A man who embodied the "culture of life," the late Pope also deserves another response to Sullivan's misguided comments below:

1. Our body is a gift from above.
2. God never gives us more than we can handle. "Suffering" is a relative term, and for the Pope, he never viewed himself suffering. He even found enough forgiveness in his life to actually meet--and forgive--the man who tried to kill him.
3. If Sullivan's opinion was held during Christ's time, there would have been no Easter. People would have given Christ up for dead long before.
4. People masquerade their disrespect for the bodies they were given behind comments about scientific knowledge, defining life in terms of "trimesters" with legal coverage for abortions, or "vegetative state" to give up on another. One gal told me Schiavo should die because she was of "low cognitive function" and being "force fed" -- funny doesn't that define an infant, too?
5. The Pope's role in the fall of Communism remains one of the most underrated acts of Democracy.
6. Those who follow the "culture of life" get their spirituality from the Bible, not the "Da Vinci code."

I can go on forever. I am not even Catholic, but my prayers remain on the blessings he gave our planet, and that the Vatican find someone even remotely similar to Pope John Paul II.