On October 16, 1978 , a virtually unknown ( outside his home country and the Vatican) Polish cardinal called Karol ( Charles) Jozef Wotyla was elected as the 264th pope , on the eighth ballot as a compromise candidate. No one then could imagine that almost 27 years later, on his death , an estimated three million people from all over the world, more than two hundred heads of state and government , church leaders of all denominations and other religious leaders would flock to Rome to pay homage to him. Karol Wotyla's life was like a fairy tale story. He was born in a poor mixed Polish-Lithuanian ( Polish father and Lithuanian mother) family. As a young man he had to work as a labourer in a stone quarry and later as a worker in a factory to make ends meet. The factory job not only provided an income to young Karol but also saved him from being deported to a forced labour camp by the German occupiers of his country. Since he was a good student and a deeply religious person, he also used this time to study for the priesthood in a clandestine manner. In 1946, at the age of 26, he was ordained a priest. Thus started a life of extraordinary intellectual, religious and literary achievements, which culminated in his becoming the pope of the Roman Catholic Church .

There is no doubt that Pope John Paul II was a great man and I join the millions across the world in mourning his death. But seeing all the pomp and pageantry of the ceremony, the rituals, the trappings of power, the show of earthly wealth around the Vatican and the comings and goings of kings, presidents and prime ministers , one may wonder whether the pope was a spiritual leader, a temporal ruler or both at the same time. One may also wonder how Christianity, which was born in Asia, has come to be perceived essentially as a Western religion.

The pope has a dual role--he is both an absolute ( judicial, legislative and executive ) monarch and a spiritual leader of the Roman Catholics at the same time. Since the reunification of Italy in the nineteenth century and the subsequent loss of papal states to the new kingdom of Italy, his temporal powers have been limited to a small city-state called the Vatican ( approximately 3000 subjects) , which is located within the city of Rome. During the reign of John Paul II, the pope's role in world affairs increased many folds, because he knew how to use his position as the spiritual head of more than a thousand million Roman Catholics living in all five continents of the world. He was the first pope, who knew how to use the media to spread his universal message . He literally turned the Vatican into an effective media machine.

True, the popes had always claimed that they had a special mission and that the papacy had universal jurisdiction. The Vatican's claim to supremacy over all other Christian churches is based on the theory of Petrine primacy. This theory is founded on several carefully constructed myths -- that Peter was the Prince of the apostles, that Peter founded the Roman Church ,that he was Rome's first Pope and that according to the wishes of Jesus, Petrine primacy would pass in perpetuity to his successors, whose pronouncements would , as a consequence, be considered as infallible. The reality was quite different. There is considerable controversy over the claim that Jesus nominated any of the apostles as their prince or leader. Many historians think that he entrusted all twelve of them equally with the task of spreading Christianity. Historians also tend to agree that the Roman Church was not founded by Peter and that he was not Rome's first bishop. However, what is accepted as a historical fact is that both Peter and Paul reached martyrdom in Rome. Even today no one knows exactly where Peter was buried. But the most important reality ( not a myth) which helped the bishop of Rome to claim supremacy over others was the fact that he was the bishop of the capital of the Roman empire and therefore an important part of the most powerful temporal authority of the then world.

The term pope is derived from the Greek word pappas, which means father. In the olden days, all the bishops in Asia and Europe were called popes . Unlike the current electoral system under which the Roman pope is elected in a conclave by eligible cardinals in secret ballots, the popes in ancient times used to be elected by the clergy and the people in open elections which often used to turn violent. To give support to the Roman bishop's claim as the head of all the bishops of Christian Church, he took on the old pagan title of Summus Pontifex, who , in effect, was the head of all Roman priests and exercised enormous power in pagan Rome. If one has to identify one single factor responsible for the rapid spread of Christianity in Europe and subsequent transformation of Christianity into a dominant Western religion despite its birth in Jerusalem, in my opinion, Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in 312 AD should be identified as that factor. So great was his indirect contribution to the spread of Christianity that he was popularly known as the thirteenth apostle. A little later , Constantine transferred the capital of the empire to Constantinople thus reducing the civil authority of Rome. This move in a strange manner, instead of reducing the position of the Roman pope, increased his powers. He started claiming the old imperial title of Pontifex Maximus ( the supreme priest).

The rise of Islam in the seventh century and its rapid expansion in territories , where Christianity was the principal force until then also indirectly consolidated Rome's position in the Christian world. In Asia, all the three "patriarchates" of early Christianity -- Jerusalem , Alexandria and Antioch --(who had their own patriarchs or popes), became part of the quickly expanding Islamic empire. After the collapse of the Western Roman empire , the bishop of Rome even adopted the imperial colours -- white and red -- as symbols of Roman supremacy over other churches. Although the Roman empire disappeared many centuries ago, the Roman Church has survived to our day as successor to Rome's imperial past, hence so much pomp and pageantry at the Vatican. During the middle ages and even later, the popes intervened so actively in political , financial and military affairs that it seemed that they had abandoned the concept of papal leadership of the Christians as their spiritual leader and had opted for papal monarchy . Rapid spread of Roman Catholicism in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia because of European colonialism during the last five hundred years led to a significant increase in the total number of Catholics. Today, there are more Roman Catholics in the world than all other Christians combined. This has further strengthened the position of the pope as the head of the world's best organised religion.

Roman Catholicism , unlike any other religion in the world , has got a highly centralised power structure with a well-established hierarchy and a clear chain of command. The Pope is the maximum authority of the church and his ambassadors represent him in most capitals of the world . Under his central authority, there are bishops( who enjoy considerable local autonomy), congregations, religious orders and societies and local parishes in every Catholic community in the world, who act on his behalf. Although the pope is the visible head of the Catholic Church, he like Peter acts on behalf of Jesus , who , according to Christian tradition , was the son of God. Thus the pope, in effect, acts on behalf of God. This is the theological foundation of the Roman Catholic Church's claim to supremacy over other churches.

As mentioned before , the loss of all papal states except the area known as the Vatican to the new kingdom of Italy substantially reduced the pope's temporal powers . But in a way it increased the pope's desire to expand his sphere of influence as the absolute spiritual and moral leader of the Christendom. Pope John Paul II knew how to reach out to the young and the old. He was also successful in enlarging the scope of his pronouncements to every sphere of human activity, -- political, economic, moral ,religious etc. He felt that the world was his parish and he was its priest. Curiously most of the world leaders listened to him with respect, even though they very often did not pay heed to what he said. Will the world treat the new pope in the same manner?