The following is by George Weigel, author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, and may have appeared in Newsweek magazine.
During the three and a half years I was in regular conversation with John Paul II while writing his biography, I was struck by the intensity of his friendships and by their endurance. Once you were Wojtyla's friend, you were his friend for life, and he worked hard to keep his friendships green. He also shared his friends with others, encouraging me, for example, to dig into the relationships with young laymen and women that he had formed in the 1950s and that had decisively shaped his vision of the priesthood. Other popes, asked about their earliest priestly experiences, would have talked about their first days teaching in a seminary or their years at the Accademia, the exclusive Roman school for the Vatican's diplomats. John Paul II talked about his lay friends in Cracow, their treks into the mountains south of the city or their kayaking trips along Poland's rivers. It was a telling difference.
Also, from the same article, sent to me (without attribution—shame, shame— by a friend):
By the conventions of his time, the intensity of his Christian conviction should have made him a sectarian, even a dangerous man. To his mind, however, it was precisely his Christian faith and his discipleship that required him to be in dialogue with everyone. Everyone was of inestimable value, and everything was of interest, because God had entered history in Jesus of Nazareth, supercharging the world and humanity with a grandeur beyond imagining.Posted by ronlusk at April 27, 2005 01:52 PM