Pope John Paul II: The Biography.

Pity the poor devil ('s advocate, that is) who will be assigned when, inevitably, John Paul II's cause for canonization gets launched - probably within an hour or two of the pontiff's demise. He will surely be a lettered and experienced Jesuit - pitted against a promoter drawn from (where else?) the diocesan priests of the Opus Dei - yet he won't have an easy barge to tote. Will Tad Szulc be of any help to him? Not much. True, nuggets like the following can be polished and mounted for display:

... the pope assured [Indians in the Yucatan] that the church had cared for their welfare from the first day the conquistadores had set foot in Mexico. But five months later, when Indians rose in revolt against their landlords and the government in Chiapas ... the Vatican was busy trying to remove the local bishop, Samuel Ruiz, the friend and champion of the poverty-stricken peasants....

When Aristide was overthrown by the Haitian army, the Holy See became the only state formally to recognize the new military junta. Strange as it may sound, there were no Vatican protests against massive human rights violations, including numerous political killings, during the junta's rule, and not a single public word of support for Aristide's restoration to office.

For the most part, however, Szulc's fine biography will serve to promote, not refute, the cause of Saint John Paul II. With the pluses and minuses averaged out, it will be hard to dispute the author's conclusion: apart from certain "startling incongruities .... [W]hen papal history of his reign is written. it is quite conceivable that [John Paul II's achievements in the areas of social justice and human rights] will outweigh his theological conservatism and severity."

Szulc, in short, portrays Karol Wojtyla sympathetically yet evenhandedly, with perceptive intelligence and occasional literary grace. The proliferation of fascinating evidence in Szulc's book runs the gamut from juicy tidbits - for example, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze made a point of informing Vatican emissaries that they had been baptized; Wojtyla wore glasses but John Paul II does not, meaning the pope appears to have given in to the vanity of contact lenses - to major and astounding "finds," such as the goods on the pope's relationship with Gorbachev or on precisely how the Vatican came to recognize Israel. Szulc is the reporter's reporter, almost the insider. He supplies more detail about the conclave that elected Wojtyla pope than even Peter Hebblethwaite managed to unearth in researching his posthumously published The Next Pope (HarperCollins).

True, the sorely missed Hebblethwaite came up with a gem that eludes Szulc: the Cracow cardinal, at his election, seriously considered taking the name of Stanislaus I, after his favorite Polish bishop-martyr. Yet it is Szulc, not Hebblethwaite, who explores fully and enlighteningly Wojtyla's love for the medieval bishop. And it is Szulc, not Hebblethwaite, who supplies the datum that the young actor, Wojtyla, when offered the choice of playing either King Boleslaw or Bishop Stanislaus - (roughly, Henry II and Thomas Becket) - in Norwid's great tragedy, chose the killer king, not the martyred prelate. Wojtyla chose Boleslaw, but only to play him broken and penitent not superb and arrogant a la Frederick II, as is customarily done. Now that's fascinating.

But what sets Szulc apart from anything that has appeared on John Paul II, and will probably keep this book on the small shelf of "absolute musts" in the large library of works that will appear on this man and his pontificate, is the profusion of detail on John Paul II's delicate, decisive, and discreet role in undermining communism in Poland. The Polish-speaking Szulc has not only interviewed many dramatis personae at the top level of Polish and Russian communism - from Gierek and Jaruzelski to Gorbachev - but also held lengthy conversations with the pope himself, an impossible man to interview, let alone for six hours. Too, Szulc has read deeply in the files of the Polish secret police, the Communist party papers, etc.

His book is not without problems. Lacking chapter titles and subtitles, it emits a whiff of hastiness. That impression is confirmed by silly errors like saying Pius XII had the longest reign of any pope since Pius IX - he didn't; Leo XIII did - or confusing an archdiocesan synod of priests with the international Synod of Bishops. Then, too, there are annoying solecisms and feeble translations: "Concerns" is a lame rendering of the German word sorge (sorrow, pain) in Pius XI's poignant encyclical against Nazism: Mitt Brennender Sorge; while "comments" is a no less caponized translation of the Latin animadversiones. Szulc can also be, on occasion, irritatingly obtuse about theological issues (for example, the difference between providence and predestination.)

More seriously, he is a bit bedazzled with his high-level sources, so that Szulc listens to them with an insufficiently critical ear. Statesmen like Jaruzelski and Gierek, not to mention the pope, are anything but objective players; their lengthy assertions of praise or blame should be subjected to close cross-readings, which they do not always receive here. There are also surprising lacunae in a book so "compleat." There is nothing, for example, on John Paul's relationship with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his right hand and a more significant figure perhaps than the secretaries of state, and little is said about the pope's relationship with the current Polish primate, Cardinal Josef Glemp (although it is fascinating to learn of old Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski's highly ambivalent, perhaps even jealous, feelings about Wojtyla).

Yet at the end of the day. the strengths of the book, as the strengths of the man, far outweigh the drawbacks. For the Catholic reader, what is best about Szulc's work is its ability to raise the question of who a pope is or should be. Peter Steinfels was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, "[Pope John Paul] is not a leader whose marching orders [Catholics] await but a repository of what they value and hope for." It is a characteristically perceptive statement. Not any cardinal raised to the "white," as it were, could make a good repository, yet in many ways John Paul II does. Szulc's portrait - with its deft limning of the pope's intense and profound spirituality - gives you a sense of how and why he does. Which is to say, the man, as he emerges from the book, leaves you not a little bewitched, bothered, and bewildered - and angry. But is that anything more than you'd expect, and indeed hope, for someone calling himself vicar of Christ and servant of the servants of God to do? Szulc's take is not the only possible one; indeed, one feels almost constrained to urge the careful reader to take a dose of astringent with it, in the form of Hebblethwaite's The Next Pope. But much as I admire (and miss) Hebblethwaite, I am slightly more convinced by Szulc.