Leading man: both for the Vatican and for Hollywood the papacy is a countercultural sign of contradiction. Their takes, though, are decidedly different.

POPE JOHN PAUL II'S FUNERAL MAY HAVE BEEN THE largest media event of modern times. Presidents, prime ministers, and prelates from more than 200 nations joined a sea of 3 million pilgrims flooding into St. Peter's Square from every corner of the globe.

And for a week the world's press gave the pope's wake and funeral wall-to-wall, round-the-clock coverage. Newspapers and television screens were plastered with images of John Paul II and the endless parade of mourners marching past his body, while columnists and commentators spilled an ocean of ink and chewed up a sky full of airwaves discussing the legacy of this global "superstar."

And superstar he was, for the world paused to mourn the passing of John Paul II not simply because he was a prelate, theologian, and possible saint but because the former actor from Poland had become a global icon, an international celebrity who strode the world's stage for more than a quarter century and who--in life and death--drew crowds in the millions and tens of millions.

But what kind of a superstar was he, and how was this cultural icon viewed and understood by his global audience?

Middle-aged Catholics remember when Pope John XXIII was an international celebrity, but in the late 1950s and early '60s good Pope John was celebrated for the way he embraced modernity and the world beyond the Vatican. Reversing a century of papal hostility and suspicion toward all things modern and secular, John XXIII praised the rise of democracy, the advancement of women, and the progress of science and technology, and found much to celebrate in the "signs of the times."

For the past 26 years, however, Pope John Paul II was a much more critical consumer of contemporary culture, indeed, of modernity itself. Time and again he challenged audiences to resist and oppose a worldly culture of consumption and death. Like a biblical prophet crying out in the wilderness, this 20th- and 21st-century pope repeatedly took the modern age to task for its hubris, avarice, and immorality, and challenged audiences to acknowledge and follow a clear and unchanging set of moral norms.

John Paul II was, for Catholics and non-Catholics, a sign of contradiction. In spite of his extraordinary efforts at ecumenism and reconciliation, this pontiff will probably be better remembered for the things he stood against, for the lines he drew in the sand.

Supporters will remember him as a prophet who challenged a modern and secular age that had lost its way. Critics will remember him as an opponent of theologians, feminists, and gay and lesbian people. But either way, he will be remembered as a moral authority who challenged and confronted the world around him.

Seeing the pope as a sign of contradiction came easily to most Americans. John Paul II took strong stands on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, women's ordination, bioethics, and euthanasia, as well as capital punishment, consumerism, nuclear proliferation, and the war in Iraq. It would be hard to find even a handful of people outside the hierarchy who agreed with him on every one of these issues.

Still, millions of Americans (and not just Catholics) were intrigued and fascinated by this pope. Part of this fascination was no doubt due to his extraordinary charisma and presence. Crowds around the world were touched and moved by his eloquence and piety. But it was also the clarity and force of his convictions that large numbers of people (though by no means all or even most) found so impressive.

Most Americans believe in democracy, the separation of church and state, and the full equality of women, and disagree with several of the pope's positions. But there was a Gary-Cooper-in-High-Noon attractiveness about his willingness to take a stand.

BUT EVEN BEFORE THIS PONTIFF, MANY AMERICANS would have seen the papacy as something of a sign of contradiction. The United States is a modern, secular, pluralistic, and largely Protestant democracy, while the Vatican is a Catholic, patriarchal, monarchical, and--many would say--medieval theocracy. It is not hard to understand why no American president had ever attended the funeral of a pope before this one.

Hollywood, too, has long tended to see the papacy as a sign of contradiction, though not usually in the way John Paul II might have liked. Occasionally, as in Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman, a cinematic pope (played by Anthony Quinn) comes across as a deeply moral and spiritual leader who challenges his church and world to reform. But more often than not, Hollywood's popes have been icons of a medieval and institutional church that resists modernity and reform. At the movies the man in white has usually sided with the forces opposing democracy, progress, and reform.

Peter, the first pope, shows up in a number of films and receives his own distinctive treatment. In movies about Christ (such as King of Kings, Jesus of Nazareth, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Passion of the Christ), the first apostle is portrayed as a well-meaning but flawed disciple who betrays Jesus in his hour of need, while in gladiator films (like The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators, in which Michael Rennie plays Peter twice) the Galilean fisherman comes across as a pious martyr following his savior to the cross. In either case Peter lacks the regal trappings associated with the papacy and is rarely seen as a pontiff.

For Hollywood the papacy is a medieval or Renaissance institution, and the pope is a monarch in a tiara. By these standards Rex Harrison may be Hollywood's greatest pontiff, playing the pope-warrior Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone's tale of Michelangelo's struggles with the Vatican. Whether sporting his papal vestments or royal coat of arms, Harrison plays Julius the pope pretty much as he played Julius Caesar in Cleopatra and King Mongkut in Anna and the King of Siam--a ruthless tyrant who must be obeyed.

THIS PAPAL HOSTILITY TO DEMOCRATIC structures continues in some modern treatments of the papacy, where the Vatican is portrayed as a secretive and not infrequently corrupt political machine. Francis Ford Coppola gives us a distinctly Machiavellian view of the papacy in The Godfather III, and when The Da Vinci Code is made into a film, the papacy will hardly come across as a paragon of democratic values.

Hollywood popes are also usually the enemies of progress, the most infamous example of this resistance to modernity being Rome's treatment of Galileo, recently recanted by Pope John Paul II. In Bertold Brecht's Galileo Pope Urban VIII threatens the Florentine mathematician with torture unless he recants his support for Copernicus' heretical theories. This pope is hardly a friend of scientific progress.

Movies have also cast the papacy as an opponent of spiritual reform. In films about Francis of Assisi (like Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Liliana Cavani's Francesco) Pope Innocent III is at least open to the reforms of Francis and his followers, but the medieval pontiff remains the leader of an institutional church that has lost its soul. And in films about Martin Luther and the Reformation (like Eric Till's Luther), Pope Leo X ends up defending insufferable practices.

Sometimes, of course, Hollywood has given the papacy credit for being the right kind of sign of contradiction. The pope is off stage in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, but the film defends Rome's stand against Henry VIII's attempts to dissolve his marriage. And in Becket the movie's sympathies are with Pope Alexander III in his struggles with Henry II.

Both Pope John Paul II and Hollywood have seen the papacy as a sign of contradiction but have very different ideas of this icon of resistance. What seems clear is that the gospel does not call for a medieval papacy that blindly resists democracy, progress, and reform but for a pope (and church) that takes clear stands against the failings and injustices of our age. Jesus was that sort of sign.

By PATRICK MCCORMICK, professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.