John Paul II: The Greatest Christian Witness of The 20th Century

In the run up to the beatification, I think I shall do a JPII series of posts.

For starters, the ever-excellent George Weigel does "An Appreciation".  Excerpts:

When Pope John Paul II was hospitalized in February, evangelist Billy Graham praised John Paul as the greatest Christian witness of the second half of the 20th century. It was a generous comment from a man whom some might consider a contender for the title he bestowed on the pope - and it captured the truth of John Paul II's life in a singular way.

For whatever else he was - priest and bishop, teacher and author, intellectual and athlete, mystic and media star - Karol Wojtyla, whom the world knew after 1978 as Pope John Paul II, was first and foremost a radically committed Christian disciple. Everything else he did was an expression of his Christian conviction.

To the hundreds of millions of people around the world who revered him, he seemed a remarkably integrated personality; his faith was the bright cord that bound every other facet of his life and personality together. In a conversation in 1996, John Paul said to me, with reference to other biographers, "They try to understand me from outside. But I can only be understood from inside." He was a man who knew himself well...