Forty-five years ago, on 16 October 1978, the Assembly of Cardinals elected Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as Pope, who took the name John Paul II. During his lifetime he enjoyed great authority, not only among Catholics, but also in the hearts of followers of other religions. He was the first Pope to visit both a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque.
Karol Wojtyła was born on 18 May 1920 in Wadowice, near Krakow. He was the third youngest child of Emilia née Kaczorowska and Karol Wojtyła. His sister died shortly after his birth, and his brother Edmund Wojtyła, a doctor, died of an epidemic of scarlet fever at the age of 26 in 1932. The young Karol also quickly lost his mother, who died of myocarditis in 1929. The future Pope graduated from gymnasium in his hometown of Wadowice, achieving very good school results. He was involved in the religious, social and sporting life of the school. His great passion was also the theatre.
In 1938, he began studying Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Kraków, where he and his father had moved at the time. Unfortunately, the German aggression against Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent arrest of university professors as part of the Sonderaktion Krakau interrupted his education. Karol Wojtyła, to provide for himself and his father, undertook hard work during the German occupation in the quarries belonging to the company “Solway”. In February 1941, his father died.
In 1942, Karol Wojtyla entered the underground Theological Seminary in Krakow. He had to combine his studies and formation with further work. From August 1944, due to the threat of arrest by the Germans, together with other seminarians, he hid in the residence of the Archbishop of Krakow until the entry of Soviet troops into Krakow in January 1945.
After the war, he completed his theological studies at the Jagiellonian University and was ordained a priest by Archbishop Adam Sapieha on 1 November 1946. Later he was sent for further studies to Rome, from where he returned in 1948 and was assigned as vicar to the parish in Niegowice, and from there, after a year, he was transferred to Kraków. In 1948 he obtained his doctoral degree at the Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University and five years later his postdoctoral degree, which was not approved by the communist authorities. It only became possible after the temporary liberalisation of the policy of the communist authorities after 1956. During this time, Wojtyła also began working as a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University and at the seminary.
Parallel to his academic work, he became known as a priest who gathered around him crowds of young people, among whom he carried out pastoral work combined with pilgrimages, hiking in the mountains and canoeing. This influence on the young generations of Poles did not please the communist authorities in Poland. Rev. Karol Wojtyła was soon employed at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Lublin, where he soon headed the department of ethics. His classes were extremely popular with students.
In 1958, Pope Pius XII appointed him auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Krakow. At the age of 38, he became the youngest member of the Polish episcopate. In his new ministry, he paid particular attention to the problem of the lack of a new church in Nowa Huta, a newly created district of Krakow that the communists intended to be devoid of religious life.
Bishop Karol Wojtyła took an active part in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), gaining wide recognition for his brilliance of mind as well as his linguistic abilities. This probably influenced his appointment as Archbishop of Krakow in 1963 and as a Cardinal in 1967.
The communist authorities in Poland hoped to be able to conflict Wojtyła with Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland. These hopes turned out to be misplaced; the two church hierarchs became the true leaders of the nation, as was evident in the preparations for and ecclesiastical celebration of the millennium of Poland’s baptism in 1966. In the following years, Wojtyła took an active part in the Eucharistic congresses in Melbourne and Philadelphia, without neglecting his pastoral and scientific duties at home.
In 1978, together with Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, he took part in the conclave (meeting of cardinals) at which Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected to succeed St Peter. He took the name of John Paul I, thus wishing to continue the pontificate of his predecessors: John XXIII and Paul VI. Unfortunately, this was interrupted by his unexpected death and the need to reconvene the conclave. During the conclave, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope on 16 October 1978, taking the name John Paul II. It was the first election of a non-Italian in 455 years. As it later turned out, the pontificate of the Polish Pope was unique. Not only because of its duration; it was the third longest in history by that measure, i.e. almost 26 and a half years. John Paul II also ushered the Catholic Church into the third millennium of Christianity. His election was met with a hysterical reaction from the communist authorities, not only in Poland. Hence the decision to make an assault on his life, which took place in Rome on 13 May 1981, organized by the secret services of the communist countries, with the Soviet Union at the forefront.
John Paul II was a tireless pilgrim; during his pontificate, he made 104 trips abroad, visiting 129 countries. In his teaching, he attached great importance to caring for values such as the family, helping the poor, the sick and the elderly. He paid great attention to the pursuit of peace, as demonstrated, for example, by the International Day of Prayer for Peace held in Assisi in 1986, which was attended by representatives of Christian churches and associations and non-Christian religions.
In addition, Wojtyła was the initiator of the World Youth Day, which is still held periodically. He contributed to the collapse of the communist system in Europe. The beginning of its decline can be traced back to the Pope’s first pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of Poland in 1979, when Warsaw heard the historic words “I, a son of the Polish land and at the same time I, John Paul II, Pope, cry out from the depths of this millennium, I cry out on the eve of Pentecost, I cry out with you all: May your Spirit descend! May he come down and renew the face of the earth. This earth!”.
John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, and his funeral in St Peter’s Square alone was attended by 300,000 people. Immediately after his death, the process of his beatification began and was completed in 2011, while in 2014 he was declared a saint.