Posted on 03/06/2004 6:29:41 PM PST by yonif
ROME, March 6 Although no gilded ceremonies have been planned or grand tributes penned, Pope John Paul II is edging up on yet another milestone.
As of Sunday, March 14, he would move a notch higher on the list of the longest-reigning leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, according to the Vatican's official tabulation. John Paul would pass Leo XIII, who served from 1878 to 1903, to become No. 2 or 3, depending on the count.
Many Catholic leaders put St. Peter in the top position, attributing 35 years to him, while many scholars say that there is no reliable history on the matter and give first place to Pius IX, who preceded Leo XIII and served more than 31 years.
But whatever the rankings or methodology, the approaching milestone provides a fresh reminder, less than six months after the 25th anniversary of John Paul's election as pope, of the unusual duration and significance of his pontificate.
Scholars and Vatican officials and analysts said in recent interviews that the amount of time John Paul had spent in office had exponentially increased his effect on both the church and the papacy itself.
Most obviously, the accumulation of years has given John Paul all the more time to fashion and refashion the Vatican and the College of Cardinals to his liking, with his own loyalists, and to curry their affection, said several Vatican officials and those who study church matters.
"To a certain extent, the discussion inside the church has been replaced by devotion to the Holy Father," said Prof. Alberto Melloni, a church historian in Bologna.
Like a corporate chieftain with an atypically generous allotment of time in charge, John Paul has been able to tend more fully to what he deems important and to ignore more consistently what he does not.
"If you have a man with the charisma of John Paul II here is a man who actually sets the church along a particular line in a very clear way," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Britain.
Under John Paul's guidance, for example, the Roman Catholic Church improved its relations with Judaism. It expanded in the kind of poor, developing countries to which he frequently traveled and about which he frequently spoke.
His eloquence, evangelism and determined public visibility paved the way.
But Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor also noted that "the longevity of the reign might mean that another aspect of the approach or mission of the church may be a little tardy in coming." The example he cited was the kind of enhanced collegiality between the pope and his bishops that was extensively discussed during the Second Vatican Council.
The consequences of such a long reign can be seen in matters small and large in specific details as well as broader realities.
Many senior Vatican officials are very old, and a few are serving past the usual retirement age of 75, a situation that some Vatican officials attribute to the pope's disinclination to make big changes in what could be the final stretch. John Paul is 83 and suffers from Parkinson's disease, among other ailments.
"I think he figures, `I've relied on these people for this long; at this stage, dare I change?' " one Vatican official said.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the extremely conservative leader of the hugely influential Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is 76. He has served in his post for about 22 years.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the secretary of state, is also 76. He has served in that post for about 13 years.
Some Vatican analysts say those numbers underscore the degree to which the pope and his inner circle, ensconced for so long in Vatican City, may not fully appreciate the current quandaries and disappointments of many Roman Catholics.
As one example, these analysts cited what they described as an initially sluggish response by the Vatican to the crisis of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
"The church has become, under this pontificate, so out of touch with the modern world," said Michael Walsh, a Roman Catholic writer who teaches at the University of Notre Dame's campus in London. In addition to that, he said, "There's a sense of atrophy in the Vatican."
Several Vatican officials supported that assessment.
They said that the defining tension in the world when John Paul was installed in October 1978 was between communism and capitalism and that as a Polish pope he was keenly in tune with that conflict.
More than quarter century later, they said, the friction between Islam and the West has taken center stage, and nothing in the pope's personal biography gives him any special perspective on that. Several Vatican analysts said he did not seem to bring the same drive to that issue, either.
But these analysts and Vatican officials noted that it was difficult to determine what was attributable to the length of the pope's time in office and what was attributable to his weak health, which limits his meetings, movements and even how much and often he speaks.
Until recently, he spoke out passionately and traveled extensively, and because those traits manifested themselves over decades instead of just years, the very image and definition of the papacy has been changed.
Vatican officials and Catholic leaders said any future pope would be expected, in a way that was not the case before John Paul, to stray far from Vatican City and put himself squarely in the news spotlight.
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