VATICAN CITY - During his 26 years as pope, the third-longest reign in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II has travelled more, created more new saints, and apologised more than any of his predecessors.
The first pope was Saint Peter, who the church believes led the first followers of Jesus for up to 37 years before being crucified in Rome.
Since then, only Pius IX has ruled for more than 30 years, from June 1846 to February 1878.
Only 13 popes have reigned for more than 20 years and John Paul II passed Leon XIII's 25 year, five month tenure, between 1846 and 1878, to become the third longest reigning pope in history in March 2004.
Karol Wojtyla, the first non-Italian pope, was elected to the papacy on October 16, 1978.
Since the first of his 104 foreign visits to date, to Mexico in 1979, the globetrotting pope has visited 129 countries, covering more than a million miles, or 31 times the earth's circumference.
In all, he has spent more than two years and eight months on the move, away from the Vatican.
He has been one of the most public personalities in history.
Orazio Petrosillo, an Italian theologian and journalist, estimates that around 400 million people have met the pope in the Vatican and on his travels.
He is also the Catholic Church's most prolific saint-maker, having canonising nearly 500, more than all his predecessors put together. He also beatified more than 1,300, including Mother of Teresa of Calcutta in a ceremony at the Vatican only six years after her death.
The pope has also elevated the living in unprecedented numbers, creating more cardinals and bishops than his predecessors. He has created 201 cardinals and has personally appointed 144 of the 183 current members of the college of cardinals, of whom 119 are papal electors below the age of 80.
He has also apologised more than any of his predecessors.
At the beginning of the new millennium, the pope made a sweeping apology for sins and errors committed during its 2,000 years of existence, implicitly invoking the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.
He later also apologised to the sex-abuse victims of priests, and to China for the excesses through recent centuries of Catholic missionaries in that country.
04/02/2005 21:38 GMT