POPE JOHN PAUL II
Papież Jan Paweł II
Pope John Paul II is the most famous man of Polish. He’s
sometimes called Blessed John Paul or John Paul the Great, born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005), reigned as Pope
of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the second-longest serving Pope
in history and the first non-Italian since 1523.
JOHN PAUL II
Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in the Polish town of
Wadowice and was the youngest of three
children of Karol Wojtyła and Emilia
Kaczorowska. On 13 April 1929, Wojtyła's
mother died in childbirth.
CURRICULUM VITAE
In mid-1938, Wojtyła and his father
moved to Cracow, where he enrolled at
Jagiellonian University. He was
studying such topics as philology and
various languages.
In 1939, Nazi German occupation forces closed the
university after invading Poland. Able-bodied males
were required to work, so from 1940 to 1944 Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a
restaurant, a manual labourer in a limestone quarry and for
the Solvay chemical factory, to avoid deportation to Germany.
After his father's death, he started thinking seriously
about the priesthood. In October 1942, while the war continued, he knocked on the door of the Bishop's Palace in Cracow and asked to
study for the priesthood.
On finishing his studies at the seminary in Cracow, Wojtyła was ordained as a priest 1 November 1946, by the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Sapieha. He then studied theology in Rome, where he earned a licentiate and later a doctorate in sacred theology.
He returned to Poland in the
summer of 1945 with his first
pastoral assignment in the village of
Niegowić, fifteen miles
from Crakow.
In March 1949, Wojtyła was transferred to the parish of Saint Florian in Kraków. He taught ethics at Jagiellonian University and subsequently at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 1954, he earned a
second doctorate, in philosophy.
In October 1962, Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican
Council (1962–1965), where he made contributions to two
of its most historic and influential products, the
Decree on Religious Freedom and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern .
On 13 January 1964, Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków. On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Karol Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals. Wojtyła was named Cardinal-Priest of the titulus of San Cesareo in Palatio.
In August 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI,
Cardinal Wojtyła voted in the Papal conclave which elected Pope John Paul I, who at 65 was considered young by
papal standards. John Paul I died after only 33 days as Pope, triggering another
conclave.
The second conclave of 1978 started on 14 October, ten days after the funeral. It was split between two strong candidates for the papacy:
Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the conservative Archbishop of Genoa, and the liberal Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, a close
friend of John Paul I.
A very charismatic figure, John Paul II was acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the 20th
century. He was instrumental in ending communism in his native
Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's
relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the
Anglican Communion.
He was one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting
129 countries during his pontificate. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to
holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483
saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during
the preceding five centuries.
He named most of the present College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated a large number of the world's past and current bishops, and ordained many priests. A key goal of
his papacy was to transform and reposition the Catholic Church. His wish was "to place his Church at the heart of a new religious alliance that would bring together Jews, Muslims and Christians in a great [religious]
armada".
On 19 December 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed venerable by his successor Pope
Benedict XVI and was beatified on 1
May 2011.