Oct 16, 2014 3 min read

As part of a look back at history, the Observer-Reporter presents “#TBT” (Throwback Thursday). Every Thursday, the O-R online staff presents a reproduction of a moment in history from our archive. This week, we commemorate the election of John Paul II to pope, October 16, 1978. This article appeared on the front page October 17. Have a historical moment you’d like to see? Email webmaster@observer-reporter.com.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Polish Pope John Paul II told the world today his primary duty is to complete with “prudent but stimulating actions” reforms introduced into the Roman Catholic Church by the Second Vatican Council.

But the church’s first non-Italian pontiff in 455 years warned in his first sermon of his reign that the “general criteria of loyalty to the Vatican Council” must not affect loyalty to the basic doctrine of the church.

“Loyalty is the respect of the liturgical rules… Loyalty also means the cult of the great discipline of the church” which must be “protected from the threats which are carried to certain truths,” the pontiff said at a Mass celebrated jointly in the Sistine Chapel with the 110 cardinals who elected him the church’s 264th ruler on Monday.

He said his predecessors Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I set guidelines for the application of the council’s resolutions ” and we intend to continue on the road they have indicated.”

The pope stressed he would try to promote ecumenism further and said he would take a stand in political controversies only “for religious and moral purposes.”

John Paul until his election was Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, and at 58 he is the youngest Roman Catholic pontiff of the century.

His adoption of the name of the “pastoral” pope whose reign lasted only 34 days was taken as an indication he intends to stress the pastoral side of the papacy and the pope’s role as the shepherd of the church and to look to all the bishops of the church for advices, not just to the Italian cardinals of the Vatican Curia.

He was expected to continue the moderate reforms of the church, the dialogue with other Christian religions and the efforts to improve relations with the Communist governments launched by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. But he also was a supporter of Pope Paul’s reaffirmation of the bans on artificial methods of birth control and married priests, and he was expected to make no changes in those prohibitions.

“He’s pretty strict doctrinally, but open to mutually shared insights as manifested in the Second Vatican Council,” said the Rev. John Long of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Christian Unity.

The stocky, fair-haired Polish prelate was elected Monday on the seventh or eighth ballot cast since the secret conclave began Saturday evening. White smoke signaling the election poured from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel at 6:18 p.m. — 1:18 p.m. EDT — and about an hour later the new pope appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.