Pope 1995

[Kerby Reynolds]

Inhis youth, Wojtyła dabbled in stage acting. He graduated with excellent grades from an all-boys high school in Wadowice, Poland, in 1938, soon after which World War II broke out. During the war, to avoid being kidnapped and sent off to a German forced labour camp, he signed up for work in harsh conditions in a quarry. Wojtyła eventually took up acting and developed a love for the profession and participated at a local theatre. The linguistically skilled Wojtyła wanted to study Polish at university. Encouraged by a conversation with Adam Stefan Sapieha, he decided to study theology and become a priest. Eventually, Wojtyła rose to the position of Archbishop of Krakw and then a cardinal, both positions held by his mentor. Wojtyła was elected pope on the third day of the second papal conclave of 1978, and became one of the youngest popes in history. The conclave was called after the death of John Paul I, who served only 33 days as pope. John Paul I had been elected in an August papal conclave to succeed Pope Paul VI. Wojtyła adopted the name of his predecessor in tribute to him.[9]

John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century, as well as the third-longest-serving pope in history after Pius IX and St. Peter. John Paul II attempted to improve the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the spirit of ecumenism, holding atheism as the greatest threat. He maintained the Church's previous positions on such matters as abortion, artificial contraception, the ordination of women, and a celibate clergy, and although he supported the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, he was seen as generally conservative in their interpretation.[10][11] He put emphasis on family and identity, while questioning consumerism, hedonism and the pursuit of wealth. 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, John Paul II beatified 1,344 people,[12] and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. By the time of his death, he had named most of the College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated many of the world's bishops, and ordained many priests.[13]

He has been credited with fighting against dictatorships for democracy and with helping to end communist rule in his native Poland and the rest of Europe.[14] Under John Paul II, the Catholic Church greatly expanded its influence in Africa and Latin America and retained its influence in Europe and the rest of the world. On 19 December 2009 John Paul II was proclaimed venerable by his successor, Benedict XVI, and on 1 May 2011 (Divine Mercy Sunday) he was beatified. On 27 April 2014 he was canonised together with John XXIII.[15] He has been criticised for allegedly, as archbishop, having been insufficiently harsh in acting against the sexual abuse of children by priests in Poland,[16] though the allegations themselves have been criticised.[17][18] Posthumously he has been referred to by some Catholics as Pope St. John Paul the Great, though that title has no official recognition.[19]

Under John Paul II, the two most important constitutions of the contemporary Catholic Church were drafted and put in force: the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which, among many things, began an effort to curb sexual abuse in the Catholic Church; and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which among other things clarified the Church's position on homosexuality.

Wojtyła was baptized a month after his birth, made his First Communion at the age of 9, and was confirmed at the age of 18.[25] As a boy, Wojtyła was athletic, often playing association football as goalkeeper.[26] During his childhood, Wojtyła had contact with the large Jewish community of Wadowice.[27] School football games were often organised between teams of Jews and Catholics, and Wojtyła often played on the Jewish side.[22][26] In 2005, he recalled: "I remember that at least a third of my classmates at elementary school in Wadowice were Jews. At secondary school there were fewer. With some I was on very friendly terms. And what struck me about some of them was their Polish patriotism."[28] It was around this time that the young Karol had his first serious relationship with a girl. He became close to a girl called Ginka Beer, described as "a Jewish beauty, with stupendous eyes and jet black hair, slender, a superb actress."[29]

In 1939, after invading Poland, Nazi Germany's occupation forces closed the university.[20] 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, in order to avoid deportation to Germany.[21][30] In February 1940, he met Jan Tyranowski who introduced him to the Carmelite spirituality and the "Living Rosary" youth groups.[32] In that same year he had two major accidents, suffering a fractured skull after being struck by a tram and sustaining injuries which left him with one shoulder higher than the other and a permanent stoop after being hit by a lorry in a quarry.[33] His father, a former Austro-Hungarian non-commissioned officer and later officer in the Polish Army, died of a heart attack in 1941,[34] leaving the young adult Wojtyła an orphan and the immediate family's only surviving member.[22][23][35] Reflecting on these times of his life, nearly forty years later he said: "I was not at my mother's death, I was not at my brother's death, I was not at my father's death. At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved."[35]

After his father's death, he started thinking seriously about the priesthood.[36] In October 1942, while World War II continued, he knocked on the door of the Bishop's Palace, Krakw, and asked to study for the priesthood.[36] Soon after, he began courses in the clandestine underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Krakw, the future Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha.[37] On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was hit by a German truck. German Wehrmacht officers tended to him and sent him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there recovering from a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. It seemed to him that this accident and his survival was a confirmation of his vocation. On 6 August 1944, a day known as "Black Sunday",[38] the Gestapo rounded up young men in Krakw to curtail the uprising there,[38] similar to the recent uprising in Warsaw.[39][40] Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle's house at 10 Tyniecka Street, while the German troops searched above.[36][39][40] More than eight thousand men and boys were taken that day, while Wojtyła escaped to the Archbishop's residence,[36][38][39] where he remained until after the Germans had left.[22][36][39]

On the night of 17 January 1945, the Germans fled the city, and the students reclaimed the ruined seminary. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the task of clearing away piles of frozen excrement from the toilets.[41] Wojtyła also helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer,[42] who had escaped from a Nazi labour camp in Częstochowa.[42] Edith had collapsed on a railway platform, so Wojtyła carried her to a train and stayed with her throughout the journey to Krakw. She later credited Wojtyła with saving her life that day.[43][44][45] B'nai B'rith and other authorities have said that Wojtyła helped protect many other Polish Jews from the Nazis. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a Jewish family sent their son, Stanley Berger, to be hidden by a Gentile Polish family. Berger's biological Jewish parents were killed in the Holocaust, and after the war Berger's new Christian parents asked Karol Wojtyła to baptise the boy. Wojtyła refused, saying that the child should be raised in the Jewish faith of his birth parents and nation, not as a Catholic.[46] He did everything he could to ensure that Berger leave Poland to be raised by his Jewish relatives in the United States.[47] In April 2005, shortly after John Paul II's death, the Israeli government created a commission to honour the legacy of John Paul II. One of the honorifics proposed by a head of Italy's Jewish community, Emmanuele Pacifici was the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations.[48] In Wojtyła's last book, Memory and Identity, he described the 12 years of the Nazi rgime as "bestiality",[49] quoting from the Polish theologian and philosopher Konstanty Michalski.[50]

After finishing his studies at the seminary in Krakw, Wojtyła was ordained as a priest on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946,[23] by the Archbishop of Krakw, Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha.[21][51][52] Sapieha sent Wojtyła to Rome's Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, to study under the French Dominican friar Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange beginning on 26 November 1946. He resided in the Belgian Pontifical College during this time, under rectorship of Maximilien de Furstenberg.[53] Wojtyła earned a licence in July 1947, passed his doctoral exam on 14 June 1948, and successfully defended his doctoral thesis titled Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce (The Doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross) in philosophy on 19 June 1948.[54] The Angelicum preserves the original copy of Wojtyła's typewritten thesis.[55] Among other courses at the Angelicum, Wojtyła studied Hebrew with the Dutch Dominican Peter G. Duncker, author of the Compendium grammaticae linguae hebraicae biblicae.[56]

According to Wojtyła's fellow student, the future Austrian cardinal Alfons Stickler, in 1947 during his sojourn at the Angelicum, Wojtyła visited Padre Pio, who heard his confession and told him that one day he would ascend to "the highest post in the Church".[57] Stickler added that Wojtyła believed that the prophecy was fulfilled when he became a cardinal.[58]

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