Pope John Paul was remembered during his funeral today more for his vitality, intellect and love for sports and the young than for his last years of suffering.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in his homily, celebrated the pope's life, underlining the young Karol Wojtyla's love of literature, theatre and poetry.
Cardinal Ratzinger contrasted this with his job working in a chemical plant surrounded and threatened by the Nazi terror.
He recalled how the Pope started to read theology and philosophy, then entered a clandestine seminary during World War Two to start training for the priesthood.
Fr Wojtyla learned he was being named auxiliary bishop of Krakow while on a canoeing trip with a youth group on the Mazury lakes in northeast Poland.
The Pope had been sustained in his faith and service by three Bible verses, including 'I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last,' which the cardinal said inspired the Pontiff's many trips to his flock around the world.
Less time to enjoy his literature and study must have seemed to him like losing his very self, losing what had become the very human identity of this young priest, he said.
But the Pope's early love of words was returned to him as he 'gave new vitality, new urgency, new attractiveness to the preaching of the Gospel'.
Only at the end of the homily did Cardinal Ratzinger touch on the Pope's very public suffering in his last years.
Watch the Pope's funeral mass here
