"The legacy of a pope who changed history
Apr 2nd 2005 From The Economist Global Agenda: John Paul II, spiritual leader to the world's one billion or so Catholics, has died. He will be remembered as a pope who resisted pressures to “modernise” the church's values—and a man who changed history by precipitating the fall of Soviet communism"

A considered article on the Pope's choices and actions, but what an epitaph:

"On the other hand, Pope John Paul would not have been true to his own deepest beliefs if he had been concerned, first and foremost, with how things seemed in the eyes of the world. He regarded himself as accountable to God; and how he fared by that measure is not something that any human being, whether believer or atheist, may presume to judge."