Pope John Paul II

Born Karol Józef Wojtyła on 18 May 1920 in Wadowice, Poland, Pope John Paul II led the Catholic Church and served as sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005. His election followed the brief 33-day papacy of John Paul I, whose name he adopted in tribute. He was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century and became the third-longest-serving pope in history, after St. Peter and Pius IX.

Wojtyła came of age in a Poland marked by war, occupation, faith, learning, and loss. His mother, Emilia, died when he was eight; his brother Edmund, a physician, died of scarlet fever; and his father died of a heart attack in 1941, leaving him the immediate family’s only surviving member. As a boy he was athletic, often playing football as a goalkeeper, and he grew up with contact with Wadowice’s large Jewish community. He later remembered that many classmates were Jewish and that some were close friends. In Kraków, he studied at Jagiellonian University, worked as a volunteer librarian, performed with theatrical groups, and developed gifts in languages, eventually learning as many as 15.

World War II altered the course of his young life. After Nazi Germany’s occupation forces closed the university in 1939, Wojtyła worked as a restaurant messenger, a manual labourer in a limestone quarry, and at the Solvay chemical factory to avoid deportation to Germany. In 1940, Jan Tyranowski introduced him to Carmelite spirituality and the “Living Rosary” youth groups. He had loved theatre and had wanted to study Polish, but a conversation with Adam Stefan Sapieha encouraged him toward theology and the priesthood. Wojtyła later rose to become Archbishop of Kraków and then a cardinal, both roles also held by Sapieha.

As pope, John Paul II became one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. He worked to improve the Catholic Church’s relations with Judaism, Islam, and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the spirit of ecumenism, while holding atheism to be the greatest threat. He supported the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, though he was seen as generally conventional in interpreting them, and he maintained the Church’s previous positions on abortion, artificial contraception, the ordination of women, and a celibate clergy. He emphasized family, identity, and the universal call to holiness, and questioned consumerism, hedonism, and the pursuit of wealth.

Under John Paul II, two major documents of the contemporary Catholic Church were drafted and promulgated: the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which revised and updated the 1917 Code, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the first universal catechism issued since the Roman Catechism. He beatified 1,344 people and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the preceding five centuries. He was also credited with fighting against dictatorships and helping to end communist rule in his native Poland and the rest of Europe. His record has also been criticised, especially over allegations that he did not act, or was not harsh enough, against the sexual abuse of children by priests.

John Paul II was succeeded by Pope Benedict XVI, who proclaimed him venerable on 19 December 2009 and beatified him on 1 May 2011. Pope Francis canonised him on 27 April 2014, alongside Pope John XXIII. His words still speak to readers because they join belief with thought, public life with conscience, and personal suffering with discipline. “Faith and reason are like two wings of the human spirit, by which it soars to the truth” fits the shape of his life: a scholar, actor, priest, bishop, and pope trying to hold intellect and devotion together.