Rome, Italy - No matter who is chosen as the next pope, John Paul II has left behind a generation of committed young Roman Catholics who are already shaping the church in a more conservative mold than did their parents. Church leaders call them Generation John Paul II.
At Catholic universities, these are the students studying the "theology of the body" - John Paul's theological justification for a conservative sexual ethic that includes opposition to contraception, abortion, premarital sex and some forms of assisted reproduction.
In seminaries, they are the young priests who wear the long black cassocks cast off by an earlier generation of Vatican II priests.
In their parishes, these are the youth group members who are reviving traditional spiritual practices like regular recitations of the rosary or "Eucharistic adorations" - praying for long stretches in front of the consecrated host.
"One of the great shocks to me was how conservative the people younger than me are, and these are Catholics from all over the world, not just the United States," said James Keating, 40, an American theologian who is spending his sabbatical in Rome running the Lay Center at Foyer Unitas Institute, a guesthouse for Catholic students.
"Their Catholicism is quite focused on John Paul II, especially his teachings on contraception and the family," said Mr. Keating, who teaches at Providence College in Rhode Island. "It's fairly significant. They are a force in the church."
John Paul II made evangelization of youth a priority of his pontificate. He appeared at World Youth Day events in cities around the world every two years, often choosing sites in countries he considered to be bastions of secularism: Denver, Paris, Rome, Toronto. These were open-air events held in stadiums or fields, and the pope used them to inspire his young flock to lead lives consistent with Catholic teaching.
Another World Youth Day is planned for Cologne, Germany, in August 2005.
One of the first tests for the next pope will be whether he can relate to these young people, a concern that is now preoccupying the cardinals who will begin meeting on Monday to select the next pope, according to interviews with church leaders.
Many of the young people who went to the World Youth Day events or flocked to Rome last week on a "pilgrimages" to John Paul's funeral readily admitted that while they adored John Paul, they did not live by what he preached. They were drawn by the pilgrimage experience, or by the pope's aura, not necessarily the message.
Indeed, not all younger Catholics have embraced John Paul's strict teaching on sexual morality; there are many who want the church to be more flexible about its ban on contraception, its hard line on divorce and its exclusion of women and married men from the priesthood.
But John Paul left behind enough of a committed core of young Catholics who are now becoming the church's Sunday school teachers, youth group leaders, theologians and priests.
Jennifer Miller, 24, from North Carolina, who is studying philosophy and the "theology of the body" at the Angelicum in Rome, said she has been delighted to discover that many younger Catholics, especially the priests, are theological and cultural conservatives like herself.
"I was recently living in Louisiana and saw it especially in the priests," she said. "They're very conservative, especially concerning the theology of the body. They're not afraid to preach it. And they have the parishes that grow."
Stephan Kampowski is a 32-year-old doctoral student from Germany at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He said that what the church teaches about sexual morality, about marriage, "is not imposing on human freedom, it is not restricting us, but it is calling us to be all that we can be."
"In the past 12 years I have lived with young Catholics of my age who shared my convictions," he said. "They are there, from all kinds of different countries, so I don't feel I'm odd."