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This is speaking of faith, conversation about belief, meaning ethics, and ideas. I'm Christa

Tippet. Today, the religious legacy of John Paul II, who has died at the age of 84 after 26 years

as Pontiff. On October 16, 1978, a thin line of white smoke rose from Saint Peter's Square in Rome,

signalling the election of Cardinal Carole Whiteua as the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Pope is the spiritual head and chief pastor of over 1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide.

He is the Bishop of Rome, and according to Roman Catholic doctrine, a direct successor of the

Apostle Peter, which links his authority to the earliest Christians. In the aromatic language

that Jesus spoke, the name Peter is identical with the word rock, and it was to Peter that in the

gospel of Matthew, Jesus proclaimed, upon this rock, I will build my church. John Paul II assumed

his role at a dynamic moment in the life of the church and the world. The Second Vatican Council

had ended 13 years earlier, and the church was just beginning to grapple with many of the changes

the council had set in motion. Then, just a decade into his papacy, this former archbishop of

Croco became a symbol of the astonishing fall of communism. In the 1990s, the East-West

divisions of the Cold War receded, but globalization rapidly brought into focus what began to be called

the North-South divide, economic disparities between industrialized and developing societies.

Church teachings clashed increasingly with profound changes in the United States and Europe,

concerning the family, the role of women, and medical technologies. Pope John Paul II expanded

what became known as a consistent ethic of life, linking issues of genetics, abortion,

...