sexta-feira, 18 de abril de 2014

BLESSED POPE JOHN PAUL l l
















BLESSED  POPE  JOHN PAUL l l




“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”

― Blessed Pope John Paul II













Pope John Paul II

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Pope John Paul II (disambiguation).
Blessed Pope
John Paul II
Pope (Bishop of Rome etc.)
Pope John Paul II on 12 August 1993 in Denver, Colorado
John Paul II in 1993
Native namePolish: Jan Paweł II
ChurchRoman Catholic Church
Papacy began16 October 1978
Papacy ended2 April 2005
PredecessorJohn Paul I
SuccessorBenedict XVI
Other posts
Orders
Ordination1 November 1946
by Adam Stefan Sapieha
Consecration28 September 1958
by Eugeniusz Baziak
Created Cardinal26 June 1967
by Paul VI
Personal details
Birth nameKarol Józef Wojtyła
Born18 May 1920
Wadowice, Republic of Poland
Died2 April 2005 (aged 84)
Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
NationalityPolish (with Vatican citizenship)
DenominationCatholic
MottoTotus Tuus
(Totally yours)
Signature{{{signature_alt}}}
Coat of arms{{{coat_of_arms_alt}}}
Sainthood
Feast day22 October
Beatified1 May 2011
Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City
by Pope Benedict XVI
PatronageWorld Youth Day (Co-Patron)
Other popes named John Paul
Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus II), sometimes called Blessed John Paul or John Paul the Great, bornKarol Józef Wojtyła (Polish: [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛf vɔjˈtɨwa]; 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005), was the head of the Catholic Churchfrom 16 October 1978 to his death in 2005. He was thesecond longest-serving pope in history and, as a Pole, the first non-Italian since Pope Adrian VI, who died in 1523.
John Paul II is considered one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. He is recognised as helping to end Communist rule in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe.[1] John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Controversially, he upheld the Church's teachings against artificial contraceptionand the ordination of women, he supported the Church'sSecond Vatican Council and its reform, and he held firm orthodox Catholic stances. He is known for his implementation of several papal documents pertaining to the role of the Church in the modern world.
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. He named most of the present College of Cardinals, consecrated or co-consecrated a large number of the world's past and current bishops, and ordained many priests.[2] 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".[3][4] 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 Saintsattributed one miracle to him, the healing of a French nun fromParkinson'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 will be canonised on 27 April 2014.[5] Like John XXIII, his feast day is not celebrated on the date of his death as is usual, but on 22 October, the anniversary of his papal inauguration in 1978.

Early life[edit]

Main article: Early life of Pope John Paul II

Emilia and Karol Wojtyła Sr. wedding portrait

Courtyard within the family home of the Wojtyłas
Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in the Polish town of Wadowice.[6][7] He was the youngest of three children born to Karol Wojtyła (1879–1941), anethnic Pole,[8] and Emilia Kaczorowska (1884–1929), whose mother's maiden surname was Scholz, suggesting partial German ancestry.[9]Emilia, who was a schoolteacher, died in childbirth in 1929[10] when Wojtyła was eight years old.[11] 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.[8][11]
Wojtyła's mother, Emilia Wojtyła, saved him from an abortion. As Milena Kindziuk, Emilia Wojtyła's biographer, writes, when the former was pregnant with the future pope, the gynaecologist in Wadowice told her that she had no chance of giving birth to a live child and asked her to terminate the pregnancy. However, the devoutly Catholic Emilia declined to do so.[12][13]
As a boy, Wojtyła was athletic, often playing football as goalkeeper.[14]During his childhood, Wojtyła had contact with Wadowice's large Jewish community.[15] School football games were often organised between teams of Jews and Catholics, and Wojtyła often played on the Jewish side.[8][14] "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."[16] 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".[4][15]
In mid-1938, Wojtyła and his father left Wadowice and moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at Jagiellonian University. While studying such topics asphilology 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.[17] During this time, his talent for language blossomed, and he learned as many as 12 foreign languages,[18] nine of which he used extensively as pope.

Nazi occupation of Poland and the Holocaust[edit]

In 1939, Nazi German occupation forces closed the university after invading Poland.[6] 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.[7][17] His father, a former Austro-Hungarian non-commissioned officer and later officer in the Polish Army, died of a heart attack in 1941,[9] leaving Wojtyła as the immediate family's only surviving member.[8][10][19] "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."[19]

Tomb of the parents of John Paul II
After his father's death, he started thinking seriously about the priesthood.[20] 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.[20] Soon after, he began courses in the clandestine underground seminary run by theArchbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Cardinal Sapieha. On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was hit by a German truck. GermanWehrmacht 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’,[21] the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to curtail the uprising, [21]similar to the recent uprising in Warsaw.[22][23] Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle's house at 10 Tyniecka Street, while the German troops searched above.[20][22][23] More than eight thousand men and boys were taken that day, while Wojtyła escaped to the Archbishop's Palace,[20][21][22] where he remained until after the Germans had left.[8][20][22]

The family home of the Wojtyłas in Wadowice.
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.[24] Wojtyła also helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer,[25] who had run away from a Nazi labour camp in Częstochowa.[25] 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.[26][27][28] 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.[29] In September 2003, Emmanuelle Pacifici, the head of Italy's Jewish community, proposed that John Paul II receive the medal of aRighteous 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.[30] 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.[31] In Wojtyła's last book,Memory and Identity, he described the 12 years of the Nazi régime as 'bestiality',[32] quoting from the Polish theologian and philosopher Konstanty Michalski.[33]

Priesthood[edit]

On finishing his studies at the seminary in Kraków, Wojtyła was ordained as a priest on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946,[10] by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha.[7][34][35] Sapieha sent Wojtyła to Rome's Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, the futurePontifical 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.[36] TheAngelicum preserves the original copy of Wojtyła's typewritten thesis.[37] Among other courses at theAngelicum, Wojtyła studied Hebrew with the Dutch Dominican Peter G. Duncker, author of the Compendium grammaticae linguae hebraicae biblicae.[38]
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."[39] Cardinal Stickler added that Wojtyła believed that the prophecy was fulfilled when he became a Cardinal.[40]
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.[41] This gesture, which he adapted from the French saint Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney,[41] would become a ‘trademark’ action during his papacy.

Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum in Rome
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 andkayaking trips.[42]
In 1953, Wojtyła's habilitation thesis was accepted by in the Faculty of Theology at the Jagiellonian University. In 1954, he earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology,[43] 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"[44] (Ocena możliwości zbudowania etyki chrześcijańskiej przy założeniach systemu Maksa Schelera).[45] Scheler was a German philosopher who founded a broadphilosophical 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.[35] 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.[46]
During this period, Wojtyła wrote a series of articles in Kraków's Catholic newspaper, Tygodnik Powszechny("Universal Weekly"), dealing with contemporary church issues.[47] 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[17][47] — 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.[17][47] In 1960, Wojtyła published the influential theological book Love and Responsibility, a defence of traditional Church teachings on marriage from a new philosophical standpoint.[17][48]

"Wujek"[edit]

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. Later in 1958, when Wojtyła was on a kayaking trip, he was named an 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.[49][50]

Bishop and Cardinal[edit]


John Paul I with cardinal Karol Wojtyla
On 4 July 1958,[35] 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 thePrimate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński, who informed him of his appointment.[51][52] He agreed to serve as Auxiliary Bishop to Kraków'sArchbishop 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 BishopBoleslaw Kominek (Titular Bishop of Sophene and Vaga; of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Wrocław and future Cardinal Archbishop of Wrocław) and then-Auxiliary Bishop Franciszek Jop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sandomierz (Titular Bishop of Daulia; later Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Wrocław and then Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Opole) .[35] 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.[6][7]
In October 1962, Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965),[6][35] 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).[35]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".[53] 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".[54]
He also participated in the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops.[6][7] On 13 January 1964, Pope Paul VIappointed him Archbishop of Kraków.[55] On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Karol Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals.[35][55] 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.[35][56][57]
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[edit]

Main article: Papal conclave, October 1978

The newly elected Pope John Paul II stands on the balcony.

Coat of Arms of Pope John Paul II with the Marian Cross. The Letter M is for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to whom he held strong devotion.
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.[7][35][58]
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.[59]
Supporters of Benelli were confident that he would be elected, and in earlyballots, Benelli came within nine votes of success.[59] However, both men faced sufficient opposition for neither to be likely to prevail. Franz Cardinal König, Archbishop of Vienna suggested to his fellow electors a compromise candidate: the Polish Cardinal, Karol Józef Wojtyła.[59]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[35][59] in honour of his immediate predecessor, and the traditional white smoke informed the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square that a pope had been chosen.[58] 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.’[60][61] When the new pontiff appeared on the balcony, he broke tradition by addressing the gathered crowd:[60]
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...[60][62]
Wojtyła became the 264th pope according to the chronological list of popes, the first non-Italian in 455 years.[63] At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope since Pope Pius IX in 1846, who was 54.[35]Like his predecessor, Pope 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.[64]

Pastoral trips[edit]

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

A statue of John Paul II made entirely with keys donated by the Mexican people to symbolise that they had given him the keys to their hearts.[65]
During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II made trips to 129 countries,[66] 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.[67][68] John Paul II's earliest official visits were to the Dominican Republic and Mexico in January 1979.[69] 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[70]and Ireland.[71] He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, theSupreme Governor of the Church of England. While in England, he also visited Canterbury Cathedral and knelt in prayer withRobert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the spot whereThomas a Becket had been killed.[72] 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.[73] In 2000, he was the first modern pope to visit Egypt,[74] where he met with the Coptic pope, Pope Shenouda III[74] and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria.[74] He was the first Catholic pope to visit and pray in an Islamic mosque, inDamascus, Syria, in 2001. He visited the Umayyad Mosque, a former Christian church where John the Baptistis believed to be interred,[75] where he made a speech calling for Muslims, Christians and Jews to live together.[75]
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,[68] Manila, Philippines, which was considered to be the largest single gathering in Christian history.[68] In March 2000, while visiting Jerusalem, John Paul became the first pope in history to visit and pray at the Western Wall.[76][77] 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.[78]

Trip to Poland[edit]

In June 1979, Pope John Paul II travelled to Poland where ecstatic crowds constantly surrounded him.[79] 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.[56] 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.[80]
"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."[80]
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.[81]
On later trips to Poland, he gave tacit support to the Solidarity organisation.[56] 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).[62][66][79][82][83]
The documentary film Nine Days that Changed the World, produced by Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista Gingrich - featuring interviews with witnesses, historians, and prominent Catholic leaders in Poland, the United States, and Italy - chronicles John Paul II's 1979 visit to Poland and its explosive political impact.[84]

Teachings[edit]


Pope John Paul II in 1980.
As pope, John Paul II wrote 14 papal encyclicals and taught about "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 Paenitentiaand 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 andscepticism, 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 Lettersand Exhortations, John Paul II talked about the dignity of women and the importance of the family for the future of humanity.[56] 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.[56]

Moral stances[edit]

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 theordination of women.[85]
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."[86]
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,[87] 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.[56][85] 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."[88] In 2000, he publicly endorsed the Jubilee 2000 campaign on African debt relieffronted 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.[89]
Pope John Paul II, who was present and very influential at the 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 actswere 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, claiming 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.[90] 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.

Evolution[edit]

On 22 October 1996, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences plenary session at the Vatican, Pope 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".[91][92][93]

Iraq War[edit]

In 2003 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."[94] 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. 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.
““Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile.””
— Pope John Paul II [95]
In 2003, the year of the American invasion of Iraq, Pope John Paul II, who opposed the Iraq War perhaps more vigorously than any other world leader, was widely viewed as a favourite to win the Nobel Peace Prize.[96][97]

Apartheid in South Africa[edit]

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."[98] 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.[99] After John Paul II's death, both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu praised the Pope for defending human rights and condemning economic injustice.[100]

Capital punishment[edit]

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.[101]
During that same visit to Missouri, John Paul II successfully convinced the governor of Missouri, Mel Carnahan, to reduce the death sentence of convicted murderer Darrell J. Mease to life imprisonment without parole.[102] 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.[103] In 2002, John Paul II again travelled to Guatemala to canonize 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 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.[104]

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