Garth George: With a heart full of love, this man changed the world

The death of any internationally known personality invariably attracts media attention and Pope John Paul II's has been no exception.

But in this secular and allegedly "post-Christian" world the extent of the media coverage - hours of television time and square metres of newspaper space - accorded the death of the pontiff left me perplexed.

I cannot think of the death of any world leader which has ever received such intense and prolonged media coverage, in this country anyway, and I am persuaded that it would not be accorded to any - save, perhaps, Queen Elizabeth II - certainly not the likes of George Bush (supposedly the most powerful man in the world) or any other head of state or church leader.

As the media feast has gone on and on I have had to ask myself why the passing of this man, simply the head of one of the world's biggest churches, has received and continues to receive such intense coverage from media which have over the years often been highly critical of him and quick to denigrate some of his actions and pronouncements.

Almost every journalist who has been writing or talking about John Paul II uses the word "charismatic". Damian Thompson, writing in London's Daily Telegraph, is typical: "The late Pope's charisma was so overpowering that people felt giddy in his presence." And: " ... the impact of John Paul can be largely attributed to the spread of his personal radiance to every corner of the globe ..."

It has come to me that what these secular journalists are describing as "charisma" and "radiance" was, in fact, Christlikeness, characterised by his genuine, deep and abiding humility and his overpowering and utterly unconditional love for mankind.

What the world of the 20th and 21st century saw in John Paul is what the world of the first century saw in Jesus Christ and his apostles - the manifestation of the Holy Spirit to whom they were wholly committed and unquestioningly obedient.

Wherever Jesus went the crowds turned out in their thousands. Few were believers; most were ordinary people attracted by Jesus' spiritual aura, that which today we would describe, inadequately to be sure, as "charisma" or "radiance".

So it was with John Paul II. Wherever he went those thousands who flocked to see him, many of them non-believers, were left in some, probably indefinable, way deeply affected and sometimes their hearts and lives were profoundly changed.

That is what God's love does to people. The 19th-century scientist and theologian, Henry Drummond, in a sermon on the 13th chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, known as the "love chapter", defines it.

St Paul, says Drummond, "passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements.

"The spectrum of Love has nine ingredients: patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness and sincerity." These things, says Drummond, "make up the supreme gift, the stature of perfect man.

"You will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known today and the near tomorrow, and not to the unknown eternity.

"We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on Earth.

"Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world.

"The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which made up the sum of every common day."

Later in his sermon, entitled The Greatest Thing In the World (which is still available in most Christian bookshops) Drummond wrote: "Where Love is God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God. God is Love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculations, without procrastination, love.

"Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we do the least of all."

That is what Pope John Paul did. He radiated God's love wherever he went, to everyone who came into or near his presence - male and female, old and young, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, agnostic and atheist.

There will be many who will be unable to understand what I'm talking about because they can see the late Pope only in temporal terms, as the leader who held the line on such vexed questions as priestly celibacy, the role of women in the church, contraception, abortion, homosexuality and human genetic manipulation.

But, fortunately, those things are not what John Paul 11 will be remembered for. He will be remembered as a man (for he was just a man after all) who was so filled with God's love and so willing to share it that, as did his master, Jesus Christ, he changed the world and left it a better place.

That is why the secular media's eulogies are going on and on. And the grand irony is that all but a handful of their practitioners don't even know it.