Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, , born ; (18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) reigned as Pope and Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death almost 27 years later. His was the second-longest pontificate. He has been the only Polish pope, and was the first non-Italian since the Dutch pontiff Adrian VI in the 1520s.John Paul II has been widely acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century. He has been credited with being instrumental in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe, as well as significantly improving the Roman Catholic Church"s relations with Judaism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Anglican Churches. While some have criticised him for his views in such areas as the ordination of women, contraception, his support for Vatican II and its effect on the Liturgy, and his stance on the sanctity of marriage, others have praised him for his firm Catholic stances in these areas.He was one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. He was fluent in many languages: his native Polish as well as Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, Ancient Greek and Latin. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the last five centuries.Whether John Paul II canonised more saints than all previous popes put together is difficult to prove, as the records of many early canonisations are incomplete, missing, or inaccurate.



Biography



Early life

Karol Józef Wojtyła (Anglicized: Charles Joseph Wojtyla) was born on 18 May 1920 in the Polish town of Wadowice and was the youngest of three children of Karol Wojtyła, an ethnic Pole, and Emilia Kaczorowska, who was of Lithuanian ancestry. His mother died on 13 April 1929, when he was just eight years old. Karol"s elder sister, Olga, had died in infancy before his birth, thus, Karol grew close to his brother Edmund, who was 14 years his senior, and whom he nicknamed ‘Mundek’. However, Edmund"s work as a physician led to his contraction and death of scarlet fever, profoundly affecting Karol.As a youth, Wojtyła was an athlete and often played football as a goalkeeper; he was also a supporter of Polish club Cracovia Kraków.Christensen, John, " The early years: an unhappy childhood," CNN. His formative years were influenced by numerous contacts with the vibrant and prospering Jewish community of Wadowice. School football games were often organised between teams of Jews and Catholics, and Wojtyła would voluntarily offer himself as a substitute goalkeeper on the Jewish side if they were short of players.In the summer of 1938, Karol Wojtyła and his father left Wadowice and moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at the Jagiellonian University. While studying such topics as philology and various languages at the University, he worked as a volunteer librarian and did compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but refused to hold or fire a weapon. He also performed with various theatrical groups and worked as a playwright. During this time, his talent for language blossomed and he learned as many as 12 foreign languages, nine of which he later used extensively as Pope.In 1939, Nazi German occupation forces closed the Jagiellonian University. All able-bodied males were required to work, and, from 1940 to 1944, Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant, a manual labourer in a limestone quarry, and as a salesman for the Solvay chemical factory to avoid being deported to Germany. His father, a non-commissioned army officer, died of a heart attack in 1941, leaving Karol the sole surviving member of his immediate family. “I was not at my mother"s death, I was not at my brother"s death, I was not at my father"s death,” he said, reflecting on these times of his life, nearly forty years later, “At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved.”He later stated that he began thinking seriously about the priesthood after his father"s death, and that his vocation gradually became ‘an inner fact of unquestionable and absolute clarity.’ In October 1942, increasingly aware of his calling to the priesthood, he knocked on the door of the Archbishops Palace in Kraków, and declared that he wanted to study for the priesthood. Soon after, he began courses in the clandestine underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan, Cardinal Sapieha.On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was knocked down by a German truck. Unexpectedly, the German Wehrmacht officers tended to him and sent him to hospital. He spent two weeks there recovering from a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. This accident and his survival seemed to Wojtyła a confirmation of his priestly vocation. On 6 August 1944, ‘Black Sunday’,George Weigel, "Witness to Hope" - HarperCollins Publishers 2001, page 71 the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to avoid an uprising similarGeorge Weigel, "Witness to Hope" - HarperCollins Publishers 2001, page 71 to the previous uprising in Warsaw.George Weigel, "Witness to Hope" - HarperCollins Publishers 2001, pages 71-21 Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle"s home at 10 Tyniets Street, while German troops searched upstairs.George Weigel, "Witness to Hope" - HarperCollins Publishers 2001, pages 71-21 More than eight thousand men and boys were taken into custody that day, but Karol escaped to the Archbishop"s Palace,George Weigel, "Witness to Hope" - HarperCollins Publishers 2001, page 71 where he remained in hiding until after the Germans left. The Battle for Warsaw - Viking Penguin 2004, pages 253-254On the night of 17 January 1945, the Germans fled the city, and the students reclaimed the ruined seminary. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the unenviable task of clearing away piles of frozen excrement from the lavatories.Witness to Hope, George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999, 2001) ISBN 0-06-018793-X. That month, Wojtyła personally aided a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer who had run away from a Nazi labour camp in Częstochowa. After her collapse on a railway platform, Wojtyła personally carried her to a train and accompanied her safely to Kraków. Zierer credits Wojtyła with saving her life that day.Roberts, Genevieve., "The death of Pope John Paul II: `He saved my life - with tea, bread"", The Independent, 2005-04-03, Retrieved on 2007-06-17.Cohen, Roger., " The Polish Seminary Student and the Jewish Girl He Saved", International Herald Tribune, 2005-04-06, Retrieved on 2007-06-17. B"nai B"rith and other authorities have said that Wojtyla helped protect many other Polish Jews from the Nazis.

Priesthood

, Poland, 1948On completion of his studies at the seminary in Kraków, Karol Wojtyła was ordained as a priest on All Saints" Day, 1 November 1946, by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. He was then sent to study theology in Rome, at the Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, where he earned a licentiate and later a doctorate in sacred theology. This doctorate, the first of two, was based on the Latin dissertation The Doctrine of Faith According to Saint John of the Cross.