VATICAN CITY, Feb 2 (AFP) - Pope John Paul II, hospitalised with breathing difficulties, has revolutionized the papacy, contributing to the collapse of communism in eastern Europe but alienating many Roman Catholics with his conservative social views.
The 84-year-old pope, who has struggled with the effects of advanced age and Parkinson's disease, was rushed to the Gemelli hospital in Rome overnight after suffering spasms of the larynx, said to be a complication of the flu.
In an interview with Vatican Radio, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls sought to reassure Catholics around the world about the pope's condition, saying he was stable and reiterating an earlier statement that "there is no reason for alarm".
It was the biggest health scare surrounding the pope since a would-be assassin's bullet just missed his heart in 1981.
The first non-Italian pope in four-and-a-half centuries, and the first from eastern Europe, Karol Wojtyla is the 263rd successor to Saint Peter as Bishop of Rome.
A warm and earthy figure, the pope has been immensely popular, imposing his own style and agenda on the papacy, eschewing the pomp that surrounded his forebears and seeking contact with ordinary people.
He has given the papacy a higher profile than it had ever had before.
He travelled to 129 countries, taking his message directly to his flock of more than one billion believers and displaying public relations skills unknown to his predecessors.
Born in a small town near Krakow, in southern Poland, the son of an army officer, on May 18, 1920, he was brought up by his father after the death of his mother when he was eight. His elder brother, a doctor, died in 1932 during an outbreak of scarlet fever.
He became a parish priest and rose steadily through the Church hierarchy until, as bishop of Krakow, he became widely known to Western ecclesiastical authorities during the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965.
When Cardinal Wojtyla was elected pope in October 1978, he was 58, a robust sportsman and a relative outsider amid the vast bureaucracy of the Holy See.
One of the pope's first foreign visits was to his native Poland. The advent of a Polish pope provided an immeasurable boost to his countrymen, and the upshot was a reinvigorated anti-communist working class movement, the birth of the communist bloc's first independent trade union, Solidarity, and the steady thaw of the communist glacier that lay over eastern Europe.
Perhaps his finest hour came when he stood before fellow Poles in 1979 and said "Do not be afraid", prompting millions to rally to the cause of Lech Walesa whose "Solidarnosc" movement was fighting to end communist rule in Poland.
In 1981 the pope was nearly killed in an assassination attempt by rightwing Turkish fanatic Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot him at close range in Saint Peter's Square. The pontiff survived after extensive surgery, but his health was badly affected thereafter.
At the same time, Church reformers, the young, and Third World congregations in the grip of a devastating AIDS epidemic became dismayed at his refusal to give ground on contraception and the use of condoms.
"For the Catholic Church, this pontificate, despite its positive aspects, has really been a disaster," said Swiss theologian Hans Kung in an interview in 2003.
"Many women have turned away from the Church because of the pope's position on contraception and the ordination of women," he added.
In the United States, high-profile scandals involving several pedophile priests shook the foundations of the Catholic Church until the Vatican belatedly sanctioned a policy of "zero tolerance" toward such behaviour.
"There is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young," John Paul said at the height of the scandals.
During two and a half decades as pope, John Paul has met virtually every significant head of state or government, from US presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to Kremlin leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, from emperor Hirohito of Japan to Queen Elizabeth of Britain, from the Israeli leadership to Arab monarchs and presidents.
Under his leadership, the Vatican opened diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993 and he was the first pope to pray in a synagogue in 1986.
But Vatican policy-making assumed an increasingly authoritarian stamp. He issued 13 encyclicals, including three on socio-economic questions, and wrote several best-selling books.
In the mid-1990s he became increasingly frail, suffering from Parkinson's disease, arthritis and other ailments.
Despite his infirmities, he continued travelling as widely as possible, making a historic visits to Cuba and embarking on a gruelling programme of events for the Church's Jubilee year in 2000.
Given his failing health, however, many felt that his trip to Switzerland -- his 103rd foreign trip -- in June 2004 would be his last. He visited Lourdes in August 2004.
His increasing frailty even led senior members of the Church to break their traditional silence and talk realistically about the possibility that the pope is approaching death.
02/02/2005 13:29 GMT - AFP