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A sea of humanity, in a spontaneous outpouring of grief and affection, converged on The Holy See on the weekend after Easter. His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God, had been gravely ill and had died at the age of 84 on 2 April 2005, in his chambers in the Episcopal Palace, Vatican City.
Pope John Paul II, often referred to as the Holy Father, is, in the opinion of some, “the man of the century.” Who can ever forget the day he appeared on television sets around the world and cried out for the first time, “Do not be afraid!” that he began his pontificate with? The Pope had lived through World War II, the Nazis, and the communists. He knew the terrible fears that can dominate people’s lives, and sometimes even paralyse them. Born Karol Joseph Wojtyla (popularly known as Lolek) in Wadowice, Poland, on 18 May 1920, to an administrative officer in the Polish army and a former schoolteacher, the Wojtylas were strict Catholics. One of Wojtyla’s childhood friends was Jerzy Kluger, a Jew who many years later would play a key role as a go-between for John Paul II and Israeli officials when the Vatican extended diplomatic recognition to Israel, in 1993, leading to the historic rapprochement with Jews and ending 2000 years of hostililty. Indeed, Wojtyla became the first pope to visit a synagogue and the first to visit the Holocaust memorial at Auschwitz. In ending the Catholic-Jewish estrangement, he called Jews “our elder brothers.” In a momentous gesture–one that brought tears to many eyes–he left a personal note in the cracks of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem asking for forgiveness for the past sins of Christians against Jews.
The Pope in an extraordinary way also engaged with Muslims and Islam. The Pope addressing a gathering of intellectuals in mostly Muslim Kazakhstan said, “I wish to reaffirm the Catholic Church’s respect for Islam, for authentic Islam, the Islam that prays, that is concerned for those in need…” While visiting the Catholic patriarchate of Baghdad, on 4 May 1999, a Muslim offered a copy of the Koran as a gift to the Pope, which he received and kissed—a gesture that is normally reserved for the book of the Gospels, the lectionary, or the missal at holy Mass. In 2001, in a first ever visit by a Roman Pontiff to an Islamic house of prayer, he made a spectacular visit to the great mosque of Damascus, which according to Islam is a holy place, and consequently the Pope had to remove his shoes. In the courtyard, he stood and prayed before a statue of St. John the Baptist that reputedly contains the Baptist’s head. During his trip to Sudan, the Pope declared: “Baraka Allah as-Sudan! May Allah bless the Sudan!”
Ordained in 1946 in Krakow, he spent much of the next few years studying–earning two masters degrees and a doctorate–before taking up priestly duties as an assistant pastor in Krakow in 1949. In the early years of his priesthood, Wojtyla served as a chaplain to university students at St. Florian’s Church in Krakow. The church was conveniently located next to Jagiellonian University, where he was working on a second doctorate in philosophy. When the university’s theology department was abolished in 1954, presumably under pressure from the communist government, the entire faculty reconstituted itself at the Seminary of Krakow, and Wojtyla continued his studies there. In 1956, he was appointed to the Chair of Ethics at Catholic University and his ascent through the church hierarchy got a boost in 1958 when he was named the auxiliary bishop of Krakow. When the Vatican Council II began the deliberations in 1962 that would revolutionise the church, Wojtyla was one of its intellectual leaders and took special interest in religious freedom. The same year, he was named the acting archbishop of Krakow when the incumbent died.
Wojtyla shrewdly did not let his distaste for communism show, and the government welcomed his appointment as cardinal in 1967 by Pope Paul VI. Wojtyla, considered “tough but flexible” and a moderate reformer, was an improvement on old-school hard-liners who were inflexibly opposed to communism. He bided his time, engaging in a strategy that honoured Catholic beliefs and traditions while accommodating the communist government. According to George Weigel, who has written extensively about the Pope, Wojtyla demanded permits to build churches, defended youth groups and ordained priests to work underground in Czechoslovakia. When once asked if he feared retribution from government officials he replied, “I’m not afraid of them: they are afraid of me.”
Despite all his engagements, Wojtyla carried on with his scholarly pursuits. He wrote a treatise in 1960 called “Love and Responsibility” that laid out the foundation for what Weigel calls “a modern Catholic sexual ethic.” His second doctoral thesis—“Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethic based on the System of Max Scheler”—was published that same year. Although he had established himself as a formidable intellectual presence, as well as an able administrator and fund-raiser, few suspected that the Sacred College of Cardinals would eventually choose Wojtyla as the next pope after the death of John Paul I in September of 1978. However, in 1978, at the age of 58, he was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church, and became the first non-Italian Pope chosen in over four and a half centuries, and the youngest Pope in this century.
Less than eight months after his 1978 inauguration, Karol Joseph Wojtyla returned to Poland–officially, an atheistic country–as Pope John Paul II for nine cathartic days. “His secretary told me that was the great moment,” says Robert Moynihan, editor and publisher of the magazine Inside the Vatican. “There was a crowd of one million people, and he told them ‘You are men. You have dignity. Don’t crawl on your bellies.’ It was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.”
During the following years the Pope’s health was slowly deteriorating, and in January 2001, one of his doctors publicly acknowledged that he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The slight stoop to his shoulder, though, which was particularly noticeable when he was tired, was a result of the two accidents that he had had in his youth. Once hit by a streetcar, he was again hit by a truck in 1944.
The Catholic church John Paul II inherited in 1978 was in shambles. Reforms begun by the Vatican Council II shook the church to its foundation. “The church went through a tremendous crisis,” says Moynihan. “It knocked the church to its knees. It lost one-third of its priests and a tremendous number of nuns.” John Paul II embarked on nothing less than a restoration of the church, one grounded in its conservative tradition, but his absolute rejection and unbending, almost dictatorial manner in certain issues has not always played well. Catholics loved the preacher, but some did not like the preachings. Margaret Steinfels, the editor of the Catholic magazine Commonweal and a more moderate critic of the Pope, accuses him of polarising issues. In his opposition to contraception, abortion and euthanasia, for example, he has accused the industrialised world of fostering a “culture of death.” She says: “I don’t deny that there are many problems in the US and the West, but I don’t think that calling it a ‘culture of death’ and the church the ‘church of life’ is a useful way of dealing with things. I disagree with his metaphors.” The Pope also has confounded Steinfels and many others with his insistence that church doctrine prohibits the ordination of women. In affirming his position, in a letter to bishops in 1994, he wrote in uncompromising fashion, “this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.”
His rigidity on issues with international ramifications, e.g. birth control in Africa, has drawn strong criticism. “The church’s refusal of condoms even for saving lives is absolutely incomprehensible,” French journalist Henri Tincq told Time. “It disqualifies the church from having any role in the whole debate over AIDS.” Nevertheless, said Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the Catholic magazine First Things, “This pope has the church in a stronger position than it’s been in since the Protestant division in the 16th century. When has the Catholic church had as much respect as it does today?”
Despite the dogged controversies, which some observes feel may have prevented him from winning the Nobel Peace Prize during his lifetime, Pope John Paul II remains the most travelled Pope in the 2000-year history of the Church, having visited 126 countries and displaying supreme charisma over the years–he is said to be the most recognised person in the world. And as Time noted in naming him Man of the Year in 1994, he generates an electricity “unmatched by anyone else on earth.”
Currently, the office of Pope is vacant, a condition known as sede vacante or vacant seat. A conclave will assemble between April 17 and April 22 to conduct a Papal Election to elect a new Pope.
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