Understanding the Spirit of John Paul II

ZENIT - Observers Try to Assess His Inner Life

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor... described the Holy Father as a "man of deep prayer" who "had a conviction of God's providence running through his life... He was always the still center, who radiated the serenity that comes from a life of prayer."

Cardinal Francis George... commented: "Karol Wojtyla was a person who held the office of the papacy in a way that transformed it." In trying to account for the impact that John Paul II had on so many people, Cardinal George explained: "He was a man steeped in the tradition that unites us to Christ; he was also a man of his own time, our time, who understood contemporary experience even as he subjected it to criticisms that echoed Jesus' own criticisms of his society 2,000 years ago."

An acknowledgment of the spiritual role of John Paul II also came from Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. [He] observed that "If John Paul stood for one large thing, it was primacy of the spiritual over the material." Commentators on the Pope, Dionne noted, "will inevitably debate the meaning of his legacy in the secular terms that so dominate our times. We should try to remember that these were not the terms on which he lived his life."