Superlatives are indispensable and unavoidable in considering the 25 year-old papacy of Pope John Paul II, marked yesterday in Rome and throughout the world by tributes and celebrations.
A colossal figure in spiritual and political terms, he has been the most travelled pope ever, the most ecumenical; he has been responsible for the greatest number of canonisations and, in secular terms, is arguably the single most important figure in reuniting Europe and bringing the Cold War to an end.
And yet he has attracted criticism in depth for his religious conservatism, exemplified in the judgment yesterday by Hans Küng, the Swiss Catholic theologian silenced by the Pope soon after he was elected. "This pontificate, despite its positive aspects, has proven to be a disaster for the Catholic church", according to Dr Küng, because power has been centralised so much, transforming the church into a "medieval prison" based on a scandalous personality cult. Many Catholics would echo such a view, drawing variously on the Pope's trenchant opposition to contraception, divorce, abortion and to women becoming priests.
The trouble with such assessments is that they are too unidimensional to capture Pope John Paul's extraordinarily diverse and complicated persona and achievements. Despite his doctrinal conservatism, his spiritual critique of the "soulless materialism" and the neo-liberal capitalism which has been so prevalent during his time as pope - not least in his native Poland - retains its radical edge and worldwide appeal. There are echoes of it in his homily published yesterday, in which he says "the war of the powerful against the weak has, today more than ever before, created profound divisions between rich and poor". The contemporary world is "an unjust economic system marked by significant structural inequalities" within which "the situation of the marginalised is daily becoming worse". And "if there is no hope for the poor, there will be no hope for anyone, not even for the so-called rich".
In the same way Pope John Paul's affirmation of the sanctity of life extends from his opposition to abortion to his hostility to the death penalty and war as an instrument of foreign policy. No pope has done more to repair and develop relations between Roman Catholics and Jews. He has been the first to visit a Muslim country. And as a Slav he has striven hard, if less successfully, to restore cordial relations with the Orthodox churches. In all of these endeavours he has drawn on his own experience in Poland as well as his sense of universality.
Relating such multiple dimensions so as to make greater sense of them has been his greatest achievement as a world leader. This is the case in his political and secular work as well as in his religious witness. He is therefore admired by many more people than would follow his narrowly defined doctrinal or theological views. He is one of the great world leaders of our time.