this is great for so many reasons...

ROME - Pope John Paul II's enduring charisma found unlikely expression here one recent afternoon. At the end of a day's filming of a new television movie about his life, Italian and Latin American extras rushed to be photographed beside the gray-haired man in papal gowns. That he happened to be Jon Voight seemed secondary. For the extras, this was as close as they would ever get to John Paul.

Mr. Voight, who at 66 persuasively evokes the older John Paul, is growing used to such reactions. After he spoke a few words about "the dignity of man" in Spanish while re-enacting John Paul's first visit to Mexico, the extras burst into spontaneous applause. And on the previous day, when the 1981 attempt on the pope's life was filmed, some of the extras burst into tears at the sight of the "wounded" pontiff.