St. John Paul II

Their story

Karol Wojtyła was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. By the time he was twenty, he had lost his mother, his only brother and his father. During the Nazi occupation of Poland he worked in a stone quarry and a chemical factory, acted in an underground theater and secretly studied for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1946 and became a professor, a poet and a beloved priest to young people, whom he often took hiking and kayaking. He became archbishop of Kraków and took part in the Second Vatican Council. On October 16, 1978, he was elected pope, the first non-Italian pope in more than four hundred years, and took the name John Paul II. At his first Mass as pope, he told the world, "Be not afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!" He traveled to more than a hundred countries, began the World Youth Days, wrote extensively on the dignity of the human person, marriage and the family, and gave the Church the Catechism of the Catholic Church. His visits to Poland helped inspire the peaceful movement that brought down communism in Eastern Europe. In 1981 he was shot and badly wounded in St. Peter's Square, and he later visited his attacker in prison to forgive him. He canonized St. Faustina and spread devotion to the Divine Mercy. In his last years he suffered from Parkinson's disease, showing the world the dignity of suffering and old age. He died on April 2, 2005, and was canonized in 2014. His feast is kept on October 22, the anniversary of the start of his papacy.