died after a 15-year reign.

No pope ever traveled so much or so far: He visited more than 120 nations during the third-longest papacy in history.

No pope delivered so many speeches: He warned in vain against wars in Iraq and the Balkans, deplored the fate of Palestinians and called for reconciliation with Jews.

And no pope celebrated so many Masses for so many of what are now the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics: his open-air ceremonies drew tens of thousands to St. Peter's Square and became a hallmark of papal visits abroad.

John Paul made an untiring effort to get to know and endear himself to all of "God's children." He sought reconciliation with the Jews -- Christianity's "older brothers" as he put it. He visited a mosque in Damascus as part of efforts to improve relations with Muslims. He called divisions among Christians "a scandal."

But to communists, he gave no quarter.

"Nazi paganism and Marxist dogma are both basically totalitarian ideologies and tend to become substitute religions," he wrote in 1989.