"He said that John Paul II was "authentic" that he was "always himself."

Like Ronald Reagan in an earlier life, JPII had been an actor. Perhaps his perceived "authenticity" was merely his ability to use his actor skills to project the right attitude at the right time in the right place before the right audience. Actors tend to be very good at that. Just as the American public swooned to the grade B actor who starred in "Bedtime for Bonzo" and elected him president, so too people swooned to the young Karol Wojtyla and embraced his papacy for the same superficial reasons. People often confuse likability for authenticity. They also tend to prefer pizzazz to bookishness, which is why most Catholics didn't warm up to B16. (I had my own reasons for never warming up to him.) Pope Francis seems to strike the right balance between pizzazz and bookishness, and that may be why people seem to like him best of all. As I said, in the end, it mostly boils down to likability. People are superficial.