Saint John Paul II (1920-2005)

A home marked by mourning

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on 18 May 1920 in Wadowice, a small town in western Galicia some fifty kilometres from Kraków, and was baptized on 20 June following.^[6] He was the third child of Karol Wojtyła, a career officer in the Polish army, and Emilia Kaczorowska.^[7] The family was modest, devout, profoundly Polish and Catholic.

Very early on, death settled into the household. An elder sister had died in infancy before his birth. His mother Emilia died on 13 April 1929, when Karol — familiarly called Lolek — was not yet nine.^[8] Three years later, on 5 December 1932, his elder brother Edmund, a beloved young doctor, died of scarlet fever contracted from a patient.^[9][10] Only father and son remained. The teenager thus grew up in a grave intimacy with a silent father, a man of prayer and discipline, of whom he would later say that he was his first seminary.

A brilliant pupil, with a heart already turned to Mary

In Wadowice, Karol was a remarkable pupil, athletic, a comedian, a friend to all, including the town's many Jewish families — company that would lastingly shape his relationship with Judaism.^[11] From childhood he took the habit of praying before the image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in the parish church and of going on pilgrimage to the nearby Marian shrine of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska.^[12] This childhood Marian piety, nourished by mourning — his mother died in April 1929, the year of his first communion^[13][14] — would become the key to his whole spiritual life and would later crystallize in the motto Totus Tuus.

In 1938, Karol and his father left Wadowice for Kraków, where the young man enrolled on 22 June 1938 at the prestigious Jagiellonian University to study Polish philology, literature and theatre.^[15] At the time he dreamed of becoming a man of letters and of the stage, not a priest.

The crushing of Poland

On 1 September 1939, the German invasion abruptly shattered university life. The Nazis closed the Jagiellonian University and deported some of its professors. To escape deportation as a forced labourer and obtain the necessary papers, Karol Wojtyła worked as a labourer in a stone quarry at Zakrzówek, then at the Solvay chemical factory at Borek Fałęcki.^[16] The experience of manual labour under the occupier's boot would later nourish his reflection on the dignity of the worker, at the heart of the encyclical Laborem Exercens (1981).^[17]

Theatre as resistance of the spirit

Far from resigning himself, Wojtyła joined the cultural resistance. In 1941 he took part in the founding of Mieczysław Kotlarczyk's Rhapsodic Theatre (Teatr Rapsodyczny), a clandestine theatre where, at the risk of their freedom, young Poles kept the national language and memory alive through poetic speech.^[18][19] This passion for words and the stage never left him: as pope, he would remain a man of gesture, voice and presence, able to hold an entire square by his speech alone.

On 18 February 1941, his father died. Karol, at twenty, was now alone in the world. It was in this radical solitude that the call to the priesthood slowly matured.

Cardinal Sapieha's secret seminary

From October 1942 onwards, Wojtyła entered the clandestine major seminary of Kraków, organized underground by Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha, the "fearless prince" who stood up to the occupier.^[20] The seminarian pursued his theological studies while continuing to work at the factory, living a double life as worker and cleric. On 29 February 1944, knocked down by a German truck, he came close to death; he was picked up unconscious — an episode he would later read as an early sign of protection.^[21]

The war over, Karol Wojtyła was ordained priest on 1 November 1946 — on the solemnity of All Saints — by Cardinal Sapieha, in the private chapel of the archbishop's palace in Kraków.^[22] He celebrated his first Masses in the crypt of Wawel Cathedral, among the tombs of the kings of Poland.

Rome and Saint John of the Cross

Spotted by Sapieha, the young priest was immediately sent to Rome, where he enrolled at the Dominican pontifical university of the Angelicum. There he prepared, under the direction of the great Dominican theologian Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, a doctoral thesis on faith in Saint John of the Cross — "The doctrine of faith in Saint John of the Cross" — which he defended in 1948.^[23][24] The choice was no accident: from the very beginning, the future pope drew on the great Carmelite mysticism, on the dark night and on naked faith as the supreme means of union with God. His whole spirituality would keep this Carmelite framework of abandonment and contemplation.

Max Scheler and the human person

Back in Poland, Wojtyła was first a country curate, a students' chaplain, a hiker and confidant of a youth whom he formed by kayak and in the mountains as much as in the confessional. He then defended a second thesis (habilitation) devoted to the possibility of founding Christian ethics on the phenomenological system of Max Scheler.^[25] Having become professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), he developed a philosophy of the person wedding the rigour of Saint Thomas Aquinas to phenomenological attention to lived experience, which he summed up in his great work Person and Act (Osoba i czyn, 1969).^[26]

This anthropology — man as a person capable of self-gift — permeates all his future magisterium, from the theology of the body to Veritatis Splendor. It also explains his natural closeness to young people: Wojtyła never ceased to believe that modern man, even disoriented, is made for truth and for gift.

The youngest bishop in Poland

On 4 July 1958, Pius XII appointed Karol Wojtyła auxiliary bishop of Kraków; he was consecrated on 28 September 1958, at thirty-eight.^[27] His episcopal motto was already Totus Tuus — "Totally yours" —, a formula of Marian consecration borrowed from Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, whose reading of the Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin had been, for him the Solvay worker, a decisive discovery.^[28]

Vatican II and religious freedom

As bishop, Wojtyła took an active part in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). He contributed notably to the reflection on the Church in the modern world — the constitution Gaudium et Spes — and to the defence of religious freedom, a vital question for a bishop come from a country where the atheist State persecuted the faith.^[29] The conciliar experience made him a pastor resolutely committed to implementing the Council according to a hermeneutic of continuity: neither modernist rupture nor traditionalist refusal, but a deepening of Tradition.

On 13 January 1964, Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków; on 26 June 1967, he created him cardinal.^[30] For fourteen years, Cardinal Wojtyła waged a patient struggle against the communist regime for the rights of the Church: after years of arm-wrestling, he obtained the construction of the church of Nowa Huta, the "city without God" which the regime had wanted parish-less.

The pope come from the East

The fleeting pontificate of John Paul I — thirty-three days — left the Church orphaned in the autumn of 1978. On 16 October 1978, on the eighth ballot, the conclave elected Karol Wojtyła, who took the name John Paul II in homage to his immediate predecessors. He was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI (1522) and the first Slavic pope in history.^[31][32] On the balcony, he ventured an unprecedented sentence, in Italian, to disarm Roman mistrust: "If I make a mistake, you will correct me."^[33]

The opening cry of the pontificate

On 22 October 1978, at the Mass inaugurating his ministry, the new pope spoke the words that would remain the motto of his whole reign — a call not to be afraid to open man and societies to Christ:

"Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ! To his saving power open the frontiers of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development." — John Paul II, homily for the inauguration of the pontificate, 22 October 1978^[34]

Behind the Iron Curtain, the message was heard like a thunderclap. The pope was addressing not only Catholics: he was calling entire peoples to shake off the fear which totalitarian regimes maintained as their first weapon. It was no accident that, less than eight months later, his first journey to Poland (June 1979) triggered a national awakening from which, the following year, the Solidarność trade union would be born (see Solidarność and Saint John Paul II). On the detail of his pontificate — government of the Church, journeys, diplomacy —, see the dedicated article Pope Saint John Paul II; the present notice concentrates on the man and the saint.

John Paul II leaves a doctrinal work of considerable scope: 14 encyclicals, dozens of apostolic letters, the new Code of Canon Law (1983), the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) and thousands of homilies and catecheses. Three axes dominate.

The truth of man redeemed by Christ

His first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (4 March 1979), sets the programme: Christ the Redeemer is the centre of the cosmos and of history, and "man is the way of the Church".^[35] This Christocentric anthropology then unfolds in the great moral encyclicals: Veritatis Splendor (1993), which refounds moral theology on the truth of the good and the existence of intrinsically evil acts, and Evangelium Vitae (1995), a vibrant plea for the inviolability of human life against what he calls the "culture of death".^[36]

Faith and reason, social doctrine

With Fides et Ratio (1998), John Paul II defends the alliance of faith and reason against contemporary scepticism — "faith and reason are like the two wings which enable the human spirit to rise towards the contemplation of truth".^[37] In social matters, his encyclicals Laborem Exercens (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and above all Centesimus Annus (1991) — published in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc — renew the social doctrine of the Church between the pitfalls of collectivism and soulless capitalism.

The theology of the body

From 1979 to 1984, the pope devoted 129 Wednesday catecheses to what would be called the theology of the body: a reading of God's plan for human love, sexuality and marriage starting from the "beginning" of Genesis.^[38] Often regarded as one of his most original contributions, it proposes an anthropology of the person made for self-gift, in which the body itself becomes "theology", the visible sign of the mystery of God.

The pope of the young

Convinced that the future of the faith is decided among the young, John Paul II instituted at the end of 1985 the World Youth Days (WYD). The first diocesan edition took place on Palm Sunday 1986; the first international WYD was held in Buenos Aires in 1987.^[39] From Santiago de Compostela (1989) to Manila (1995, the largest gathering in history) to Rome for the Jubilee 2000, these gatherings became the signature of a pope who, despite age and sickness, knew how to electrify millions of young people.

13 May 1981

On 13 May 1981, in St Peter's Square, amid the crowd of the general audience, the Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Ağca shot the pope at point-blank range, who collapsed in his jeep, gravely wounded in the abdomen.^[40][41] Rushed to the Gemelli clinic, operated on for more than five hours, John Paul II barely survived.

The date immediately struck the pope: 13 May is the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima (13 May 1917). He saw in it the sign of a Marian protection. According to reported remarks, he confided his conviction that "a maternal hand guided the trajectory of the bullet", saving him in extremis on the threshold of death.^[42][43] As a sign of gratitude, he had the bullet that had struck him set into the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.^[44]

Forgiveness for his aggressor

Two years later, on 27 December 1983, John Paul II went to Rebibbia prison to meet Ali Ağca in his cell, talk with him at length and forgive him — a universal image of Christian mercy which travelled around the world.^[45] The attempt marked a turning point: convinced that he had been restored to life for a mission, the pope bound his ministry still more closely to the message of Fatima and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to which he solemnly consecrated the world on 25 March 1984, in St Peter's Square, in union with the bishops of the world.^[46]

Beneath the media pope and the tireless doctor stood a man of prayer of whom those close to him testify that he spent long hours prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament, his face in his hands. His holiness, recognized by the Church, rests on a few clearly identifiable spiritual pillars.

Totus Tuus: all for Mary

The motto Totus Tuus says the essential. Borrowed from Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, it expresses a total consecration to Jesus through Mary. In his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), John Paul II himself returns to what he owes Montfort:

"Totus tuus. This expression is not only an expression of devotion: it is more. [...] Our perfection consists in being conformed, united and consecrated to Jesus Christ; hence the most perfect of all devotions is undoubtedly that which conforms, unites and consecrates us most perfectly to Jesus Christ. Now, since Mary is of all creatures the one most conformed to Jesus Christ, it follows that [...] devotion to the Blessed Virgin [...] consecrates and conforms us most perfectly to Jesus Christ." — Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, quoted by John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, §15^[47]

It is this Marian trust which gives the pope his inner freedom: having entrusted everything to Mary, he has nothing left to protect. It is also this trust which restores the Rosary to the heart of Catholic devotion: in 2002, he added the luminous mysteries to the three traditional series and proclaimed a Year of the Rosary.^[48]

Divine Mercy and Saint Faustina

The other great focus of his spirituality is Divine Mercy. A son of the same land as Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), the humble Kraków religious to whom Christ had entrusted the message of Mercy, Wojtyła had, from his episcopate onwards, defended her cause. As pope, he gave it universal scope. From his second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (1980), he made mercy the key to the Gospel.^[49] On 30 April 2000, canonizing Saint Faustina — the first saint of the Great Jubilee —, he instituted for the whole Church the Sunday of Divine Mercy:

"It is important then that we accept the whole message that comes to us from the word of God on this Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church will be called Divine Mercy Sunday." — John Paul II, homily for the canonization of Saint Faustina, 30 April 2000^[50]

Heaven would seem to ratify this bond: John Paul II died on 2 April 2005, on the very eve of that Divine Mercy Sunday which he had instituted five years earlier.^[51]

Suffering offered up

As Parkinson's disease stiffened his body, blurred his speech and bent his tall stature, the pope transformed his decline into preaching. He who had written, as early as 1984, the apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris on the Christian meaning of suffering, became its living commentary:

"Those who suffer in union with Christ [...] not only receive from Christ strength [...], but complete by their suffering what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." — John Paul II, apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris, 11 February 1984, §24^[52]

Refusing to hide, he offered the world the spectacle, scandalous for the age, of a powerful man who does not flee weakness. His last public appearance, on Palm Sunday then on Wednesday 30 March 2005, when he tried in vain to speak to the crowd from his window, was a mute catechesis on the dignity of the dying.

A pope of the holiness of others

An often noted spiritual trait: John Paul II canonized 482 saints and beatified 1,338 blesseds, more than all his predecessors combined since the institution of the modern processes.^[53] Far from inflation, this choice expresses a conviction: holiness is not reserved for an elite, it is the universal vocation of every baptized person, recalled by Vatican II. Among those he raised to the altars figure Saint Maximilian Kolbe, whom he proclaimed martyr of charity (1982), Saint Edith Stein, co-patroness of Europe (1998-1999), Saint Padre Pio (2002), Saint Annibale Maria di Francia (2004) and, among those he beatified, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (2003).

The pilgrim pope of the Jubilee

The Great Jubilee of the year 2000 is the summit of his pontificate. The pope wants a Church entering the third millennium purified. On 12 March 2000, the first Sunday of Lent, he presided over an unprecedented liturgy of asking pardon for the faults committed by sons of the Church in the course of history — the Inquisition, divisions among Christians, wrongs done to the Jewish people, to women, to evangelized peoples.^[54] A few days later, during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he slipped a prayer asking pardon into a crevice of the Western Wall in Jerusalem (26 March 2000), a gesture of immense significance for reconciliation between Jews and Christians.^[55]

The boldness of dialogue

The first pope known to enter a synagogue — that of Rome, on 13 April 1986, where he greeted the Jews as "our elder brothers" —, the first pope to enter a mosque (Damascus, 2001), John Paul II also convened in 1986 the interreligious meeting of Assisi for peace.^[56] This dialogue never dilutes the proclamation of Christ: it proceeds from the conviction, expressed in Redemptoris Missio (1990), that the Church must propose Christ to all, without ever imposing him.

"Let me go to the house of the Father"

On the evening of 2 April 2005, after a slow agony followed by the whole world, John Paul II died in his apartments in the Apostolic Palace.^[57] According to those close to him, his last words expressed a desire to go "to the house of the Father". The news plunged the planet into an unparalleled mourning. At his funeral, on 8 April 2005, presided over by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Benedict XVI —, the immense crowd brandished banners demanding his immediate canonization: Santo subito! ("Sainthood now!"). Ratzinger concluded his homily with an image that has remained famous:

"We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father's house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father." — Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, homily at the funeral of John Paul II, 8 April 2005^[58]

From venerable to saint

The cause of beatification was opened with exceptional speed. The miracle retained was the unexplained healing of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand, a French religious suffering from Parkinson's disease — the pope's very disease —, healed in the night of 2 to 3 June 2005 after praying to the deceased pontiff.^[59] Benedict XVI beatified John Paul II on 1 May 2011, on Divine Mercy Sunday.

A second miracle — the healing of the Costa Rican Floribeth Mora Díaz, stricken with an inoperable cerebral aneurysm and healed on the day of the 2011 beatification — opened the way to canonization.^[60] On 27 April 2014, Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis canonized John Paul II together with John XXIII, in the presence of Benedict XVI: for the first time, two popes canonized two others.^[61] His liturgical feast was fixed on 22 October, the anniversary of the inauguration of his pontificate.

A witness of the twentieth century

Karol Wojtyła crossed the whole century of ideologies without ever yielding either to fear or to hatred. Shaped by mourning, forced labour, the Nazi occupation and communist oppression, he made his experience into an anthropology of hope: man, created and redeemed, is reducible neither to an economic cog nor to the State's raw material. This conviction, proclaimed on 22 October 1978, helped crack the Soviet bloc without the Church firing a single shot.

A school of holiness

But his deepest legacy is not political. It is to have shown, even in his broken body, that holiness is possible today — for a pope as for a Solvay worker, for a Kraków Carmelite as for a Calcutta religious. "Do not be afraid", his first word, was also the final meaning of his life: having entrusted everything to Mary, Totus Tuus, he could give everything. The Church, by canonizing him on Divine Mercy Sunday, only publicly recognized what the crowd was already crying over his coffin.

• Pope Saint John Paul II (1920-2005) — the dossier devoted to his pontificate, his government of the Church and his travels.
• Solidarność and Saint John Paul II (1978-1989) — his role in the Polish awakening and the fall of communism.
• Saint John XXIII (1881-1963) — the "good pope" of the Council, canonized on the same day as he.
• Saint Paul VI (1897-1978) — the pope who created him cardinal and completed Vatican II.
• Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) — the martyr of Auschwitz whom he proclaimed "martyr of charity" in 1982.
• Saint Edith Stein (1891-1942) — the Carmelite who died at Auschwitz, whom he canonized and proclaimed co-patroness of Europe.
• Saint Padre Pio (1887-1968) — the stigmatist of the Gargano whom he canonized in 2002.
• Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) — the apostle of the poorest whom he beatified in 2003.
• Saint Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938) — the apostle of Divine Mercy, first saint of the Jubilee 2000.