With sagans of words being written and broadcast about the death of John Paul II, there’s not too much to add. So here’s just a little.

Was he the last European Pope?

Brazil has 137.5 million Catholics, Mexico 89 million, the Philippines 61 million and the United States 58 million. The Europe appears with 55 million in Italy. The Catholic hierarchy is, famously, not a democracy, but the laity’s center of gravity is firmly in the New World, and its fastest growth is coming in Africa and Asia. Europe doesn’t much figure.

Josh Marshall succinctly describes why so many are even writing about this latest Bishop of Rome, and what the office looked like before Karol Wojtyla took it up:

[B]efore John Paul II, the Pope was a much more, well ? parochial figure than he has been in the decades since.

The Pope didn?t travel around the world. He was always an Italian. And he was far less involved in the ecumenical work that played such a role in John Paul?s pontificate.

The job is clearly different now, and John Paul II made it so.
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