Pope John Paul II

For other uses, see Pope John Paul II (disambiguation).

Pope Saint John Paul II
Pope, Bishop of Rome
John Paul II in 1993
Native name	Polish: Jan Paweł II
Papacy began	16 October 1978
Papacy ended	2 April 2005 (26 years, 5 months, 2 weeks and 3 days)
Predecessor	John Paul I
Successor	Benedict XVI
Orders
Ordination	1 November 1946 by Adam Stefan Sapieha
Consecration	28 September 1958 by Eugeniusz Baziak
Created cardinal	26 June 1967 by Paul VI
Personal details
Born	Karol Józef Wojtyła (1920-05-18)18 May 1920 Wadowice, Republic of Poland
Died	2 April 2005(2005-04-02) (aged 84) Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Nationality	Polish (with Vatican citizenship)
Denomination	Catholic (Roman Rite)
Previous post(s)	Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków, Poland (1958–1964) Titular Bishop of Ombi (1958–1964) Archbishop of Kraków, Poland (1964–1978) Cardinal-Priest of San Cesareo in Palatio (1967–1978)
Motto	[Totus Tuus] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (Totally yours)
Signature
Coat of arms
Sainthood
Feast day	22 October
Beatified	1 May 2011 St. Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI
Canonized	27 April 2014 St. Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope Francis
Patronage	Archdiocese of Kraków World Youth Day (Co-Patron) Young Catholics Families Świdnica
Other popes named John Paul

Pope Saint John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła (Polish: [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛf vɔjˈtɨwa]; 18 May 1920 ‒ 2 April 2005), also known as Saint John Paul the Great, was the 264th pope of the Catholic Church from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005. He was the second longest-serving pope in modern history after Pope Pius IX who served for 31 years from 1846 to 1878. Born in Poland, John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI who served from 1522 to 1523.

John Paul II is recognised as helping to end Communist rule in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. He upheld the Church's teachings against artificial contraception and the ordination of women, supported the Church's Second Vatican Council and its reform, and in general held firm to orthodox Catholic stances.

He was one of the most travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. 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 preceding five centuries. By the time of his death, he had named most of the College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated a large number of the world's bishops, and ordained many priests. A key goal of his papacy was to transform and reposition the Catholic Church. His wish was "to place his Church at the heart of a new religious alliance that would bring together Jews, Muslims and Christians in a great [religious] armada."

John Paul II's cause for canonisation commenced in 2005 one month after his death with the traditional five-year waiting period waived. On 19 December 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed Venerable by his successor Pope Benedict XVI and was beatified on 1 May 2011 after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints attributed one miracle to him, the healing of a French nun from Parkinson's disease. A second miracle, attributed to the late pope, was approved on 2 July 2013 and confirmed by Pope Francis two days later. John Paul II was canonised on 27 April 2014, alongside Pope John XXIII. Like John XXIII, his feast day is not celebrated on the date of his death as is usual, but on the anniversary of his papal inauguration, 22 October 1978.

Early life

Main article: Early life of Pope John Paul II

The wedding portrait of Pope Saint John Paul II's parents, Emilia and Karol Wojtyła Snr

The courtyard within the family home of the Wojtyłas in Wadowice, Poland

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in the Polish town of Wadowice. He was the youngest of three children born to Karol Wojtyła (1879–1941), an ethnic Pole, and Emilia Kaczorowska (1884–1929), and whose mother's maiden surname was Scholz. Emilia, who was a schoolteacher, died in childbirth in 1929 when Wojtyła was eight years old. His elder sister Olga had died before his birth, but he was close to his brother Edmund, nicknamed Mundek, who was 13 years his senior. Edmund's work as a physician eventually led to his death from scarlet fever, a loss which affected Wojtyła deeply.

As a boy, Wojtyła was athletic, often playing football as goalkeeper. During his childhood, Wojtyła had contact with Wadowice's large Jewish community. School football games were often organised between teams of Jews and Catholics, and Wojtyła often played on the Jewish side. "I remember that at least a third of my classmates at elementary school in Wadowice were Jews. At elementary school there were fewer. With some I was on very friendly terms. And what struck me about some of them was their Polish patriotism." Wojtyła's first, and possibly only, love affair was with a Jewish girl, Ginka Beer, who was described as "slender", "a superb actress" and "having stupendous dark eyes and jet black hair".

In mid-1938, 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, he worked as a volunteer librarian and was required to participate in compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but he refused to fire a weapon. He 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 used extensively as pope.

Nazi occupation of Poland and the Holocaust

In 1939, Nazi German occupation forces closed the university after invading Poland. Able-bodied males were required to work, so from 1940 to 1944 Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant, a manual labourer in a limestone quarry and for the Solvay chemical factory, to avoid deportation to Germany. His father, a former Austro-Hungarian non-commissioned officer and later officer in the Polish Army, died of a heart attack in 1941, leaving Wojtyła as the immediate family's only surviving member. "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."

The tomb of the parents of Pope Saint John Paul II at Rakowicki Cemetery in Kraków, Poland

After his father's death, he started thinking seriously about the priesthood. In October 1942, while the war continued, he knocked on the door of the Bishop's Palace in Kraków and asked 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 hit by a German truck. German Wehrmacht officers tended to him and sent him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there recovering from a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. It seemed to him that this accident and his survival was a confirmation of his vocation. On 6 August 1944, a day known as 'Black Sunday', the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to curtail the uprising, similar to the recent uprising in Warsaw. Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle's house at 10 Tyniecka Street, while the German troops searched above. More than eight thousand men and boys were taken that day, while Wojtyła escaped to the Archbishop's Palace, where he remained until after the Germans had left.

On 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 task of clearing away piles of frozen excrement from the toilets. Wojtyła also helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer, who had run away from a Nazi labour camp in Częstochowa. Edith had collapsed on a railway platform, so Wojtyła carried her to a train and stayed with her throughout the journey to Kraków. Edith credits Wojtyła with saving her life that day. B'nai B'rith and other authorities have said that Wojtyła helped protect many other Polish Jews from the Nazis. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a Jewish family sent its son, Stanley Berger, to be hidden by a Gentile Polish family. Berger's biological Jewish parents died during the Holocaust, and after the war Berger's new Christian parents asked a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, to baptise the boy. The future pope refused, claiming that the child should be raised in the Jewish faith of his birth parents and nation, not as a Catholic. In September 2003, Emmanuelle Pacifici, the head of Italy's Jewish community, proposed that John Paul II receive the medal of a Righteous Among the Nations for saving a two-year-old Jewish boy by giving him to a Gentile Polish family to be hidden in 1942, when Karol Wojtyla was just a seminarian. After the war, this boy's Christian adopted parents asked the future Pope John Paul II to baptise the boy, yet once again he refused, as with Berger. After the war, Karol Wojtyla did everything he could to ensure that this Jewish boy he saved leave Poland to be raised by his Jewish relatives in the United States. In April 2005, shortly after John Paul II's death, the Israeli government created a commission to honour the legacy of John Paul II. One of the proposed ways of honouring him was to give him the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. In Wojtyła's last book, Memory and Identity, he described the 12 years of the Nazi régime as 'bestiality', quoting from the Polish theologian and philosopher Konstanty Michalski.

Priesthood

Ordination history of Pope John Paul II
History Diaconal ordination Ordained by Stefan Card Sapieha (Kraków) Date 20 October 1946 Priestly ordination Ordained by Stefan Card Sapieha (Kraków) Date 1 November 1946 Episcopal consecration Principal consecrator Eugeniusz Baziak (Kraków AA) Co-consecrators Franciszek Jop (Sandomierz aux) Bolesław Kominek Date 28 September 1958 Place Wawel Cathedral  Cardinalate Elevated by Paul VI Date 26 June 1967
Episcopal succession Bishops consecrated by Pope John Paul II as principal consecrator Piotr Bednarczyk 21 April 1968 Józef Rozwadowski 24 November 1968 Stanislaw Smolenski 5 April 1970 Albin Małysiak CM 5 April 1970 Paweł Socha CM 26 December 1973 Józef Marek 27 December 1973 Franciszek Macharski 6 January 1979 Justo Mullor García 27 May 1979 Alfio Rapisarda 27 May 1979 Achille Silvestrini 27 May 1979 Samuel Seraphimov Djoundrine AA 27 May 1979 Rubén López Ardón 27 May 1979 Paulino Lukudu Loro FSCJ 27 May 1979 Vincent Mojwok Nyiker 27 May 1979 Armido Gasparini FSCJ 27 May 1979 Michael Hughes Kenny 27 May 1979 William Russell Houck 27 May 1979 José Cardoso Sobrinho OCarm 27 May 1979 Gerhard Ludwig Goebel MSF 27 May 1979 Décio Pereira 27 May 1979 Fernando José Penteado 27 May 1979 Girolamo Grillo 27 May 1979 Paciano Basilio Aniceto 27 May 1979 Alan Basil de Lastic 27 May 1979 William Thomas Larkin 27 May 1979 John Joseph O'Connor 27 May 1979 Jean-Marie Lafontaine 27 May 1979 Ladislau Biernaski CM 27 May 1979 Newton Holanda Gurgel 27 May 1979 Matthew Harvey Clark 27 May 1979 Alejandro Goic Karmelic 27 May 1979 Pedro G. Magugat MSC 27 May 1979 Ramón López Carrozas OdeM 27 May 1979 Jozef Tomko 15 September 1979 Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky 12 November 1979 Giovanni Coppa 6 January 1980 Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini SJ 6 January 1980 Christian Wiyghan Tumi 6 January 1980 Marcel Bam'ba Gongoa 4 May 1980 Louis Nkinga Bondala CICM 4 May 1980 Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya 4 May 1980 Paride Taban 4 May 1980 Roger Mpungu 4 May 1980 Michel-Joseph-Gérard Gagnon MAfr 4 May 1980 Dominique Kimpinde Amando 4 May 1980 Joseph Nduhirubusa 4 May 1980 Vicente Joaquim Zico CM 6 January 1981 Sergio Goretti 6 January 1981 Giulio Sanguineti 6 January 1981 Francesco Voto 6 January 1981 Gregory Obinna Ochiagha 6 January 1981 Anicetus Bongsu Antonius Sinaga OFM Cap 6 January 1981 Lucas Luis Dónnelly Carey OdeM 6 January 1981 Filippo Giannini 6 January 1981 Ennio Appignanesi 6 January 1981 Martino Scarafile 6 January 1981 Alessandro Plotti 6 January 1981 Stanisław Szymecki 12 April 1981 Charles Louis Joseph Vandame SJ 6 January 1982 John Bulaitis 6 January 1982 Traian Crişan 6 January 1982 Charles Kweku Sam 6 January 1982 Thomas Joseph O'Brien 6 January 1982 Antônio Alberto Guimarães Rezende CSS 6 January 1982 Francis George Adeodatus Micallef OCD 6 January 1982 Anthony Michael Milone 6 January 1982 Salim Sayegh 6 January 1982 Virgilio Noè 6 March 1982 Antonio Vitale Bommarco OFM Conv 6 January 1983 José Sebastián Laboa Gallego 6 January 1983 Karl-Josef Rauber 6 January 1983 Francesco Monterisi 6 January 1983 Kevin Joseph Aje 6 January 1983 John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan 6 January 1983 Pietro Rossano 6 January 1983 Anacleto Sima Ngua 6 January 1983 Ildefonso Obama Obono 6 January 1983 Jaroslav Škarvada 6 January 1983 Dominik Hrušovský 6 January 1983 Luigi del Gallo Roccagiovine 6 January 1983 Zenon Grocholewski 6 January 1983 Juliusz Paetz 6 January 1983 Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler SDB 1 November 1983 Paolo Romeo 6 January 1984 Paul Kim Tchang-ryeol 6 January 1984 Polycarp Pengo 6 January 1984 Nicolas Okioh 6 January 1984 Eugenio Binini 6 January 1984 Ernest Kombo SJ 6 January 1984 Jan Pieter Schotte CICM 6 January 1984 Domenico Pecile 6 January 1984 Bernard Patrick Devlin 6 January 1985 Kazimierz Górny 6 January 1985 Aloysius Balina 6 January 1985 Afonso Nteka OFM Cap 6 January 1985 Pellegrino Tomaso Ronchi OFM Cap 6 January 1985 Fernando Sáenz Lacalle 6 January 1985 Jorge Arturo Augustin Cardinal Medina Estévez 6 January 1985 Justin Francis Rigali 14 September 1985 Pier Luigi Celata 6 January 1986 Franjo Komarica 6 January 1986 Walmir Alberto Valle IMC 6 January 1986 Norbert Wendelin Mtega 6 January 1986 John Bosco Manat Chuabsamai 6 January 1986 Donald William Wuerl 6 January 1986 Felipe González González OFM Cap 6 January 1986 Józef Michalik 16 October 1986 Gilberto Agustoni 6 January 1987 Franc Perko 6 January 1987 Dino Monduzzi 6 January 1987 Joseph Sangval Surasarang 6 January 1987 George Biguzzi SX 6 January 1987 Benedict Dotu Sekey 6 January 1987 Julio Edgar Cabrera Ovalle 6 January 1987 William Jerome McCormack 6 January 1987 Emmanuel A. Mapunda 6 January 1987 Dominic Su Haw Chiu 6 January 1987 John Magee SPS 17 March 1987 Beniamino Stella 5 September 1987 René Pierre Louis Joseph Séjourné 5 September 1987 Giulio Nicolini 5 September 1987 Giovanni Battista Re 7 November 1987 Michel Sabbah 6 January 1988 Marian Oles 6 January 1988 Emery Kabongo Kanundowi 6 January 1988 Luís d'Andrea OFM Conv 6 January 1988 Victor Adibe Chikwe 6 January 1988 Athanasius Atule Usuh 6 January 1988

On finishing his studies at the seminary in Kraków, Wojtyła was ordained as a priest on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946, by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. Sapieha sent Wojtyła to Rome's Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum to study under the French Dominican Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange beginning on 26 November 1946. Wojtyła earned a licence in July 1947, passed his doctoral exam on 14 June 1948, and successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce (The Doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross) in philosophy on 19 June 1948. The Angelicum preserves the original copy of Wojtyła's typewritten thesis. Among other courses at the Angelicum, Wojtyła studied Hebrew with the Dutch Dominican Peter G. Duncker, author of the Compendium grammaticae linguae hebraicae biblicae.

According to Wojtyła's schoolmate the future Austrian Cardinal Alfons Stickler, in 1947 during his sojourn at the Angelicum Wojtyła visited Padre Pio who heard his confession and told him that one day he would ascend to "the highest post in the Church." Cardinal Stickler added that Wojtyła believed that the prophecy was fulfilled when he became a Cardinal.

Wojtyła returned to Poland in the summer of 1948 for his first pastoral assignment in the village of Niegowić, fifteen miles (24 km) from Kraków, at the Church of the Assumption. He arrived at Niegowić at harvest time, where his first action was to kneel and kiss the ground. This gesture, which he adapted from the French saint Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, would become a 'trademark' action during his papacy.

The Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum in Rome, Italy

In March 1949, Wojtyła was transferred to the parish of Saint Florian in Kraków. He taught ethics at Jagiellonian University and subsequently at the Catholic University of Lublin. While teaching, he gathered a group of about 20 young people, who began to call themselves Rodzinka, the "little family". They met for prayer, philosophical discussion, and to help the blind and sick. The group eventually grew to approximately 200 participants, and their activities expanded to include annual skiing and kayaking trips.

In 1953, Wojtyła's habilitation thesis was accepted by the Faculty of Theology at the Jagiellonian University. In 1954, he earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, evaluating the feasibility of a Catholic ethic based on the ethical system of the phenomenologist Max Scheler with a dissertation entitled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler" (Ocena możliwości zbudowania etyki chrześcijańskiej przy założeniach systemu Maksa Schelera). Scheler was a German philosopher who founded a broad philosophical movement which emphasised the study of conscious experience. However, the Communist authorities abolished the Faculty of Theology at the Jagellonian University thereby preventing him from receiving the degree until 1957. Wojtyła developed a theological approach which combined traditional Catholic Thomism with the ideas of personalism, a philosophical approach deriving from phenomenology, which was popular among Catholic intellectuals in Kraków during Wojtyła's intellectual development. He translated Scheler's Formalism and the Ethics of Substantive Values.

During this period, Wojtyła wrote a series of articles in Kraków's Catholic newspaper, Tygodnik Powszechny ("Universal Weekly"), dealing with contemporary church issues. He focused on creating original literary work during his first dozen years as a priest. War, life under Communism, and his pastoral responsibilities all fed his poetry and plays. Wojtyła published his work under two pseudonyms — Andrzej Jawień and Stanisław Andrzej Gruda — to distinguish his literary from his religious writings (under his own name), and also so that his literary works would be considered on their merits. In 1960, Wojtyła published the influential theological book Love and Responsibility, a defence of traditional Church teachings on marriage from a new philosophical standpoint.

"Wujek"

While a priest in Kraków, groups of students regularly joined Wojtyła for hiking, skiing, bicycling, camping and kayaking, accompanied by prayer, outdoor Masses and theological discussions. In Stalinist-era Poland, it was not permitted for priests to travel with groups of students. Father Wojtyła asked his younger companions to call him "Wujek" (Polish for "Uncle") to prevent outsiders from deducing he was a priest. The nickname gained popularity among his followers. In 1958, when Wojtyła was named auxiliary bishop of Kraków, his acquaintances expressed concern that this would cause him to change. Wojtyła responded to his friends, "Wujek will remain Wujek," and he continued to live a simple life, shunning the trappings that came with his position as Bishop. This beloved nickname stayed with Wojtyła for his entire life and continues to be affectionately used, particularly by the Polish people.

Bishop and Cardinal

File:Giovanni Paolo I e II.jpg

Pope John Paul I with then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla at the Vatican on 4 September 1978

On 4 July 1958, while Wojtyła was on a kayaking holiday in the lakes region of northern Poland, Pope Pius XII appointed him as the Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków. He was then summoned to Warsaw to meet the Primate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, who informed him of his appointment. He agreed to serve as Auxiliary Bishop to Kraków's Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak, and he was ordained to the Episcopate (as Titular Bishop of Ombi) on 28 September 1958. Baziak was the principal consecrator. Principal co-consecrators were then-Auxiliary Bishop Boleslaw Kominek (Titular Bishop of Sophene and Vaga; of the Catholic Archdiocese of Wrocław and future Cardinal Archbishop of Wrocław) and then-Auxiliary Bishop Franciszek Jop of the Catholic Diocese of Sandomierz (Titular Bishop of Daulia; later Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Wrocław and then Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Opole). At the age of 38, Wojtyła became the youngest bishop in Poland. Baziak died in June 1962 and on 16 July Wojtyła was selected as Vicar Capitular (temporary administrator) of the Archdiocese until an Archbishop could be appointed.

In October 1962, Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), where he made contributions to two of its most historic and influential products, the Decree on Religious Freedom (in Latin, Dignitatis Humanae) and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes). Wojtyła and the Polish bishops contributed a draft text to the Council for Gaudium et Spes. According to the historian John W. O'Malley, the draft text Gaudium et Spes which Wojtyła and the Polish delegation sent "had some influence on the version that was sent to the council fathers that summer but was not accepted as the base text". According to John F. Crosby, as pope, John Paul II used the words of Gaudium et Spes later to introduce his own views on the nature of the human person in relation to God: man is "the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake", but man "can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself".

He also participated in the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops. On 13 January 1964, Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków. On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Karol Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals. Wojtyła was named Cardinal-Priest of the titulus of San Cesareo in Palatio.

In 1967, he was instrumental in formulating the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which dealt with the same issues that forbid abortion and artificial birth control.

In 1970, according to a contemporary witness, Cardinal Wojtyła was against the distribution of a letter around Kraków, stating that the Polish Episcopate was preparing for the 50th anniversary of the Polish-Soviet War.

Election to the papacy

Papal styles of Pope John Paul II
Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	Saint

Main article: Papal conclave, October 1978

The newly elected Pope Saint John Paul II stands on the balcony at St. Peter's Basilica on 14 October 1978 in Vatican City.

The coat of arms of Pope Saint John Paul II displaying the Marian Cross with the letter M signifying the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus

In August 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Wojtyła voted in the Papal conclave which elected Pope John Paul I. John Paul I died after only 33 days as pope, triggering another conclave.

The second conclave of 1978 started on 14 October, ten days after the funeral. It was split between two strong candidates for the papacy: Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the conservative Archbishop of Genoa, and the liberal Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, a close friend of John Paul I.

Supporters of Benelli were confident that he would be elected, and in early ballots, Benelli came within nine votes of success. However, both men faced sufficient opposition for neither to be likely to prevail. Giovanni Colombo, the Archbishop of Milan was considered as a compromise candidate among the Italian cardinal-electors, but when he started to receive votes, he announced that if elected he would decline to accept the papacy. Franz Cardinal König, Archbishop of Vienna, suggested to his fellow electors another compromise candidate: the Polish Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła. Wojtyła won on the eighth ballot on the third day (16 October) with, according to the Italian press, 99 votes from the 111 participating electors. He subsequently chose the name John Paul II in honour of his immediate predecessor and also in honour of the late Pope Paul VI, and the traditional white smoke informed the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square that a pope had been chosen. There had been rumours that the new pope wished to be known as Pope Stanislaus I in honour of the Polish saint of the name, but was convinced by the cardinals that it was not a Roman name. He accepted his election with these words: 'With obedience in faith to Christ, my Lord, and with trust in the Mother of Christ and the Church, in spite of great difficulties, I accept.' When the new pontiff appeared on the balcony, he broke tradition by addressing the gathered crowd:

Dear brothers and sisters, we are saddened at the death of our beloved Pope John Paul I, and so the cardinals have called for a new bishop of Rome. They called him from a faraway land — far and yet always close because of our communion in faith and Christian traditions. I was afraid to accept that responsibility, yet I do so in a spirit of obedience to the Lord and total faithfulness to Mary, our most Holy Mother. I am speaking to you in your — no, our Italian language. If I make a mistake, please kirrect [sic] me...

Wojtyła became the 264th pope according to the chronological list of popes, the first non-Italian in 455 years. At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope since Pope Pius IX in 1846, who was 54. Like his predecessor, Pope Saint John Paul II dispensed with the traditional Papal coronation and instead received ecclesiastical investiture with the simplified Papal inauguration on 22 October 1978. During his inauguration, when the cardinals were to kneel before him to take their vows and kiss his ring, he stood up as the Polish prelate Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński knelt down, stopped him from kissing the ring, and simply hugged him.

Pastoral trips

Main article: List of pastoral visits of Pope John Paul II outside Italy

A Mexico City statue of Pope Saint John Paul II with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe made entirely of metal keys donated by the Mexican people

During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II made trips to 129 countries, travelling more than 1,100,000 kilometres (680,000 mi) whilst doing so. He consistently attracted large crowds, some among the largest ever assembled in human history, such as the Manila World Youth Day, which gathered up to four million people, the largest Papal gathering ever, according to the Vatican. John Paul II's earliest official visits were to the Dominican Republic and Mexico in January 1979. While some of his trips (such as to the United States and the Holy Land) were to places previously visited by Pope Paul VI, John Paul II became the first pope to visit the White House in October 1979, where he was greeted warmly by then-President Jimmy Carter. He was the first pope ever to visit several countries in one year, starting in 1979 with Mexico and Ireland. He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. While in England, he also visited Canterbury Cathedral and knelt in prayer with Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the spot where Thomas a Becket had been killed.

He travelled to Haiti in 1983, where he spoke in Creole to thousands of impoverished Catholics gathered to greet him at the airport. His message, "things must change in Haiti", referring to the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, was met with thunderous applause. In 2000, he was the first modern pope to visit Egypt, where he met with the Coptic pope, Pope Shenouda III and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. He was the first Catholic pope to visit and pray in an Islamic mosque, in Damascus, Syria, in 2001. He visited the Umayyad Mosque, a former Christian church where John the Baptist is believed to be interred, where he made a speech calling for Muslims, Christians and Jews to live together.

On 15 January 1995, during the X World Youth Day, he offered Mass to an estimated crowd of between five and seven million in Luneta Park, Manila, Philippines, which was considered to be the largest single gathering in Christian history. In March 2000, while visiting Jerusalem, John Paul became the first pope in history to visit and pray at the Western Wall. In September 2001, amid post-11 September concerns, he travelled to Kazakhstan, with an audience largely consisting of Muslims, and to Armenia, to participate in the celebration of 1,700 years of Armenian Christianity.

First trip to Poland

In June 1979, Pope John Paul II travelled to Poland where ecstatic crowds constantly surrounded him. This first trip to Poland uplifted the nation's spirit and sparked the formation of the Solidarity movement in 1980, which later brought freedom and human rights to his troubled homeland. Poland's Communist leaders intended to use the Pope's visit to show the people that even though the Pope was Polish it did not alter their capacity to govern, oppress, and distribute the goods of society. They also hoped that if the Pope abided by the rules they set, that the Polish people would see his example and follow them as well. If the Pope's visit inspired a riot, the Communist leaders of Poland were prepared to crush the uprising and blame the suffering on the Pope.

"The Pope won that struggle by transcending politics. His was what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power' — the power of attraction and repulsion. He began with an enormous advantage, and exploited it to the utmost: He headed the one institution that stood for the polar opposite of the Communist way of life that the Polish people hated. He was a Pole, but beyond the regime's reach. By identifying with him, Poles would have the chance to cleanse themselves of the compromises they had to make to live under the regime. And so they came to him by the millions. They listened. He told them to be good, not to compromise themselves, to stick by one another, to be fearless, and that God is the only source of goodness, the only standard of conduct. 'Be not afraid,' he said. Millions shouted in response, 'We want God! We want God! We want God!' The regime cowered. Had the Pope chosen to turn his soft power into the hard variety, the regime might have been drowned in blood. Instead, the Pope simply led the Polish people to desert their rulers by affirming solidarity with one another. The Communists managed to hold on as despots a decade longer. But as political leaders, they were finished. Visiting his native Poland in 1979, Pope John Paul II struck what turned out to be a mortal blow to its Communist regime, to the Soviet Empire, [and] ultimately to Communism."

According to John Lewis Gaddis, one of the most influential historians of the Cold War, the trip led to the formation of Solidarity and would begin the process of Communism's demise in Eastern Europe:

When Pope John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport he began the process by which communism in Poland – and ultimately elsewhere in Europe – would come to an end.

On later trips to Poland, he gave tacit support to the Solidarity organisation. These visits reinforced this message and contributed to the collapse of East European Communism that took place between 1989/1990 with the reintroduction of democracy in Poland, and which then spread through Eastern Europe (1990–1991) and South-Eastern Europe (1990–1992).

Teachings

File:John Paul II 1980 cropped.JPG

A 1980 photo of Pope Saint John Paul II in Rome, Italy

As pope, John Paul II wrote 14 papal encyclicals and taught about sexuality in what is referred as the "Theology of the Body". Some key elements of his strategy to "reposition the Catholic Church" were encyclicals such as Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia and Redemptoris Mater. In his At the beginning of the new millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte), he emphasised the importance of "starting afresh from Christ": "No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person." In The Splendour of the Truth (Veritatis Splendor), he emphasised the dependence of man on God and His Law ("Without the Creator, the creature disappears") and the "dependence of freedom on the truth". He warned that man "giving himself over to relativism and scepticism, goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself". In Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason) John Paul promoted a renewed interest in philosophy and an autonomous pursuit of truth in theological matters. Drawing on many different sources (such as Thomism), he described the mutually supporting relationship between faith and reason, and emphasised that theologians should focus on that relationship. John Paul II wrote extensively about workers and the social doctrine of the Church, which he discussed in three encyclicals: Laborem Exercens, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, and Centesimus Annus. Through his encyclicals and many Apostolic Letters and Exhortations, John Paul II talked about the dignity of women and the importance of the family for the future of humanity. Other encyclicals include The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) and Ut Unum Sint (That They May Be One). Though critics accused him of inflexibility in explicitly re-asserting Catholic moral teachings against abortion and euthanasia that have been in place for well over a thousand years, he urged a more nuanced view of capital punishment. In his second encyclical Dives in misericordia he stressed that divine mercy is the greatest feature of God, needed especially nowadays. According to that, he gave to the new millennium in 2000 saint Faustina and (on the same day) the Divine Mercy Sunday. During his last visit in the fatherland, in Kraków-, he entrusted the world to the divine mercy.

Moral stances

Main article: Social and political stances of Pope John Paul II

John Paul II was considered a conservative on doctrine, and issues relating to sexual reproduction and the ordination of women.

While the Pope was visiting the United States of America he said, "All human life, from the moments of conception and through all subsequent stages, is sacred."

A series of 129 lectures given by John Paul II during his Wednesday audiences in Rome between September 1979 and November 1984 were later compiled and published as a single work entitled Theology of the Body, an extended meditation on human sexuality. He extended it to the condemnation of abortion, euthanasia and virtually all capital punishment, calling them all a part of the "culture of death" that is pervasive in the modern world. He campaigned for world debt forgiveness and social justice. He coined the term "social mortgage", which related that all private property had a social dimension, namely, that "the goods of this are originally meant for all." In 2000, he publicly endorsed the Jubilee 2000 campaign on African debt relief fronted by Irish rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono, once famously interrupting a U2 recording session by telephoning the studio and asking to speak to Bono.

Pope John Paul II, who was present and very influential at Vatican II (1962–65), affirmed the teachings of that Council and did much to implement them. Nevertheless, his critics often wished that he would embrace the so-called "progressive" agenda that some hoped would evolve as a result of the Council. In fact, the Council did not advocate "progressive" changes in these areas; for example, they still condemned abortion as an unspeakable crime. Pope John Paul II continued to declare that contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts were gravely sinful, and, with Joseph Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI), opposed Liberation theology.

Following the Church's exaltation of the marital act of sexual intercourse between a baptised man and woman within sacramental marriage as proper and exclusive to the sacrament of marriage, John Paul II believed that it was, in every instance, profaned by contraception, abortion, divorce followed by a 'second' marriage, and by homosexual acts. His beliefs were often assumed to be a rejection of women. In 1994, John Paul II asserted the Church's lack of authority to ordain women to the priesthood, stating that without such authority ordination is not legitimately compatible with fidelity to Christ. This was also deemed a repudiation of calls to break with the constant tradition of the Church by ordaining women to the priesthood. In addition, John Paul II chose not to end the discipline of mandatory priestly celibacy, although in a small number of unusual circumstances, he did allow certain married clergymen of other Christian traditions who later became Catholic to be ordained as Catholic priests..

Apartheid in South Africa

Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of apartheid in South Africa. In 1985, while visiting the Netherlands, he gave an impassioned speech condemning apartheid at the International Court of Justice, proclaiming that "no system of apartheid or separate development will ever be acceptable as a model for the relations between peoples or races." In September 1988, Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to ten countries bordering South Africa, while demonstratively avoiding South Africa. During his visit to Zimbabwe, John Paul II called for economic sanctions against South Africa's government. After John Paul II's death, both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu praised the Pope for defending human rights and condemning economic injustice.

Capital punishment

Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, although previous popes had accepted the practice. At a papal mass in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States – the only Western country where the death penalty is still applied – he said:

A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.

During that same visit to Missouri, John Paul II successfully convinced the governor of Missouri, Mel Carnahan, to reduce the death sentence of Darrell J. Mease, a convicted murderer, to life imprisonment without parole. Although John Paul II saved Mease's life, his previous attempts to save death-row victims were less successful. In 1983, John Paul II visited Guatemala for the first time. The pope pleaded for clemency to the Central American country's president, Efraín Ríos Montt, for six left-wing guerrillas sentenced to death, but without success. In 2002, John Paul II again travelled to Guatemala to canonise Central America's first saint. At that time, Guatemala was the only country in Latin America along with Communist Cuba to apply capital punishment. John Paul II pleaded to the Guatemalan president, Alfonso Portillo, for a moratorium on executions. The pope's appeal was greeted with enthusiasm by those concerned about human rights abuses in Guatemala, both in the country and abroad.

European Union

Pope John Paul II pushed for a reference to Europe's Christian cultural roots in the draft of the European Constitution. In his 2003 apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, John Paul II wrote that he "fully (respected) the secular nature of (European) institutions." However, he wanted the EU Constitution to enshrine religious rights, including acknowledging the rights of religious groups to organise freely, recognise the specific identity of each denomination and allow for a "structured dialogue" between each religious community and the EU, and extend across the European Union the legal status enjoyed by religious institutions in individual member states. "I wish once more to appeal to those drawing up the future European Constitutional Treaty so that it will include a reference to the religion and in particular to the Christian heritage of Europe," John Paul II said. The pope's desire for a reference to Europe's Christian identity in the Constitution was supported by non-Catholic representatives of the Church of England and Orthodox Churches from Russia, Romania, and Greece. John Paul II's demand to include a reference to Europe's Christian roots in the European Constitution was supported even by non-Christians, such as Joseph Weiler, a pious Orthodox Jew and renowned constitutional lawyer, who said that the Constitution's lack of a reference to Christianity was not a "demonstration of neutrality," but, rather, "a Jacobin attitude."

At the same time, however, John Paul II was an enthusiastic supporter of European integration; in particular, he supported his native Poland's entry into the bloc. On 19 May 2003, three weeks before a referendum was held in Poland on EU membership, the Polish pope addressed his compatriots and urged them to vote for Poland's EU membership at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City State. While some conservative, Catholic politicians in Poland opposed EU membership, John Paul II said:

I know that there are many in opposition to integration. I appreciate their concern about maintaining the cultural and religious identity of our nation. However, I must emphasise that Poland has always been an important part of Europe. Europe needs Poland. The Church in Europe needs the Poles' testimony of faith. Poland needs Europe.

The Polish pope compared Poland's entry into the EU to the Union of Lublin, which was signed in 1564 and united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into one nation and created an elective monarchy.

Evolution

On 22 October 1996, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences plenary session at the Vatican, Pope Saint John Paul II said of evolution that "this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory." Although generally accepting the theory of evolution, John Paul II made one major exception — the human soul. "If the human body has its origin in living material which pre-exists it, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God".

Iraq War

In 2003, Pope Saint John Paul II also became a prominent critic of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. In his 2003 State of the World address, the Pope declared his opposition to the invasion by stating, "No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity." He sent Pío Cardinal Laghi, the former Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to the United States, to talk with George W. Bush, the American President, to express opposition to the war. Pope Saint John Paul II said that it was up to the United Nations to solve the international conflict through diplomacy and that a unilateral aggression is a crime against peace and a violation of international law. The Pope's opposition to the Iraq War led to him being a frontrunner to win 2003 Nobel Peace Prize which was ultimately awarded to Iranian attorney/judge and noted human rights advocate, Shirin Ebadi.

Liberation theology

In 1984 and 1986, through leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), John Paul II officially condemned aspects of Liberation theology, which had many followers in South America. Visiting Europe, Óscar Romero unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a Vatican condemnation of El Salvador's regime, for violations of human rights and its support of death squads. In his travel to Managua, Nicaragua, in 1983, John Paul II harshly condemned what he dubbed the "popular Church" (i.e. "ecclesial base communities" supported by the CELAM), and the Nicaraguan clergy's tendencies to support the leftist Sandinistas, reminding the clergy of their duties of obedience to the Holy See. During that visit Ernesto Cardenal, a priest and minister in the Sandinista government, knelt to kiss his hand. John Paul withdrew it, wagged his finger in Cardenal's face, and told him, "You must straighten out your position with the church."

Organised crime

Pope John Paul II was the first pontiff to actively fight against Mafia violence in Southern Italy. In 1993, during a pilgrimage to Agrigento, Sicily, he appealed to the mafiosi: "I say to those responsible: Convert! One day, the judgment of God will arrive!" In 1994, John Paul II visited Catania and told victims of mafia violence to "rise up and cloak yourself in light and justice!" In 1995, the mafia bombed two historical churches in Rome. Some believed that this was the mob's vendetta against the pope, who had denounced organised crime.

Persian Gulf War

Between 1990 and 1991, a 34-nation coalition led by the United States waged a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which had invaded and annexed Kuwait. Pope John Paul II was a staunch opponent of the Gulf War. Throughout the conflict, he appealed to the international community to stop the war, and after it was over led diplomatic initiatives to negotiate peace in the Middle East. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, John Paul II harshly condemned the conflict:

No, never again war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war.

In April 1991, during his Urbi et Orbi Sunday message at St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Saint John Paul II called for the international community to "lend an ear" to "the long-ignored aspirations of oppressed peoples." Pope Saint John Paul II specifically named the Kurds, a people who were fighting a civil war against Saddam Hussein's troops in Iraq, as one such people. He referred to the war as a "darkness menacing the earth." During this time, the Vatican had expressed its frustration with the international ignoring of the pope's calls for peace in the Middle East.

Rwandan genocide

Pope Saint John Paul II was the world's first leader to use the term genocide (on 15 May 1990) to call the massacre between Hutus and Tutsis in the mostly Catholic country of Rwanda in the 1990s, which escalated in 1994. Already before the escalation of the killings, John Paul II called for a ceasefire and condemned the massacres twice in 1990 – on 10 April and 15 May. In 1995, during his third visit to Kenya before an audience of 300,000, John Paul II pleaded for an end to the violence in Rwanda and Burundi, pleading for forgiveness and reconciliation as a solution to the genocide. John Paul II told Rwandan and Burundian refugees that he "was close to them and shared their immense pain." His pleas for peace and forgiveness resulted from fears that the ethnic violence could spill over into Kenya and other parts of East Africa. In an emotional call for peace, John Paul II said:

"What is happening in your countries is a terrible tragedy that must end. During the African Synod, we, the pastors of the church, felt the duty to express our consternation and to launch an appeal for forgiveness and reconciliation. This is the only way to dissipate the threats of ethnocentrism that are hovering over Africa these days and that have so brutally touched Rwanda and Burundi."

Views on sexuality

While taking a traditional position on sexuality, defending the Church's moral opposition to marriage for same-sex couples, Pope Saint John Paul II asserted that people with homosexual inclinations possess the same inherent dignity and rights as everybody else. In his book, Memory and Identity, he referred to the "strong pressures" by the European Parliament to recognise homosexual unions as an alternative type of family, with the right to adopt children. In the book, as quoted by Reuters, he wrote: "It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and against the family." A 1997 study determined that 3% of the pope's statements were about the issue of sexual morality.

Role in the collapse of dictatorships

Pope John Paul II has been credited with inspiring political change that not only led to the collapse of Communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Eastern Europe, but also in many countries ruled by dictators. In the words of Joaquín Navarro-Valls, John Paul II's press secretary:

The single fact of John Paul II's election in 1978 changed everything. In Poland, everything began. Not in East Germany or Czechoslovakia. Then the whole thing spread. Why in 1980 did they lead the way in Gdansk? Why did they decide, now or never? Only because there was a Polish pope. He was in Chile and Pinochet was out. He was in Haiti and Duvalier was out. He was in the Philippines and Marcos was out. On many of those occasions, people would come here to the Vatican thanking the Holy Father for changing things.

Chile

Before John Paul II's pilgrimage to Latin America, during a meeting with reporters, he criticised Augusto Pinochet's regime as "dictatorial." In the words of the New York Times, he was "using unusually strong language" to criticise Pinochet and asserted the journalists that the Church in Chile must not only pray, but actively fight for the restoration of democracy in Chile.

During his visit to Chile in 1987, John Paul II asked Chile's 31 Catholic bishops to campaign for free elections in the country. According to George Weigel and Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, he encouraged Pinochet to accept a democratic opening of the regime, and may even have called for his resignation According to Monsignor Sławomir Oder, the postulator of John Paul II's beatification cause, John Paul's words to Pinochet had a profound impact on the Chilean dictator. The Pope confided to a friend: "I received a letter from Pinochet in which he told me that as a Catholic he had listened to my words, he had accepted them, and he had decided to begin the process to change the leadership of his country."

During his visit to Chile, John Paul II supported the Vicariate of Solidarity, the Church-led pro-democracy, anti-Pinochet organisation. John Paul II visited the Vicariate of Solidarity's offices, spoke with its workers, and "called upon them to continue their work, emphasizing that the Gospel consistently urges respect for human rights." While in Chile, Pope John Paul II made gestures of public support of Chile's anti-Pinochet democratic opposition. For instance, he hugged and kissed Carmen Gloria Quintana, a young student burned alive by Chilean police and told her that "We must pray for peace and justice in Chile." Later, he met with several opposition groups, including those that had been declared illegal by Pinochet's government. The opposition praised John Paul II for denouncing Pinochet as a "dictator," for many members of Chile's opposition were persecuted for much milder statements. Bishop Carlos Camus, one of the harshest critics of Pinochet's dictatorship within the Chilean Church, praised John Paul II's stance during the papal visit: "I am quite moved, because our pastor supports us totally. Never again will anyone be able to say that we are interfering in politics when we defend human dignity." He added: "No country the Pope has visited has remained the same after his departure. The Pope's visit is a mission, an extraordinary social catechism, and his stay here will be a watershed in Chilean history."

Some have erroneously accused John Paul II of affirming Pinochet's regime by appearing with the Chilean ruler in public. However, Cardinal Roberto Tucci, the organiser of John Paul II's visits, revealed that Pinochet tricked the pontiff by telling him he would take him to his living room, while in reality he took him to his balcony. Tucci claims that the pontiff was "furious."

Haiti

Pope John Paul II visited Haiti on 9 March 1983, when the country was ruled by Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. He bluntly criticised the poverty of the country, directly addressing Baby Doc and his wife, Michèle Bennett in front of a large crowd of Haitians:

Yours is a beautiful country, rich in human resources, but Christians cannot be unaware of the injustice, the excessive inequality, the degradation of the quality of life, the misery, the hunger, the fear suffered by the majority of the people.

John Paul II spoke in French and occasionally in Creole, and in the homily outlined the basic human rights that most Haitians lacked: "the opportunity to eat enough, to be cared for when ill, to find housing, to study, to overcome illiteracy, to find worthwhile and properly paid work; all that provides a truly human life for men and women, for young and old." Following John Paul II's pilgrimage, the Haitian opposition to Duvalier frequently reproduced and quoted the Pope's message. Shortly before leaving Haiti, John Paul II called for social change in Haiti by saying: "Lift up your heads, be conscious of your dignity of men created in God's image..."

John Paul II's visit inspired massive protests against the Duvalier dictatorship. In response to the visit, 860 Catholic priests and Church workers signed a statement committing the Church to work on behalf of the poor. In 1986, Duvalier was deposed in an uprising.

Paraguay

The collapse of the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay was linked, among other things, to Pope John Paul II's visit to the South American country in 1989. Since Stroessner's taking power through a coup d'état in 1954, Paraguay's bishops increasingly criticised the regime for human rights abuses, rigged elections, and the country's feudal economy. During his private meeting with Stroessner, John Paul II told the dictator:

"Politics has a fundamental ethical dimension because it is first and foremeost a service to man. The Church can and must remind men — and in particular those who govern — of their ethical duties for the good of the whole of society. The Church cannot be isolated inside its temples just as men's consciences cannot be isolated from God."

Later, during a Mass, Pope John Paul II criticised the regime for impoverishing the peasants and the unemployed, claiming that the government must give people greater access to the land. Although Stroessner tried to prevent him from doing so, Pope John Paul II met opposition leaders in the one-party state.

Role in the fall of Communism

Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting Pope Saint John Paul II in June 2000

Main article: Holy See–Soviet Union relations

John Paul II has been credited with being instrumental in bringing down Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, by being the spiritual inspiration behind its downfall and catalyst for "a peaceful revolution" in Poland. Lech Wałęsa, the founder of 'Solidarity', credited John Paul II with giving Poles the courage to demand change. According to Wałęsa, "Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of Communism. In Warsaw, in 1979, he simply said: 'Do not be afraid', and later prayed: 'Let your Spirit descend and change the image of the land... this land'." It has also been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank covertly funded Solidarity.

Then-U.S. President George W. Bush presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Pope Saint John Paul II in June 2004

President Ronald Reagan's correspondence with the pope reveals "a continuous scurrying to shore up Vatican support for U.S. policies. Perhaps most surprisingly, the papers show that, as late as 1984, the pope did not believe the Communist Polish government could be changed."

As the British historian Timothy Garton Ash, who describes himself as an "agnostic liberal," explained shortly after John Paul II's death:

No one can prove conclusively that he was a primary cause of the end of communism. However, the major figures on all sides – not just Lech Wałęsa, the Polish Solidarity leader, but also Solidarity's arch-opponent, General Wojciech Jaruzelski; not just the former American president George Bush Senior but also the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev – now agree that he was. I would argue the historical case in three steps: without the Polish Pope, no Solidarity revolution in Poland in 1980; without Solidarity, no dramatic change in Soviet policy towards eastern Europe under Gorbachev; without that change, no velvet revolutions in 1989.

In December 1989, John Paul II met with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Vatican and each expressed his respect and admiration for the other. Gorbachev once said "The collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II". On John Paul II's death, Mikhail Gorbachev said: "Pope John Paul II's devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us."

On 4 June 2004, then-U.S. President George W. Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour, to Pope Saint John Paul II during a ceremony at the Apostolic Palace. The president read the citation that accompanied the medal, which recognised "this son of Poland" whose "principled stand for peace and freedom has inspired millions and helped to topple communism and tyranny." After receiving the award, John Paul II said, "May the desire for freedom, peace, a more humane world symbolised by this medal inspire men and women of goodwill in every time and place."

Communist attempt to humiliate John Paul II

Poland's Communist government unsuccessfully tried to embarrass John Paul II and undermine his popularity by falsely asserting he had an illegitimate son. Służba Bezpieczeństwa, Poland's Communist-era security service, had an action named "Triangolo" headed by Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, one of the murderers of Jerzy Popiełuszko. Piotrowski wanted to take advantage of Irena Kinaszewska, the secretary of the Kraków-based Catholic magazine Tygodnik Powszechny, where the future Pope John Paul II once worked, and who was an admirer of John Paul II. After putting drugs in Kinaszewska's drink, Służba Bezpieczeństwa officers unsuccessfully tried to get her to say she had sexual relations with John Paul II. When this did not succeed, the Służba Bezpieczeństwa forged false memoirs of Kinaszewska suggesting a sexual relationship between the two and placed them in the apartment of the priest Andrzej Bardecki, and the memoirs were to be confiscated by the militia during a search. However, the provocation failed, as Piotrowski was proven a fake and Bardecki found the forgery in time and destroyed it.

Relations with other faiths

Pope Saint John Paul II travelled extensively and met with believers from many divergent faiths. At the World Day of Prayer for Peace, held in Assisi on 27 October 1986, more than 120 representatives of different religions and Christian denominations spent a day together with fasting and praying.

Anglicanism

Pope Saint John Paul II had good relations with the Church of England, referred to by his predecessor Pope Paul VI, as "our beloved Sister Church". He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He preached in Canterbury Cathedral and received the Archbishop of Canterbury with friendship and courtesy. However, John Paul II was disappointed by the Church of England's decision to ordain women and saw it as a step in the opposite direction from unity between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.

In 1980 John Paul II issued a Pastoral Provision allowing married former Episcopal priests to become Catholic priests, and for the acceptance of former Episcopal Church parishes into the Catholic Church. He allowed the creation of the Anglican Use form of the Latin Rite, which incorporates the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. John Paul II helped establish Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church, together with Archbishop Patrick Flores of San Antonio, Texas, as a place where Anglicans and Catholics could worship together.

Animism

In his book-length interview Crossing the Threshold of Hope with the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori published in 1995, Pope John Paul II praises animism, drawing parallels with Christianity. He says:

…it would be helpful to recall… the animist religions which stress ancestor worship. It seems that those who practice them are particularly close to Christianity, and among them, the Church's missionaries also find it easier to speak a common language. Is there, perhaps, in this veneration of ancestors a kind of preparation for the Christian faith in the Communion of Saints, in which all believers – whether living or dead – form a single community, a single body? […] There is nothing strange, then, that the African and Asian animists would become believers in Christ more easily than followers of the great religions of the Far East.

In 1985, the pope visited the African country of Togo, where 60 per cent of the population espouses animist beliefs. To honour the pope, animist religious leaders met him at a Catholic Marian shrine in the forest, much to the pontiff's delight. John Paul II proceeded to call for the need for religious tolerance, praised animism, and emphasised common elements between animism and Christianity, saying:

Nature, exuberant and splendid in this area of forests and lakes, impregnates spirits and hearts with its mystery and orients them spontaneously toward the mystery of He who is the author of life. It is this religious sentiment that animates you and one can say that animates all of your compatriots.

During the investiture of President Thomas Boni Yayi of Benin as a titled Yoruba chieftain on 20 December 2008, the reigning Ooni of Ile-Ife, Nigeria, Olubuse II, referred to Pope John Paul II as a previous recipient of the same royal honour.

Buddhism

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, visited Pope Saint John Paul II eight times, more than any other single dignitary. The Pope and the Dalai Lama held many similar views and understood similar plights, both coming from nations damaged by communism and both serving as heads of major religious bodies. As Archbishop of Kraków, long before the 14th Dalai Lama was a world-famous figure, Wojtyła held special Masses to pray for the Tibetan people's non-violent struggle for freedom from Maoist China. During his 1995 visit to Sri Lanka, a country where a majority of the population adheres to Theravada Buddhism, Pope John Paul II expressed his admiration for the Buddhist religion:

In particular I express my highest regard for the followers of Buddhism, the majority religion in Sri Lanka, with its ...four great values of ...loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity; with its ten transcendental virtues and the joys of the Sangha expressed so beautifully in the Theragathas. I ardently hope that my visit will serve to strengthen the goodwill between us, and that it will reassure everyone of the Catholic Church's desire for interreligious dialogue and cooperation in building a more just and fraternal world. To everyone I extend the hand of friendship, recalling the splendid words of the Dhammapada: "Better than a thousand useless words is one single word that gives peace..."

Eastern Orthodox Church

Main article: Pope John Paul II's relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church

In May 1999, John Paul II visited Romania on the invitation from Patriarch Teoctist Arăpaşu of the Romanian Orthodox Church. This was the first time a pope had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054. On his arrival, the Patriarch and the President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, greeted the Pope. The Patriarch stated, "The second millennium of Christian history began with a painful wounding of the unity of the Church; the end of this millennium has seen a real commitment to restoring Christian unity."

On 23–27 June 2001 John Paul II visited Ukraine, another heavily Orthodox nation, at the invitation of the President of Ukraine and bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Pope spoke to leaders of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, pleading for "open, tolerant and honest dialogue". About 200 thousand people attended the liturgies celebrated by the Pope in Kiev, and the liturgy in Lviv gathered nearly one and a half million faithful. John Paul II stated that an end to the Great Schism was one of his fondest wishes. Healing divisions between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches regarding Latin and Byzantine traditions was clearly of great personal interest. For many years, John Paul II sought to facilitate dialogue and unity stating as early as 1988 in Euntes in mundum that "Europe has two lungs, it will never breathe easily until it uses both of them".

During his 2001 travels, John Paul II became the first pope to visit Greece in 1291 years. In Athens, the Pope met with Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church. After a private 30-minute meeting, the two spoke publicly. Christodoulos read a list of "13 offences" of the Catholic Church against the Eastern Orthodox Church since the Great Schism, including the pillaging of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204, and bemoaned the lack of apology from the Catholic Church, saying "Until now, there has not been heard a single request for pardon" for the "maniacal crusaders of the 13th century."

The Pope responded by saying "For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us forgiveness", to which Christodoulos immediately applauded. John Paul II said that the sacking of Constantinople was a source of "profound regret" for Catholics. Later John Paul II and Christodoulos met on a spot where Saint Paul had once preached to Athenian Christians. They issued a 'common declaration', saying "We shall do everything in our power, so that the Christian roots of Europe and its Christian soul may be preserved. ... We condemn all recourse to violence, proselytism and fanaticism, in the name of religion". The two leaders then said the Lord's Prayer together, breaking an Orthodox taboo against praying with Catholics.

The Pope had said throughout his pontificate that one of his greatest dreams was to visit Russia, but this never occurred. He attempted to solve the problems that had arisen over centuries between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, and in 2004 gave them a 1730 copy of the lost icon of Our Lady of Kazan.

Islam

Pope Saint John Paul II made considerable efforts to improve relations between Catholicism and Islam.

On 6 May 2001, Pope Saint John Paul II became the first Catholic pope to enter and pray in a mosque. Respectfully removing his shoes, he entered the Umayyad Mosque, a former Byzantine era Christian church dedicated to John the Baptist (who was believed to be interred there) in Damascus, Syria, and gave a speech including the statement: "For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and to offer each other forgiveness." He kissed the Qur'an in Syria, an act which made him popular among Muslims but which disturbed many Catholics.

In 2004, Pope Saint John Paul II hosted the "Papal Concert of Reconciliation", which brought together leaders of Islam with leaders of the Jewish community and of the Catholic Church at the Vatican for a concert by the Kraków Philharmonic Choir from Poland, the London Philharmonic Choir from the United Kingdom, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from the United States, and the Ankara State Polyphonic Choir of Turkey. The event was conceived and conducted by Sir Gilbert Levine, KCSG and was broadcast throughout the world.

John Paul II oversaw the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which makes a special provision for Muslims; therein, it is written, "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in 'the first place amongst whom are the Muslims'; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

Judaism

Main article: Pope John Paul II and Judaism

Relations between Catholicism and Judaism improved dramatically during the pontificate of John Paul II. He spoke frequently about the Church's relationship with the Jewish faith.

In 1979, John Paul II became the first pope to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where many of his compatriots (mostly Polish Jews) had perished during the Nazi occupation in World War II. In 1998 he issued "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" which outlined his thinking on the Holocaust. He became the first pope known to have made an official papal visit to a synagogue, when he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on 13 April 1986.

On 30 December 1993, Pope Saint John Paul II established formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel, acknowledging its centrality in Jewish life and faith.

On 7 April 1994, Pope Saint John Paul II hosted the Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocaust. It was the first-ever Vatican event dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews murdered in World War II. This concert, which was conceived and conducted by American Maestro Gilbert Levine, was attended by the Chief Rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff, the President of Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, and survivors of the Holocaust from around the world. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, actor Richard Dreyfuss and cellist Lynn Harrell performed on this occasion under Levine's direction. On the morning of the concert, the Pope received the attending members of survivor community in a special audience in the Apostolic Palace.

In March 2000, John Paul II visited Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Israel, and later made history by touching one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, placing a letter inside it (in which he prayed for forgiveness for the actions against Jews). In part of his address he said: "I assure the Jewish people the Catholic Church... is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place", he added that there were "no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust". Israeli cabinet minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, who hosted the Pope's visit, said he was "very moved" by the Pope's gesture.

It was beyond history, beyond memory.

We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.

In October 2003, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a statement congratulating John Paul II on entering the 25th year of his papacy. In January 2005, John Paul II became the first pope in history known to receive a priestly blessing from a rabbi, when Rabbis Benjamin Blech, Barry Dov Schwartz, and Jack Bemporad visited the Pontiff at Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace.

Immediately after John Paul II's death, the ADL issued a statement that Pope Saint John Paul II had revolutionised Catholic-Jewish relations, saying that "more change for the better took place in his 27-year Papacy than in the nearly 2,000 years before." In another statement issued by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, Director Dr Colin Rubenstein said, "The Pope will be remembered for his inspiring spiritual leadership in the cause of freedom and humanity. He achieved far more in terms of transforming relations with both the Jewish people and the State of Israel than any other figure in the history of the Catholic Church".

With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.

In an interview with the Polish Press Agency, Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, said that never in history did anyone do as much for Christian-Jewish dialogue as Pope John Paul II, adding that many Jews had a greater respect for the late pope than for some rabbis. Schudrich praised John Paul II for condemning anti-Semitism as a sin, which no previous pope had done.

Pope John Paul II's beatification was greeted with great enthusiasm among many Jews. On the occasion, the Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that "John Paul II was revolutionary because he tore down a thousand-year wall of Catholic distrust of the Jewish world." Meanwhile, Elio Toaff, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome, said that:

"Remembrance of the Pope Karol Wojtyła will remain strong in the collective Jewish memory because of his appeals to fraternity and the spirit of tolerance, which excludes all violence. In the stormy history of relations between Roman popes and Jews in the ghetto in which they were closed for over three centuries in humiliating circumstances, John Paul II is a bright figure in his uniqueness. In relations between our two great religions in the new century that was stained with bloody wars and the plague of racism, the heritage of John Paul II remains one of the few spiritual islands guaranteeing survival and human progress."

Lutheranism

From 15 November 1980 to 19 November 1980, John Paul II visited the Federal Republic of Germany on his first trip to a country with a large Lutheran population. In Mainz, he met with leaders of the Lutheran and other Protestant Churches, and with representatives of other Christian denominations.

On 11 December 1983, John Paul II participated in an ecumenical service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rome, the first papal visit ever to a Lutheran church. The visit took place 500 years after the birth of Martin Luther, the German Augustinian monk who initiated the Lutheran reformation.

In his apostolic pilgrimage to Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden of June 1989, John Paul II became the first pope to visit countries with Lutheran majorities. In addition to celebrating Mass with Catholic believers, he participated in ecumenical services at places that had been Catholic shrines before the 16th-century Lutheran reformation: Nidaros Cathedral in Norway; near St. Olav's Church at Thingvellir in Iceland; Turku Cathedral in Finland; Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark; and Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden.

On 31 October 1999, (the 482nd anniversary of Reformation Day, Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses), representatives of the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, as a gesture of unity. The signing was a fruit of a theological dialogue that had been going on between the LWF and the Vatican since 1965.

Assassination attempts and plots

Main articles: 1981 Pope John Paul II assassination attempt, Juan María Fernández y Krohn, and The Bojinka Plot

The Fiat Popemobile which carried John Paul II during the 1981 assassination attempt on his life in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City

As he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience on 13 May 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, an expert Turkish gunman who was a member of the militant fascist group Grey Wolves. The assassin used a Browning 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, shooting the pope in the abdomen and perforating his colon and small intestine multiple times. John Paul II was rushed into the Vatican complex and then to the Gemelli Hospital. On the way to the hospital, he lost consciousness. Even though the two bullets missed his mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta, he lost nearly three-quarters of his blood. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his wounds. Surgeons performed a colostomy, temporarily rerouting the upper part of the large intestine to let the damaged lower part heal. When he briefly gained consciousness before being operated on, he instructed the doctors not to remove his Brown Scapular during the operation. The pope stated that Our Lady of Fátima helped keep him alive throughout his ordeal.

Small marble tablet in St. Peter's Square indicating where the shooting of John Paul II occurred. The tablet bears John Paul's personal papal arms and the date of the shooting in Roman numerals.

Could I forget that the event in St. Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fátima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.

Ağca was caught and restrained by a nun and other bystanders until police arrived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after Christmas in 1983, John Paul II visited Ağca in prison. John Paul II and Ağca spoke privately for about twenty minutes. John Paul II said, "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust.″

On 2 March 2006, the Italian parliament's Mitrokhin Commission, set up by Silvio Berlusconi and headed by Forza Italia senator Paolo Guzzanti, concluded that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt on John Paul II's life, in retaliation for the pope's support of Solidarity, the Catholic, pro-democratic Polish workers' movement, a theory which had already been supported by Michael Ledeen and the United States Central Intelligence Agency at the time. The Italian report stated that Communist Bulgarian security departments were utilised to prevent the Soviet Union's role from being uncovered. The report stated that Soviet military intelligence (Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije), not the KGB, were responsible. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov called the accusation "absurd". The Pope declared during a May 2002 visit to Bulgaria that the country's Soviet-bloc-era leadership had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. However, his secretary, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, alleged in his book A Life with Karol, that the pope was convinced privately that the former Soviet Union was behind the attack. It was later discovered that many of John Paul II's aides had foreign-government attachments; Bulgaria and Russia disputed the Italian commission's conclusions, pointing out that the Pope had publicly denied the Bulgarian connection.

A second assassination attempt took place on 12 May 1982, just a day before the anniversary of the first attempt on his life, in Fátima, Portugal when a man tried to stab John Paul II with a bayonet. He was stopped by security guards, although Stanisław Dziwisz later claimed that John Paul II had been injured during the attempt but managed to hide a non-life threatening wound. The assailant, a Traditionalist Catholic Spanish priest named Juan María Fernández y Krohn, was ordained as a priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of the Society of Saint Pius X and was opposed to the changes caused by the Second Vatican Council, claiming that the pope was an agent of Communist Moscow and of the Marxist Eastern Bloc. Fernández y Krohn subsequently left the priesthood and served three years of a six-year sentence. The ex-priest was treated for mental illness and then expelled from Portugal to become a solicitor in Belgium.

Pope Saint John Paul II was also a target of the Al-Qaeda-funded Bojinka plot during a visit to the Philippines in 1995. The first plan was to kill him in the Philippines during World Youth Day 1995 celebrations. On 15 January 1995, a suicide bomber was planning to dress as a priest, while John Paul II passed in his motorcade on his way to the San Carlos Seminary in Makati City. The would-be-assassin intended to get close and detonate the bomb. The assassination was supposed to divert attention from the next phase of the operation. However, a chemical fire inadvertently started by the cell alerted police to their whereabouts, and all were arrested a week before the Pope's visit, confessing to the plot.

In 2009, John Koehler, a journalist and former army intelligence officer, published Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union's Cold War Against the Catholic Church. Mining mostly East German and Polish secret police archives, Koehler says the assassination attempts were "KGB-backed" and gives details. During John Paul II's reign there were many clerics within the Vatican who on nomination, declined to be ordained, and then mysteriously left the church. There is wide speculation that they were, in reality, KGB agents.

Apologies

Main article: Apologies by Pope John Paul II

John Paul II apologised to almost every group who had suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church through the years. Even before he became pope, he was a prominent editor and supporter of initiatives like the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops from 1965. As pope, he officially made public apologies for over 100 wrongdoings, including:

• The legal process on the Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo Galilei, himself a devout Catholic, around 1633 (31 October 1992).
• Catholics' involvement with the African chiefs who sold their subjects and captives in the African slave trade (9 August 1993).
• The Church Hierarchy's role in burnings at the stake and the religious wars that followed the Protestant Reformation (May 1995, in the Czech Republic).
• The injustices committed against women, the violation of women's rights and the historical denigration of women (10 July 1995, in a letter to "every woman").
• The inactivity and silence of many Catholics during the Holocaust (see the article Religion in Nazi Germany) (16 March 1998).

On 20 November 2001, from a laptop in the Vatican, Pope John Paul II sent his first e-mail apologising for the Catholic sex abuse cases, the Church-backed "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children in Australia, and to China for the behaviour of Catholic missionaries in colonial times.

Health

Main article: Pope John Paul II's health

An ailing Pope Saint John Paul II riding in the Popemobile in September 2004 in St. Peter's Square in the world's smallest nation, Vatican City State

When he became pope in 1978, John Paul II was still an avid sportsman. At the time, the 58-year-old was extremely healthy and active, jogging in the Vatican gardens, weight training, swimming, and hiking in the mountains. He was fond of football. The media contrasted the new Pope's athleticism and trim figure to the poor health of John Paul I and Paul VI, the portliness of John XXIII and the constant claims of ailments of Pius XII. The only modern pope with a fitness regimen had been Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) who was an avid mountaineer. An Irish Independent article in the 1980s labelled John Paul II the keep-fit pope.

However, after over twenty-five years as pope, two assassination attempts (one of which resulted in severe physical injury to the Pope), by Mehmet Ali Ağca and a number of cancer scares, John Paul's physical health declined. In 2001, he was diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's disease. International observers had suspected this for some time, but it was only publicly acknowledged by the Vatican in 2003. Despite difficulty speaking more than a few sentences at a time, trouble hearing, and severe osteoarthrosis, he continued to tour the world although rarely walking in public.

Death and funeral

Main article: Funeral of Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II was hospitalised with breathing problems caused by a bout of influenza on 1 February 2005. He left hospital on 10 February, but was subsequently hospitalised again with breathing problems two weeks later and underwent a tracheotomy. On 31 March 2005 following a urinary tract infection, he developed septic shock, a form of infection with a high fever and low blood pressure, but was not hospitalised. Instead, he was monitored by a team of consultants at his private residence. This was taken as an indication that the pope and those close to him believed that he was nearing death; it would have been in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican. Later that day, Vatican sources announced that John Paul II had been given the Anointing of the Sick by his friend and secretary Stanisław Dziwisz. During the final days of the Pope's life, the lights were kept burning through the night where he lay in the Papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. Tens of thousands of people assembled and held vigil in St. Peter's Square and the surrounding streets for two days. Upon hearing of this, the dying pope was said to have stated: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you."

On Saturday, 2 April 2005, at approximately 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words in Polish, "Pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca" ("Allow me to depart to the house of the Father"), to his aides, and fell into a coma about four hours later. The Mass of the vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter commemorating the canonisation of Saint Maria Faustina on 30 April 2000, had just been celebrated at his bedside, presided over by Stanisław Dziwisz and two Polish associates. Present at the bedside was a cardinal from Ukraine who served as a priest with John Paul in Poland, along with Polish nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, who ran the papal household.

On 2 April 2005, Pope Saint John Paul II died in his private apartment at 21:37 CEST (19:37 UTC) of heart failure from profound hypotension and complete circulatory collapse from septic shock, 46 days short of his 85th birthday. John Paul had no close family by the time he died, and his feelings are reflected in his words written in 2000 at the end of his Last Will and Testament. Stanisław Dziwisz later admitted to not burning the pontiff's personal notes despite the request being part of the will.

Pictured (l-r) are George W. Bush, Laura Bush, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, and Andrew Card, U.S. dignitaries paying respect to Pope Saint John Paul II on 6 April 2005 at St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City

The death of the pontiff set in motion rituals and traditions dating back to medieval times. The Rite of Visitation took place from 4 April 2005 to 7 April 2005 at St. Peter's Basilica. The Testament of Pope John Paul II published on 7 April 2005 revealed that the pontiff contemplated being buried in his native Poland but left the final decision to The College of Cardinals, which in passing, preferred burial beneath St. Peter's Basilica, honouring the pontiff's request to be placed "in bare earth".

The Mass of Requiem held on 8 April 2005 was said to have set world records both for attendance and number of heads of state present at a funeral. (See: List of Dignitaries). It was the single largest gathering of heads of state in history, surpassing the funerals of Winston Churchill (1965) and Josip Broz Tito (1980). Four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religions attended alongside the faithful. It is likely to have been the largest single pilgrimage of Christianity ever with numbers estimated in excess of four million mourners gathering in and around Vatican City. Between 250,000 and 300,000 watched the event from within the Vatican's walls.

The Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, conducted the ceremony. John Paul II was interred in the grottoes under the basilica, the Tomb of the Popes. He was lowered into a tomb created in the same alcove previously occupied by the remains of Pope John XXIII. The alcove had been empty since Pope John's remains had been moved into the main body of the basilica after his beatification.

Posthumous recognition

Pope Saint John Paul II
Born	18 May 1920 Wadowice, Poland
Died	2 April 2005 Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Venerated in	Catholic Church
Beatified	1 May 2011, St. Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope Benedict XVI
Canonized	27 April 2014, St. Peter's Square, Vatican City by Pope Francis
Feast	22 October
Patronage	Kraków, Poland, World Youth Day, young Catholics, Świdnica, families

Title "the Great"

Upon the death of John Paul II, a number of clergy at the Vatican and laymen throughout the world began referring to the late pontiff as "John Paul the Great"—only the fourth pope to be so acclaimed, and the first since the first millennium. Scholars of Canon Law say that there is no official process for declaring a pope "Great"; the title simply establishes itself through popular and continued usage, as was the case with celebrated secular leaders (for example, Alexander III of Macedon became popularly known as Alexander the Great). The three popes who today commonly are known as "Great" are Leo I, who reigned from 440–461 and persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw from Rome; Gregory I, 590–604, after whom the Gregorian Chant is named; and Pope Nicholas I, 858–867.

His successor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, referred to him as "the great Pope John Paul II" in his first address from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, and Angelo Cardinal Sodano referred to John Paul as "the Great" in his published written homily for the pope's funeral Mass of Repose.

The tomb of Pope Saint John Paul II in the Vatican Chapel of St. Sebastian within St. Peter's Basilica

Since giving his homily at the funeral of Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict XVI continued to refer to John Paul II as "the Great." At the 20th World Youth Day in Germany 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Polish, John Paul's native language, said, "As the Great Pope John Paul II would say: Keep the flame of faith alive in your lives and your people." In May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI visited John Paul's native Poland. During that visit, he repeatedly made references to "the great John Paul" and "my great predecessor". Two newspapers have called him "the Great" or "the Greatest". The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera called him "the Greatest" and the South African Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross, has called him "John Paul II the Great". Two Catholic schools have also been named after him using this title; the recently renamed John Paul the Great Catholic University and John Paul the Great Catholic High School.

Beatification

Main article: Beatification of Pope John Paul II

1.5 million St. Peter's Square attendees witness the beatification of Pope Saint John Paul II on 1 May 2011 in Vatican City

A monument to Pope Saint John Paul II in Poznań, Poland

Inspired by calls of "Santo Subito!" ("[Make him a] Saint Immediately!") from the crowds gathered during the funeral Mass which he performed, Benedict XVI began the beatification process for his predecessor, bypassing the normal restriction that five years must pass after a person's death before beginning the beatification process. In an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome who was responsible for promoting the cause for canonisation of any person who died within that diocese, cited "exceptional circumstances" which suggested that the waiting period could be waived. This decision was announced on 13 May 2005, the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima and the 24th anniversary of the assassination attempt on John Paul II at St. Peter's Square.

In early 2006, it was reported that the Vatican was investigating a possible miracle associated with John Paul II. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun and member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Wards, confined to her bed by Parkinson's disease, was reported to have experienced a "complete and lasting cure after members of her community prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II". As of May 2008, Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, then 46, was working again at a maternity hospital run by her religious institute.

"I was sick and now I am cured", she told reporter Gerry Shaw. "I am cured, but it is up to the church to say whether it was a miracle or not."

On 28 May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass before an estimated 900,000 people in John Paul II's native Poland. During his homily, he encouraged prayers for the early canonisation of John Paul II and stated that he hoped canonisation would happen "in the near future."

In January 2007, Stanisław Cardinal Dziwisz of Kraków, his former secretary, announced that the interview phase of the beatification process, in Italy and Poland, was nearing completion. In February 2007, relics of Pope John Paul II — pieces of white papal cassocks he used to wear — were freely distributed with prayer cards for the cause, a typical pious practice after a saintly Catholic's death. On 8 March 2007, the Vicariate of Rome announced that the diocesan phase of John Paul's cause for beatification was at an end. Following a ceremony on 2 April 2007 — the second anniversary of the Pontiff's death — the cause proceeded to the scrutiny of the committee of lay, clerical, and episcopal members of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, to conduct a separate investigation. On the fourth anniversary of Pope John Paul's death, 2 April 2009, Cardinal Dziwisz, told reporters of a presumed miracle that had recently occurred at the former pope's tomb in St. Peter's Basilica. A nine-year-old Polish boy from Gdańsk, who was suffering from kidney cancer and was completely unable to walk, had been visiting the tomb with his parents. On leaving St. Peter's Basilica, the boy told them, "I want to walk", and began walking normally. On 16 November 2009, a panel of reviewers at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints voted unanimously that Pope Saint John Paul II had lived a life of heroic virtue. On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI signed the first of two decrees needed for beatification and proclaimed John Paul II "Venerable", asserting that he had lived a heroic, virtuous life. The second vote and the second signed decree certifying the authenticity of the first miracle, the curing of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun, from Parkinson's disease. Once the second decree is signed, the positio (the report on the cause, with documentation about his life and writings and with information on the cause) is complete. He can then be beatified. Some speculated that he would be beatified sometime during (or soon after) the month of the 32nd anniversary of his 1978 election, in October 2010. As Monsignor Oder noted, this course would have been possible if the second decree were signed in time by Benedict XVI, stating that a posthumous miracle directly attributable to his intercession had occurred, completing the positio.

The Vatican announced on 14 January 2011 that Pope Benedict XVI had confirmed the miracle involving Sister Marie Simon-Pierre and that John Paul II was to be beatified on 1 May, the Feast of Divine Mercy. 1 May is commemorated in former communist countries, such as Poland, and some Western European countries as May Day, and Pope Saint John Paul II was well known for his contributions to communism's relatively peaceful demise. In March 2011 the Polish mint issued a gold 1,000 Polish złoty coin (equivalent to US$350), with the Pope's image to commemorate his beatification.

On 29 April 2011, Pope Saint John Paul II's coffin was exhumed from the grotto beneath St. Peter's Basilica ahead of his beatification, as tens of thousands of people arrived in Rome for one of the biggest events since his funeral. John Paul II's remains (in a closed coffin) were placed in front of the Basilica's main altar, where believers could pay their respect before and after the beatification mass in St. Peter's Square on 1 May 2011. On 3 May 2011, Pope Saint John Paul II was reinterred in the marble altar in Pier Paolo Cristofari's Chapel of St. Sebastian, which is where Pope Innocent XI was buried. This more prominent location, next to the Chapel of the Pietà, the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and statues of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, was intended to allow more pilgrims to view his memorial.

Marco Fidel Rojas, the mayor of Huila, Colombia, testified that he was "miraculously cured" of Parkinson's disease through the intercession of John Paul II. Mr. Rojas' doctor has certified his cure, and the documentation has been sent to the sainthood cause's Vatican office in a case that may move John Paul's canonisation forward.

Canonisation

Main article: Canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II

To be eligible for canonisation (being declared a saint) by the Catholic Church, two miracles must be attributed to a candidate.

According to an article on the Catholic News Service (CNS) dated 23 April 2013, a Vatican commission of doctors concluded that a healing had no natural (medical) explanation, which is the first requirement for an alleged miracle to be officially documented. The miracle was deemed to have taken place shortly after the late Pope's beatification on 1 May 2011 by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI; it was reported to be the healing of Costa Rican woman Floribeth Mora of an otherwise terminal brain aneurysm on the date of John Paul's beatification. A Vatican panel of expert theologians examined the evidence, determined that it was directly attributable to the intercession of John Paul II, and recognised it as miraculous. The next stage was for Cardinals who compose the membership of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to give their opinion to Pope Francis, who decides whether to sign and promulgate the decree and set a date for canonisation.

On 4 July 2013, Pope Francis confirmed his approval of John Paul II's canonisation, formally recognising the second miracle attributed to his intercession. He was canonised together with John XXIII. The date of the canonisation was on 27 April 2014, Divine Mercy Sunday.

On Monday, 27 January 2014, it was reported that a relic of the late pope (a vial containing drops of John Paul II's blood) was stolen from the Church of San Pietro della Ienca in the mountainous Abruzzo region of central Italy, an area where the late Pope had loved to go on skiing vacations. Because there are only three relics containing his blood, few or no other items were disturbed, and it would be difficult to sell, the investigating Italian police believe it was a commissioned theft, and that the blood will be used in some sort of satanic ritual. The theft sparked a major search for the culprits. Two men have confessed to the crime, and an iron reliquary and a stolen cross were recovered from the grounds of a drug treatment facility in L'Aquila, 120 km (75 miles) east of Rome, on 30 January, but the relic itself was still missing from the church, 20 km (13 miles) north of L'Aquila. Specialized scientific police searched the grounds. The blood was recovered shortly after, when it was found in the garbage close to where the container that held the relic was found.

Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the incumbent Archbishop of Krakow (where John Paul II had served as Archbishop prior to his papacy) and the former Prefect of the Papal Household and longtime personal secretary of the late Pope, gave the vial to the Church there in recognition of its connections to the Pontiff.

The canonisation mass for Blessed Popes John Paul II and John XXIII, was celebrated by Pope Francis (with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), on Sunday, 27 April 2014 (Divine Mercy Sunday) in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican (Pope John Paul had died on vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005). About 150 Cardinals and 700 bishops concelebrated the Mass, and at least a 500,000 people attended the mass with an estimated 300,000 others watching from video screens placed around Rome.

Criticism and controversy

Main articles: Criticism of Pope John Paul II and Criticism of the Catholic Church

John Paul II was widely criticised, among other things, for his views against the ordination of women and contraception, his support for the Second Vatican Council and its reform of the Liturgy, his stance on the sanctity of marriage, and his lack of action against sexual child abuse within the church.

Opposition to his beatification

Some Catholic theologians disagreed with the call for beatification of Pope Saint John Paul II. Eleven dissident theologians, including Jesuit professor José María Castillo and Italian theologian Giovanni Franzoni, raised seven religiously liberal, unorthodox points of contention including the Pope's stance against contraception and the ordination of women as well as the Church scandals that presented "facts which according to their consciences and convictions should be an obstacle to beatification". These objections were not sustained, and his beatification (and eventual recognition as a saint) moved forward.

Child sex abuse scandals

Main article: Catholic sex abuse cases

John Paul II was also criticised for failing to respond quickly enough to the sex abuse crisis. In his response, he stated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young". The Church instituted reforms to prevent future abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees and, because a significant majority of victims were teenage boys, disallowing ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". They now require dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty. In 2008, the Church asserted that the scandal was a very serious problem and estimated that it was "probably caused by 'no more than 1 per cent' " (or 5,000) of the over 500,000 Catholic priests worldwide.

In April 2002, John Paul II, despite being frail from Parkinson's disease, summoned all the American cardinals to the Vatican to discuss possible solutions to the issue of sexual abuse in the American Church. He asked them to "diligently investigate accusations." John Paul II suggested that American bishops be more open and transparent in dealing with such scandals and emphasised the role of seminary training to prevent sexual deviance among future priests. In what The New York Times called "unusually direct language," John Paul condemned the arrogance of priests which led to the scandals:

Priests and candidates for the priesthood often live at a level both materially and educationally superior to that of their families and the members of their own age group. It is therefore very easy for them to succumb to the temptation of thinking of themselves as better than others. When this happens, the ideal of priestly service and self-giving dedication can fade, leaving the priest dissatisfied and disheartened.

The pope read a statement intended for the American cardinals, calling the sex abuse "an appalling sin" and said the priesthood had no room for such men.

In 2002, Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, the Catholic Archbishop of Poznań, was accused of molesting seminarians. Pope John Paul II accepted his resignation, and placed sanctions on him, prohibiting Paetz from exercising his ministry as bishop. These restrictions were lifted in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2003, John Paul II reiterated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young". and in April 2003, the Pontifical Academy for Life organised a three-day conference, entitled "Abuse of Children and Young People by Catholic Priests and Religious", where eight non-Catholic psychiatric experts were invited to speak to near all Vatican dicasteries' representatives. The panel of experts overwhelmingly opposed implementation of policies of "zero-tolerance" such as was proposed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. One expert called such policies a "case of overkill" since they do not permit flexibility to allow for differences among individual cases.

In 2004, Pope Saint John Paul II recalled Bernard Francis Law to be Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. Law had previously resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002 in response to the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal after Church documents were revealed which suggested he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese. Law resigned from this position in November 2011.

Pope Saint John Paul II was a firm supporter of the Legion of Christ and its leader Marcial Maciel, who was followed by allegations of sex abuse which the Vatican eventually determined were true, after both had passed away.

Opus Dei controversies

Main article: Controversies about Opus Dei

John Paul II was criticised for his support of the Opus Dei prelature and the 2002 canonisation of its founder, Josemaría Escrivá, whom he called 'the saint of ordinary life.' Other movements and religious organisations of the Church went decidedly under his wing (Legion of Christ, the Neocatechumenal Way, Schoenstatt, the charismatic movement, etc.) and he was accused repeatedly of taking a soft hand with them, especially in the case of Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ.

In 1984, Pope Saint John Paul II appointed Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a member of Opus Dei, as Director of the Vatican Press Office. An Opus Dei spokesman says "the influence of Opus Dei in the Vatican has been exaggerated." Of the nearly 200 cardinals in the Catholic Church, only two are known to be members of Opus Dei.

Banco Ambrosiano scandal

Main article: Banco Ambrosiano

Pope John Paul was alleged to have links with Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank which collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank's failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi, and his membership in the illegal Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2). The Vatican Bank was Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder, and the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 is rumoured to be linked to the Ambrosiano scandal.

Calvi, often referred to as "God's Banker", was also involved the Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, in his dealings, and was close to Bishop Paul Marcinkus, the bank's chairman. Ambrosiano also provided funds for political parties in Italy, and for both the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and its Sandinista opposition. There are also rumours that it provided money for Solidarity in Poland. It has been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank funded Solidarity.

Calvi used his complex network of overseas banks and companies to move money out of Italy, to inflate share prices, and to secure massive unsecured loans. In 1978, the Bank of Italy produced a report on Ambrosiano that predicted future disaster. On 5 June 1982, two weeks before the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, Calvi had written a letter of warning to Pope John Paul II, stating that such a forthcoming event would "provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage." On 18 June 1982 Calvi's body was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and contained cash valued at US$14,000, in three different currencies.

Gay rights activists

Further information: Christianity and homosexuality

Many gay rights activists criticised him for maintaining the Church's opposition to homosexual behaviour and same-sex marriage. During John Paul II's reign, the Vatican described homosexuality as an "objective disorder" and in his own book, Memory and Identity, John Paul II describes the concept of homosexual families as an "ideology of evil", phrases which incensed many of the people so described.

Problems with traditionalists

In addition to all the criticism from those demanding modernisation, traditionalist Catholics sometimes denounced him as well. These issues included demanding a return to the Tridentine Mass and repudiation of the reforms instituted after the Second Vatican Council, such as the use of the vernacular language in the formerly Latin Roman Rite Mass, ecumenism, and the principle of religious liberty. He was also accused by these critics for allowing and appointing liberal bishops in their sees and thus silently promoting Modernism, which was firmly condemned as the "synthesis of all heresies" by his predecessor Pope St. Pius X. In 1988, the controversial traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X (1970), was excommunicated under John Paul II because of the unapproved ordination of four bishops, which was called by the Holy See a "schismatic act".

The World Day of Prayer for Peace, with a meeting in Assisi, Italy, in 1986, in which the Pope prayed only with the Christians, was heavily criticised as giving the impression that syncretism and indifferentism were openly embraced by the Papal Magisterium. When a second 'Day of Prayer for Peace in the World' was held, in 2002, it was condemned as confusing the laity and compromising to false religions. Likewise criticised was his kissing of the Qur'an in Damascus, Syria, on one of his travels on 6 May 2001. His call for religious freedom was not always supported; bishops like Antônio de Castro Mayer promoted religious tolerance, but at the same time rejected the Vatican II principle of religious liberty as being liberalist and already condemned by Pope Pius IX in his 'Syllabus errorum' (1864) and at the First Vatican Council.

Some Catholics oppose his beatification and potential canonisation for the above reasons.

Religion and AIDS

Main article: Religion and AIDS

John Paul's position against artificial birth control, including the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, was harshly criticised by doctors and AIDS activists, who said that it led to countless deaths and millions of AIDS orphans. Critics have also claimed that large families are caused by lack of contraception and exacerbate Third World poverty and problems such as street children in South America. The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development published a paper stating, "Any strategy that enables a person to move from a higher-risk towards the lower end of the continuum, [we] believe, is a valid risk reduction strategy."

Social programmes

There was strong criticism of the pope for the controversy surrounding the alleged use of charitable social programmes as a means of converting people in the Third World to Catholicism. The Pope created an uproar in the Indian subcontinent when he suggested that a great harvest of faith would be witnessed on the subcontinent in the third Christian millennium.

Ian Paisley

In 1988, when Pope John Paul II was delivering a speech to the European Parliament, Ian Paisley, the then-leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, shouted "I denounce you as the antichrist!" and held up a red banner reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST". Archduke Otto of Austria, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, snatched Paisley's banner and, along with other MEPs, helped eject him from the chamber. The Pope continued with his address after Paisley had been ejected.

Međugorje apparitions

A number of quotes about the apparitions of Međugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have been attributed to John Paul II. In 1998, when a certain German gathered various statements that were supposedly made by the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, and then forwarded them to the Vatican in the form of a memorandum, Ratzinger responded in writing on 22 July 1998: "The only thing I can say regarding statements on Međugorje ascribed to the Holy Father and myself is that they are complete invention."

See also

• Cardinals created by John Paul II
• List of peace activists
• List of places named after Pope John Paul II
• Prophecies about Pope John Paul II
• The Rapid Development

References

Sources

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• "'Cured' Pope Returns to Vatican". 2005–2009 BBC World News. 10 February 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite news}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
• Domínguez, Juan (4 April 2005). "Pope John Paul II and Communism". Copyright free — Public domain. Archived from the original on 6 April 2004. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dziwisz, Bishop Stanisław (13 May 2001). "13 May 1981 Conference of Bishop Stanisław Dziwisz For Honorary Doctorate, 13 May 2001 to the Catholic University of Lublin". 2001–2009 L'Osservatore Romano, Editorial and Management Offices, Via del Pellegrino, 00120, Vatican City. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Frail Pope Suffers Heart Failure". BBC News. 1 April 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2009.
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• "Pope John Paul II". Editorials. The Voice Of America. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
• "Pope Returns to Vatican after Operation". 2001–2009 BBC News. 13 March 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2009.
• Sean Gannon (7 April 2006). "Papal Fallibility". 2006–2009 Haaretz Daily News, Israel. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
• "Stasi Files Implicate KGB in Pope Shooting". 2001–2009 Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
• "Pope John Paul II's Final Days". St Anthony Messenger Press. 2005–2009 American Catholic.Org. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite news}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
• Tchorek, Kamil; Roger Boyes (2 April 2005). "Kracow Lights a Candle for its Favourite Son's Last Fight". London: 2005–2009 The Times The Times online. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite news}}: External link in |publisher= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
• Vinci, Alessio (1 April 2005). "Vatican source: Pope Given Last Rites". 2005 Cable News Network LP. Retrieved 1 January 2009.
• CNN's Alessio Vinci, Chris Burns, Jim Bittermann, Miguel Marquez, Walter Rodgers, Christiane Amanpour and John Allen contributed to this report (2 April 2005). "World Awaits Word on Pope's Condition". 2005 Cable News Network LP. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Bibliography

• Berry, Jason; Gerald Renner (2004). Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-7432-4441-1.
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• de Montfort, St. Louis-Marie Grignion (27 March 2007). True Devotion to Mary. Mark L. Jacobson (Translator). San Diego, California: Avetine Press. ISBN 978-1-59330-470-6.
• Duffy, Eamon (2006). Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes (Third ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11597-0.
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• Mannion, Gerard (ed.) (2008). The Vision of John Paul II: Assessing His Thought and Influence. Collegeville, Mn.: Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-5309-8. {{cite book}}: |first1= has generic name (help); External link in |title= (help)
• Maxwell-Stuart, P.G. (2006) [1997]. Chronicle of the Popes: Trying to Come Full Circle. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28608-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Menachery, Prof. George (11 November 1978). "John Paul II Election Surprises".
• Menachery, Prof. George (11 April 2005). "Last days of pope john paul ii".
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• Wojtyła, Karol (1981). Love and Responsibility. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. ISBN 978-0-89870-445-7. Retrieved 1 January 2009. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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Further reading

• For a comprehensive list of books written by and about Pope John Paul II, please see Pope John Paul II bibliography
• For other references see Pope John Paul II in popular culture
• Template:Worldcat id

External links

• John Paul the Great Catholic University
• The Holy See website
• A Tribute to Pope John Paul II on the Occasion of his Beatification
• Papal Transition 2005 Web Archive from the US Library of Congress