Soon after Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini became Pope Paul VI in 1963, he made it clear that he was going to be a traveling Pope"an apostle on the move." In the seven years since, he has made good that promise by traveling farther and more often than all his predecessors combined: eight trips totaling 41,000 miles. His ninth trip, which began last weeka punishing, 28,000-mile, ten-day pilgrimage taking him as far as Australia and Samoawas the longest thus far and, as it turned out, the most dangerous. In Manila, Paul VI came closer than any Pope in centuries to being assassinated.
The...