Pope John Paul II, who died today aged 84, will be remembered as one of the greatest communicators and most influential figures of modern times.
Born Karol Jozef Wojtyla on May 18th, 1920, he was a Pole who became the first non-Italian to rule the Vatican in 450 years, living to mark his silver jubilee in office on October 16th, 2003.
On March 14th, 2004 he became the third-longest-serving pontiff in history, having served 25 years and five months in office.
Dubbed "God's athlete" at the beginning of his reign in 1978, in recognition of his sporting prowess, and blessed with striking looks, he received a reception in some countries more akin to that of a global pop star.
The breakneck pace of his reign was slowed by an assassination attempt in St
Peter's Square in 1981. Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot the Pope in the stomach, was famously forgiven by his victim during a meeting in an Italian jail two years later.
He was still recovering from the first attack when a deranged former priest from Spain, Juan Fernandez Krohn, lunged at the Pope with a bayonet in Portugal. He survived that attack unscathed.
In later years the ravages of Parkinson's disease and crippling hip and knee ailments were to reduce him to a physically frail figure.
The Pope 's views on issues such as abortion and his championing of human rights, expressed with characteristic vigour and clarity, were the hallmark of his reign.
He likened the modern debates on euthanasia and abortion to the US's historic battles against racism and slavery, and also spoke out against embryonic stem-cell research and the death penalty. He was opposed to the use of birth control and ruled out the ordination of women priests not only for his lifetime but used his position as pontiff to impose a ban "sine die" - for all time.
He also reiterated the Church's uncompromising approach to homosexuality and divorce.
He put human rights at the centre of the most powerful religious institution in the world - fervently opposing Nazism, communism and the failings of capitalism during his life.
Through his support for the trade union Solidarity in Poland, he placed a high value on work and supported workers' rights.
The 1987 Papal encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern) contained harsh words for both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism. Papal speeches also questioned the morality of sanctions on Iraq, equated consumerism with fascism and criticised the American squeeze on Cuba.
John Paul II, perhaps more than the secular figures of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, was credited with helping to bring down the Iron Curtain with his high-profile visits and anti-communist stance.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, wrote later: "Everything that happened in eastern Europe would have been impossible without the presence of this pope ."
His ability to mesmerise a crowd of hundreds of thousands, and humble leaders from Fidel Castro to Ferdinand Marcos, were legendary.
On his visit to Ireland in 1979 he said mass before 1.25 million people in Dublin's Phoenix Park, while his tour of Britain in 1982 drew admiration for his deft avoidance of conflict at the time of the Falklands War.
He visited Argentina just days before the end of the conflict, lecturing the dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri on the "absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war".
As he travelled the world, the pope was careful to maintain firm control over his church. He clamped down on "liberation theologians" in Latin America and demanded discipline throughout the corridors of the Vatican.
Dogged by ill-health, he quashed speculation about whether he would step down by saying: "I leave to Christ the decision as to how and when He will release me."
His last years were marked by an iron-willed effort to see some of his long-cherished dreams fulfilled in spite of obvious physical decline. Well aware that he was moving towards the end of his life, he was desperate to promote his crusade to seek common ground between the three great monotheistic
faiths of Christianity, Islam and Judaism as he saw the Church into the Third Millennium.
His visit in 2000 to Israel, Jordan and the West Bank was preceded by a plea for forgiveness for the "past sins of the Church" including the Crusades and the Inquisition. He also asked for pardon for the Christian mistreatment of the Jews, whom he called "the people of the Covenant".
In 2001, his six-day trip to Greece, Syria and Malta saw him become the first Pontiff to enter an Islamic house of worship, when he prayed before the tomb of St John the Baptist in the Grand Ummayyid Mosque in Damascus.
His visit to Greece, and apology for the sacking of Constantinople by Catholic Venetians 797 years ago, was hailed as a bold step towards healing the 1,000-year-old breach with the Greek Orthodox Church.
He continued to travel widely in spite of a marked decline in health, including making a ninth visit to his beloved Poland last year and carrying out an exhausting visit to Canada, Guatemala and Mexico.
The poor state of his health - with the tell-tale signs of Parkinson's such as hand tremor and slurred speech - became increasingly apparent. His visit to Slovakia - his 102nd foreign pilgrimage - in September 2003 saw him wheeled about by aides on a throne-like chair.
He was seen struggling through a three-hour Mass during which an aide had to complete his farewell remarks to the crowd.
The Pope did not flinch from acknowledging that he was approaching the end of his life.
In early 2003 he told his fellow countrymen gathered in St Peter's Square in Rome that his judgment day was "drawing near".
On January 31 this year the Pope cancelled scheduled audiences due to a bout of flu, although he had continued to receive foreign visitors in recent weeks. At a special midnight New Year's Day Mass in his private chapel the ailing pontiff made several appeals to encourage international relief efforts to help
victims of the December 26th tsunami disaster.
The Pope was a stalwart opponent of the war in Iraq and in spite of his health problems, mounted a sustained diplomatic campaign of resistance to the conflict, sending envoys to Baghdad and Washington and welcoming Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Tariq Aziz, a Christian, for talks in the Vatican.
He was able to voice his anti-war stance in person to British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he met
him in a private audience in Rome in February 2003. The end of his reign appeared to be marked by increasingly uncompromising pronouncements from the Vatican.
The Vatican launched a global campaign against gay marriages, warning Catholic politicians that support of same-sex unions was "gravely immoral" and urging non-Catholics to join the offensive. The Pope had earlier warned that divorced Catholics who remarried could not receive communion.
In 2002 the Pope urged lawyers and judges not to take part in divorce cases, decrying divorce as a "festering wound" that had devastated society. His remarks applied to all divorce cases, not just those involving Roman Catholics. The indissolubility of marriage was part of the divine natural order and
applied to everyone, he said.
He also made a plea to Europeans to reject materialism and reaffirm traditional Roman Catholic family values.
At a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in October 2003 the Pope warned of "new and serious difficulties" in the path to unity between the two churches, widely interpreted as referring to the controversy over gay priests in the Anglican Church.
The end of Pope John Paul II's reign was clouded in some part by the sexual abuse scandals within the Church. He spoke of the "deep sense of sadness and shame" caused by the scandals in an address to Canadian youth last year.
"If you love Jesus, love the Church. Do not be discouraged by the sins and failings of some of her members," he said.
He also bluntly said sex abuse by priests "was rightly considered a crime by society", telling American cardinals that there was no place in religious life for abusers. "To the victims and their families wherever they may be, I express my profound sense of solidarity and concern," he said.
John Paul II's papacy was marked by the creation of a remarkable number of saints, with the tally of canonised saints higher than all of his predecessors combined since the current saint-making process began in the 16th century.
In spite of his evident failing health and his increasing frailty, the Pope was still intellectually vigorous up until the end.
The 36,000 word Fides et Ratioencyclical, published to mark his 20th anniversary as Pontiff, called for reconciliation of faith and rationality in the midst of a Christianity open to other cultures and their ideas.
He was born in 1920 to a poor family in the town of Wadowice, near Krakow. His father was a non-commissioned army officer. Tragedy came at the early age of nine when his mother died, and then an older brother died when he was 12. His father died in 1941.
His adolescent passions were theatre, literature and - famously - football. In between playing in goal for a local side as a young man, he would tour the country performing Shakespeare and Polish drama.
He studied philology - the science of language - at Krakow University and became a member of the resistance during the Nazi occupation, taking Jewish families out of the ghettos and helping them to escape the death camps, according to a friend.
Wojtyla was ordained in 1946, rapidly ascending through the Church hierarchy by first becoming a professor of moral theology and social ethics and then a bishop at the age of 38.
By 44 he was Archbishop of Krakow and he was made a cardinal two years later. But he did not expect the role chosen for him following the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978.
After being elected as a compromise candidate by his fellow cardinals in the Curia, a surprised and upset Wojtyla had to be taken aside and reminded of his duty to submit to God's edict.
Rumours have long abounded of a file kept in the depths of the Vatican chronicling miracles of healing which may one day form the basis upon which Karol Wojtyla could be elevated to the sainthood.
In the meantime, the world mourns the death of a man who helped shape events during the final century of the last millennium and defied expectations by continuing his tireless mission into the next.