Polish ecclesiastic, a Roman Catholic priest who rose in the hierarchy of the church to be elected the 264th Pope on October 16, 1978, ca. 5:15 PM, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy and Sovereign of Vatican City. A passionate anti-Communist, social activist and socialist, Pope John Paul II had much to do with bringing down the Iron Curtain in 1989 and believed the northern nations should share their wealth with the southern hemisphere. No pope in history had more scope of influence than he has through the modern media, and he once gave 25 speeches in a single day without repeating himself.
“Lolek” as he was known in childhood, was born in 1920, the second son of Karol Wojtyla (voy TIH wah) Sr., a retired army officer and tailor, and Emilia Kaczorowska Wojtyla, a schoolteacher of Lithuanian descent, strict Catholics. They lived a Spartan lifestyle in a one-room apartment, and his dad was strict with the boy, making him study in a cold room to learn concentration. There was no anti-Semitism in the family and the boy had Jewish playmates. Indeed, Wojtyla became the first pope to visit a synagogue and the first to visit the memorial at Auschwitz to victims of the Holocaust. In ending the Catholic-Jewish estrangement, he called Jews “our elder brothers.”
He was an athletic kid who skied, hiked, kayaked and swam in the flooded Skawa River, later becoming goal-keeper in the school soccer team. Death was part of the family history, with an infant sister who died prior to his birth and a month before his 9th birthday, his mother’s death of heart and kidney problems. When he was 12, his older brother, Edmund, 26, died of scarlet fever. Lolek himself had two close brushes with death; once when he was hit by a streetcar and secondly, when he was nearly struck by a truck in 1944. The Pope, 5’ 10″ and 175 lbs in his prime, had a few physical difficulties from his early accidents and as an adult, had a dislocated shoulder, a broken thigh that led to femur-replacement surgery, the removal of a precancerous tumor from his colon in 1992 and an attempt on his life by a gunman whose two bullets wounded him in the abdomen, right arm and left hand. The Pope had an appendectomy operation 10/08/1996, Rome.
From the time he was a kid, Wojtyla was aware of the fragility of life and the presence of suffering, and he learned early the comfort of prayer and peace of meditation. As a young man, he was very religious but also drawn passionately to the theater and to writing mystical, somewhat murky poetry. He was a bohemian youth with long hair, and totally apolitical. Though he had close women friends, he apparently never dated or had a romance. Gregarious and charismatic, he was the male star of his theater groups and usually seen at the social mixers.
After the Germans invaded Poland, he escaped deportation and imprisonment in late 1940 by taking a job as a stonecutter in a quarry. A few months later, in February of 1941, Wojtyla’s 61-year-old father died, leaving his dream of seeing his son commit to the priesthood unfulfilled. The Pope has said that his father once told him, “I will not live long and would like to be certain before I die that you will commit yourself to God’s service.”
At 22, he entered a secret nighttime seminary operated in Nazi-occupied Poland by the Archbishop of Krakow. An excellent student, he was ordained four years later and sent to Rome for two more years of theological studies. He was ordained in 1946 in Krakow, and spent much of the next few years studying — he earned two masters degrees and a doctorate — before taking up priestly duties as an assistant pastor in Krakow. He returned to Communist Poland in 1948 where he flourished, first as a parish priest and even more as a university professor. Along with his obvious fine intellectual and linguistic abilities, he was an unusually strong hiker, mountain climber and skier. His outward bound-type expeditions into the mountains and forests made him almost a cult figure among the university students. He would take dozens of students on strenuous expeditions almost every weekend, spending the evenings talking philosophy, ethics and religion. His appointment as a bishop came when he was on a camping trip. Arriving home, learned the news – and then returned to the mountains.
Unusual for a bishop, Wojtyla was willing to talk with his students about sex, with which he stressed a “personalist” view of fulfillment, equality of men and women and the importance of the female orgasm. The main source of his views was Wanda Poltawska, a Polish psychiatrist and sexologist, a close friend of his for many years. He unflinchingly upheld the policy of the church on banning birth control. Very much the Catholic traditionalist, he strongly supported human rights.
In 1954, he was hired by the Catholic University of Lublin, the only Catholic university in the communist world, as a non-tenured professor. The arrangement turned Wojtyla into a commuter, shuttling between Lublin and Krakow on the overnight train to teach and counsel in one city and study in the other. He also founded and ran a service that dealt with marital problems, from family planning and illegitimacy to alcoholism and physical abuse. Time magazine called it “perhaps the most successful marriage institute in Christianity.”
In 1956, Wojtyla was appointed to the Chair of Ethics at Catholic University and his ascent through the church hierarchy got a boost in 1958 when he was named the auxiliary bishop of Krakow. When the Vatican Council II began the deliberations in 1962 that would revolutionize the church, Wojtyla was one of its intellectual leaders and took special interest in religious freedom. The same year, he was named the acting archbishop of Krakow when the incumbent died.
In 1967, he was appointed a cardinal by Pope Paul VI. He observed Catholic beliefs and traditions while accommodating the communist government, discretely keeping his distaste for communism private. Wojtyla bided his time, engaging in a strategy that honored Catholic beliefs and traditions while accommodating the communist government. However he remained “a resilient enemy of Communism and champion of human rights, a powerful preacher and sophisticated intellectual able to defeat Marxists in their own line of dialogue.” (Current Biography)
His immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul I, died of a heart attack on September 28, 1978, Rome. Though Wojtyla was established as a formidable intellectual presence — as well as an able administrator and fund-raiser, he was not generally considered a front-line candidate for the vacated appointment. However, after seven rounds of balloting, he was elected by the Sacred College of Cardinals in the afternoon of October 16, 1978. He reportedly formally accepted his election before the cardinals with tears in his eyes. He was also the first non-Italian pope in 455 years (the last was Adrian VI in 1523) and, was, at 58, the youngest pope in 132 years.
The Pope survived an assassination attempt on May 13, 1981 by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca (born January 9, 1958) in the streets of Rome as he rode in his open car. The time of 5:21:31 PM is precise as his watch stopped at the exact time of the shot. It was a Chilean citizen who saved the Pope. He was visiting the Vatican as a tourist, and was just beside Agca when he saw the gun and he knocked the gun from the hands of Agca, and that action saved the Pope from receiving more bullets. John Paul always credited the Virgin of Fatima for saving his life because he was shot on her feast day, May 13. Italy’s president pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca on June 13, 2000, returning him to Turkey where he went to prison for another, unrelated crime. He served 19 years for shooting the Pope in the stomach.
Although he drew enormous crowds, sometimes in the millions, whenever he gave public appearances, the Pope’s health slowly deteriorated. On January 21, 1999, an elderly and frail Pope made a celebrated visit to Mexico, traveling to St. Louis, Missouri five days later. Despite the fact that he suffered visibly from Parkinson’s disease, trembling and unsteady, John Paul remained a potent and remarkable presence until, and arguably after, his death. During his 31-hour pastoral visit to the U.S., he celebrated Mass, shared a photo op with President Bill Clinton and persuaded the Governor to commute the death sentence of a convicted killer.
On December 24, 1999, John Paul II opened the Holy Door to Saint Peter’s Basilica at 11:26 PM MET, ushering in a holy year that was supposed to have set the tone for the entire third millennium. Over the past 20 years, he visited over 115 countries, displaying remarkable charisma, modesty and sincerity. As Time noted in naming him Man of the Year in 1994, he generated an electricity “unmatched by anyone else on earth.” The most traveled pope in history, he spoke eight languages, learning Spanish after he became Pope. With an appreciation of modern advances, he was quick to use the media and technology to his advantage. As an historic “first,” the Pope spoke to the Italian Parliament on November 14, 2002, 10:58 AM MET, Rome.
He survived many crises, reforms and turmoil within the church, from Vatican Councils to Vietnam to the growing loss of young men joining the priesthood. His critics claimed that he was closed-minded and rigid, maintaining policies of opposition to contraception, abortion and euthanasia that are no longer viable in today’s world. His inflexibility on issues with international ramifications — birth control in Africa, for example — drew strong criticism. His refusal to approve the use of condoms was incomprehensible at a time when AIDS is life threatening. The denial of ordination to women and the doctrine of celibacy remained controversial and the scandals of pedophile priests in the early 21st century were as deeply disturbing as the cover-up of the church in paying settlements to keep the victims quiet. Many observers say John Paul’s record has been mixed. Although the church has expanded in Africa and Latin America — the latter accounts for about half of the estimated one billion Catholics — it has lost followers in the industrialized world, including Poland.
The Pope often explained himself with dense, closely reasoned and deeply philosophical encyclicals which, along with his letters and other writings filled more than 150 volumes. Though the spiritual well-being of the world was his business, Pope John Paul II did not neglect his own spiritual life. He was sometimes found kneeling on the ground in the middle of winter before a statue or deep in prayer with his head resting on an altar. Even when not interacting with others, he was seen moving his lips, apparently in prayer. John Paul II has been a towering figure at the moral center of modern life.
The ailing pontiff, suffering from respiratory distress, was rushed by ambulance to Gemelli Hospital in Rome on February 1, 2005. He reportedly had the flu and was released on February 10, 2005. On February 24, Pope John Paul II was again rushed to Gemelli hospital, again in respiratory distress. This time he underwent a tracheotomy at 8:20 PM local time. The official statement claimed that he had suffered a relapse of the flu and was suffering spasms of the larynx. On the same day The Pope’s book, “Memory and Identity,” was released, a philosophical treatise on good and evil.
The Pope was discharged from the hospital on Sunday, March 13, 2005. The breathing tube was left in his throat to assist his respiration. Two weeks later it was revealed that he was taking nourishment through a feeding tube placed in his nose. On April 1, 2005, as he fought an infection with a high fever, his heart and kidneys began to fail. According to Corriere della Sera online, the Pope died on April 2, 2005 at 9:37 PM local time at the Vatican while the rest of the world reflected on his legacy and speculated about his successor.
He was beatified in a ceremony held in Vatican Square on May 1, 2011.
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