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John Paul II, the most traveled pope in history and the first non-Italian to occupy the office since the 16th century, passed away at his residence in the Vatican on April 2, 2005. Six days later, Two million people crowded Vatican City for his funeral, which was reportedly one of the largest in history.
In 1920, Karol Jozef Wojtyla (John Paul II) was born in Wadowice, Poland, 35 miles south of Krakow. The future pope registered at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University after graduating from high school to study philosophy and literature while participating in a theater troupe. Wojtyla was forced to look for employment in a quarry and subsequently a chemical factory when the Nazis occupied Krakow during World War II and shut down the university. He was the only member of his family still alive in 1941 after his mother, father, and one surviving sibling passed away.
Wojtyla had spent his entire existence in the church, but he didn’t start seminary school until 1942. He went back to Jagiellonian University after the war to continue his theology studies, and in 1946 he was ordained as a priest. Later, after earning two doctorates, he worked as a professor of social ethics and moral theology. At the age of 38, on July 4, 1958, Pope Pius XII named him the auxiliary bishop of Krakow. Later, when he was the city’s archbishop, he advocated for religious liberty as the church started the Second Vatican Council, which would fundamentally alter Catholicism.
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He undertook the challenges of living and serving as a Catholic priest in communist Eastern Europe after being named a cardinal in 1967. He once said, when asked if he was concerned about communist leaders exacting revenge, “I’m not scared of them. They are afraid of me”
Wojtyla was discreetly and gradually establishing a reputation as a charismatic preacher and a brilliant individual. Still, few people anticipated Wojtyla would be selected to succeed Pope John Paul I when he passed away in 1978 after only 34 days in office. However, the Sacred College of Cardinals selected the 58-year-old after seven rounds of voting, making him the first Slavic pontiff and the youngest to be elected in 132 years.
John Paul II was a conservative pope whose pontificate was distinguished by his steadfast and unyielding resistance to communism, war, abortion, contraception, the death penalty, and homosexual sex. Later, he declared his opposition to stem cell research, human cloning, and suicide. As pope, he traveled extensively, interacting with both Catholics and those outside the church using his fluency in eight languages (Polish, Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin), as well as his well-known charm.
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Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, by Turkish political fanatic Mehmet Ali Agca. The pope notably visited his would-be assassin in jail, where he had started serving a life sentence, after being discharged from the hospital, and personally absolved him for his actions. The following year, a fanatical cleric who opposed Vatican II’s reforms made another unsuccessful attempt on the pope’s life.
Although Pope John Paul II’s Parkinson’s disease was not officially acknowledged by the Vatican until 2003, many think he started showing symptoms in the early 1990s. Even though he continued to maintain a physically demanding travel schedule, he started to acquire slurred speech and had trouble walking. Even though he had to hand over a lot of his formal responsibilities in his later years, he still managed to address the faithful from a window at the Vatican. The pontiff required hospitalization in February 2005 due to complications from the flu. In two months, he passed away.
Pope John Paul II is renowned for his efforts to bring an end to communism, for establishing relationships with followers of other religions, and for giving the Catholic Church’s first apology for its role in World War II. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who later assumed the title of Pope Benedict XVI, followed him. John Paul II was made a saint in April 2014 by Pope Francis, who replaced Pope Benedict in March 2013.
