Saint John Paul II

Karol Wojtyła was born on 18 May 1920 at Wadowice in southern Poland. By the time he was twenty he had lost his mother, his only brother and his father. He loved poetry and the theatre. When the Nazis occupied Poland and closed the universities, he worked in a stone quarry and a chemical factory, acted in an underground theatre, and in 1942 began to study for the priesthood in a secret seminary. He was ordained in 1946.

He studied in Rome, then worked as a university chaplain and professor of ethics, famous for taking young people hiking and kayaking in the mountains. He became auxiliary bishop of Kraków in 1958, took part in the Second Vatican Council, and was made Archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and a cardinal in 1967.

On 16 October 1978 he was elected pope, the first non-Italian in over four hundred years. “Be not afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!” he said at his inauguration on 22 October, now his feast day. His visit to Poland in 1979 gave courage to the movement that became Solidarity and helped bring about the peaceful fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. On 13 May 1981 he was shot in Saint Peter’s Square. He survived, credited Our Lady of Fátima, and visited his assailant in prison to forgive him.

In more than twenty-six years he made over a hundred journeys abroad, began World Youth Day, published the Catechism of the Catholic Church, taught the “theology of the body,” and canonized hundreds of saints. In his last years, with Parkinson’s disease, he showed the world how to suffer with faith. He died on 2 April 2005, the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday. Pope Francis canonized him on 27 April 2014.