The death of John Paul II, coming as it does in a season when a world war is being waged against Islamic extremist terrorism, reminds us of the positive, even heroic role that a religious leader – and a religious institution – can play in the struggle for freedom and democracy. The life of Karol Wojtyla illuminated this fact most famously by his heroism in struggle against Soviet communism, in which he emerged in the climactic and victorious years as one of the handful of giants, alongside President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher, Lane Kirkland, and a few others.

The man who became John Paul II had learned about the evil of communism the hard way, in his native Poland, and he understood that the evil of communism sprang from its atheistic dogma. We do not suggest that all unbelievers are evil. But when the dogma of atheism is enforced by the state, freedom is impossible. John Paul II grasped, in other words, what Washington understood – that national morality cannot prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is hard to think of any one who pressed this point more heroically than John Paul II in the loneliest years of a long twilight struggle.

This was not always the case with those who occupy the throne of Saint Peter, and the record of the Catholic Church during the global struggle that preceded the Cold War – we speak of that against the Nazi reich – fell, by the best of accounts, far short. But during the years of John Paul II’s accession, a remarkable inversion took place. One of the achievements of his life is that suddenly, the secular institutions – not always, but in many situations – fell out of the lead. And years hence, when people are writing about the Cold War the way they have written about World War II, they will be asking not “where was Rome?” but “where were the others?”

The very fact of the death of John Paul II is a reminder of that all popes are mortal and human. And there are those of us who, in the past several years, were disappointed at the fact that the leader of the church who stood so fast for liberty during the Cold War hung back a bit as the battle was joined in Iraq. But as we reflect on this we are prepared to consider that John Paul II could reasonably have seen himself as above that fray and wanting to avoid casting an evangelical light on a war that was already fraught with religious heat. In any event, even with his reluctance on Iraq, his life looms large over the battlefield.

Reading over the weekend the coverage of the death of the pope one could not help but be struck with the degree to which many suggest the pope was out of touch with modernity, particularly in respect of such matters as birth control, homosexual relations, the role of women in the church, abortion, and end-of-life issues. We don’t seek here to sort out the particulars of any of these controversies, in which we recognize that many sincere and decent persons differ. But we have been struck in recent years with the enduring nature of religious law – and John Paul II has reasserted its relevancy to the global debate.

John Paul II acceded to the throne of Saint Peter at a time when liberation theology and other streams of theological liberalism were on the march. He was both canny and principled in the way in which he steered the leadership back toward more fundamental teachings while remaining open to the yearnings in many of the poorest parts of the globe. It can’t be a coincidence that by the closing years of his papacy the numbers of his followers were swelling in precisely those parts of the globe where liberation theology once sought to cloud the light of Sinai with the fog of Marx and Engels.

It’s too soon, of course, to say who will succeed John Paul II, but it’s not too soon to observe, as the cardinals gather for their meeting in Rome, that there is a far greater chance than ever before that the leader of the billion followers of the Roman Catholic church will be a person of color or from an archdiocese outside of Europe altogether – from Africa, say, or Latin America, or Asia. One doesn’t have to be a Catholic or even a Christian to marvel at, and celebrate, this fact. Or to honor the extraordinary individual who during his years at the Vatican has been such a towering figure in the struggle for a better world for millions of all faiths.