Abstract
I. Introduction Upon the death of Pope John Paul II, United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan commented: "Quite apart from his role as spiritual guide to more than a billion men, women and children, he was a tireless advocate of peace, a true pioneer in interfaith dialogue and a strong force for critical self-evaluation by the Church itself." 1 In so describing the late Pope's inspired advocacy for human dignity, the General Secretary put it exactly backwards. Our late Pontiff engaged the world, and provoked the world in turn to engage with the Catholic Church and its teachings, not "quite apart from his role as spiritual guide," but quite precisely because of it. John Paul, the Vicar of Christ and heir to Peter in the Apostolic Succession, and John Paul, the social activist and political statesman, were always and inextricably one and the same. When John Paul II was consecrated as Bishop for the See of St. Peter nearly thirty years ago, political and legal scholars and commentators in the United States were about to enter into a vitally important intellectual debate on the proper place and appropriate comportment of religious voices in the public square. As that scholarly debate unfolded, John Paul offered through his papacy the model case example for the religious witness in public life. Over the past quarter-century, he left a broad and meaningful legacy of social action with his catalytic role in bringing about the fall of communism, especially in ...