- Latin:
- Johannes Paulus
- Original name:
- Karol Jozef Wojtyła
- Born:
- May 18, 1920, Wadowice,
Poland
Top Questions
What is St. John Paul II known for?
John Paul II was the first non-Italian
pope
in 455 years. He travelled abroad extensively in an effort to promote greater understanding between countries and religions, and he campaigned against political oppression, violence, and materialism. He survived an assassination attempt in 1981.
What were St. John Paul II’s accomplishments?
John Paul II’s private conversations with
Polish
and
Soviet
leaders contributed to the peaceful
end of the Soviet regime
in eastern Europe, and his worldwide outreach brought greater visibility to the church. He engaged in acts of interfaith reconciliation with
Judaism
and
Islam
, promulgated a new
catechism
(1992), and canonized nearly 500
saints
.
What was St. John Paul II’s legacy?
John Paul II was the first globally oriented pope, and he increased the global prestige of the papacy. His emphasis on religious and national freedom was unprecedented. He also centralized control over Catholic educational institutions and maintained traditional church positions on gender and sexual issues.
St. John Paul II
(born May 18, 1920, Wadowice, Poland?died April 2, 2005, Vatican City; beatified May 1, 2011; canonized April 27, 2014; feast day October 22) was the
bishop
of
Rome
and head of the
Roman Catholic Church
from 1978 to 2005. He was the first non-
Italian
pope
in 455 years and the first from a Slavic
country
. His
pontificate
of more than 26 years was the third longest in history. As part of his effort to promote greater understanding between nations and between
religions
, he undertook numerous trips abroad, traveling far greater distances than had all other popes
combined
, and he extended his influence beyond the
church
by campaigning against political oppression and criticizing the materialism of the West. He also issued several unprecedented apologies to groups that historically had been wronged by Catholics, most notably
Jews
and
Muslims
. His unabashed
Polish
nationalism
and his emphasis on nonviolent political activism aided the
Solidarity
movement in communist Poland in the 1980s and ultimately contributed to the peaceful dissolution of the
Soviet Union
in 1991. More generally,
John Paul
used his influence among Catholics and throughout the world to advance the recognition of human dignity and to deter the use of
violence
. His centralized style of church governance, however,
dismayed
some members of the clergy, who found it autocratic and stifling. He failed to reverse an overall decline in the numbers of
priests
and
nuns
, and his traditional interpretations of church teachings on personal and sexual
morality
alienated some segments of the laity.
Early life and influences
Wojtyła’s childhood coincided with the only period of freedom that Poland would know between 1772 and 1989: the two decades between Marshal
Jozef Piłsudski
’s defeat of the Soviet
Red Army
in 1920 and the German invasion in 1939. Wojtyła thus grew up experiencing national freedom but also understanding its vulnerability. Although Wadowice, a town of about 8,000 Catholics and 2,000 Jews, lay only 15 miles (24 km) from the future site of
Auschwitz
, a Nazi
death camp
, there was apparently little
anti-Semitism
in the town before the war. One of Wojtyła’s close boyhood friends was a son of the leader of Wadowice’s Jewish
community
.
Wojtyła’s father, Karol senior, was a lieutenant in the Polish army. His mother, Emilia Kaczorowska, died when he was eight years old; his brother, Edmund, who had become a physician, died less than four years later. Wojtyła was an outgoing youth, though always with a serious side. He excelled in academics and dramatics, played
football
(soccer), and, under his father’s guidance, lived a
disciplined
life of routine religious observance. He regularly assisted Father Kazimierz Figlewicz, his
confessor
and first teacher in Catholicism, in Wadowice’s main church, which was next door to the Wojtyła family’s tiny apartment.
After graduating from secondary school as valedictorian, Wojtyła moved with his father to
Krakow
, where he attended the Jagiellonian University. His studies ended abruptly when
Nazi
Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. In the months that followed, Jews as well as non-Jewish cultural and political leaders, including professors and priests, were killed or deported to
concentration camps
by the
Nazis
, who considered the
Slavs
an inferior race.
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Wojtyła and his father fled with thousands to the east but soon returned after learning that the Russians had also invaded Poland. Back in Krakow, Wojtyła continued his studies in
clandestine
classes. For the next four years, in order to avoid arrest and deportation, he worked in a factory owned by Solvay, a chemical firm that the Nazis considered essential to their war effort. Wojtyła was thus the only pope, at least in modern times, to have been a labourer.
During these years Wojtyła began to write nationalistic plays, and he joined the Rhapsodic Theatre, an underground resistance group that aimed to sustain Polish
culture
and morale through covert readings of poetry and drama. Through
Jan Tyranowski, a tailor who conducted a youth ministry for the local church, Wojtyła was introduced to the teachings of
St. John of the Cross
, a
Carmelite
mystic who held that redemption could be gained through suffering and a “spirituality of abandonment.” Tyranowski’s example helped to convince Wojtyła that the church, even more than a renewed Polish theatre, might improve the world. Wojtyła’s confessor continued to be his childhood mentor, Figlewicz, who had transferred to Wawel Cathedral in Krakow.
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Decision to join the priesthood
In February 1941 Wojtyła returned from work one day to discover that his father had died alone; he prayed by the body all night. By the autumn of 1942 he had decided to enter the priesthood. For two years, while still working at the chemical factory, he
attended
illegal seminary classes run by Krakow’s
cardinal
archbishop, Prince Adam
Sapieha
. After narrowly escaping a Nazi roundup of able-bodied men and boys in 1944, Wojtyła spent the rest of the war in the archbishop’s palace, disguised as a cleric. As pope, Wojtyła recalled that witnessing Nazi horrors, including the murder of many priests, showed him the real meaning of the priesthood.
In 1945 the Soviets replaced the Germans as occupiers of Poland. In November 1946 Wojtyła was ordained by Sapieha into the Catholic priesthood. He chose to say his first
mass
, assisted by Figlewicz, in Wawel Cathedral’s crypt chapel amid the sarcophagi of Polish monarchs and heroes, including those who had defended national freedom and European Christendom. He then began two years of study in Rome, where he completed his first doctorate, an examination of the theology of St. John of the Cross. Assigned to Krakow’s St. Florian’s parish in 1949, he studied, wrote, and lectured on philosophy and social and sexual
ethics
. During the next decade he completed a second doctorate, taught
theology
and ethics at the Jagiellonian University, and eventually was appointed to a full professorship at the Catholic University of
Lublin
.
The young priest wrote poetry, published anonymously, on a variety of religious, social, and personal themes. He also became the spiritual leader and mentor of a circle of young adult friends whom he joined on kayaking and camping trips. Together, they celebrated
mass
in the open at a time when unapproved worship outside of churches was forbidden by the communist regime. Experiences with these friends contributed to the ideas in his first book of nonfiction,
Love and Responsibility
(1960), an exploration of the several
graces
available in conjugal sexual relationships. The work was considered radical by those who held the traditional church view that sex was solely for the purpose of procreation.
Church leaders were impressed by Wojtyła’s ability to operate a
dynamic
pastorate despite communist restrictions. In 1958 Pope
Pius XII
appointed him an
auxiliary
bishop of Krakow. At the
Second Vatican Council
(1962?65) Wojtyła so distinguished himself that halfway through the council, in December 1963, Pope
Paul VI
named him
archbishop
of Krakow.
The Second Vatican Council introduced Wojtyła to issues including the role of the laity, the church’s relations with other religions, and its relations with the
secular
world. After the council’s conclusion in 1965, Wojtyła was appointed to Pope
Paul VI
’s Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate. His work appears to have influenced
Humanae vitae
(1968; “Of Human Life”), Paul VI’s
encyclical
rejecting artificial
contraception
, which became one of the church’s most ignored teachings. Some bishops also disagreed with it, saying privately that, on this issue, Wojtyła may have made basic theological mistakes.