Pope John Paul II

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PRIESTHOOD SUNDAY

• Pope John Paul II

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• Pope John Paul II born Karol Józef Wojtyla (18
  May 1920 2 April 2005) served as Pope of the
  Catholic Church from 16 October 1978 until his
  death almost 27 years later. His was the
  second-longest pontificate only Pope Pius IX
  served longer. He was the only Polish Pope, and
  was the first non-Italian Pope since Dutch Pope
  Adrian VI in the 1520s.

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• As a youth, Wojtyla was an athlete and often
  played football (soccer) as a goalkeeper he was
  also a supporter of Polish club Cracovia
  Kraków.His formative years were influenced by
  numerous contacts with the vibrant and prospering
  Jewish community of Wadowice. School football
  games were often organised between teams of Jews
  and Catholics, and Wojtyla would voluntarily
  offer himself as a substitute goalkeeper on the
  Jewish side if they were short of players.

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• His father, a non-commissioned army officer, died
  of a heart attack in 1941, leaving Karol the sole
  surviving member of his immediate family. I was
  not at my mother's death, I was not at my
  brother's death, I was not at my father's death,
  he said, reflecting on these times of his life,
  nearly forty years later, At twenty, I had
  already lost all the people I loved.

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• He later stated that he began thinking seriously
  about the priesthood after his father's death,
  and that his vocation gradually became an inner
  fact of unquestionable and absolute clarity. In
  October 1942, increasingly aware of his calling
  to the priesthood, he knocked on the door of the
  Archbishops Palace in Kraków, and declared that
  he wanted to study for the priesthood. Soon
  after, he began courses in the clandestine
  underground seminary run by the Archbishop of
  Kraków, Adam Stefan, Cardinal Sapieha.

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• On completion of his studies at the seminary in
  Kraków, Karol Wojtyla was ordained as a priest on
  All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946, by the
  Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. He was
  then sent to study theology in Rome,.

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• He returned to Poland in the summer of 1948 with
  his first pastoral assignment in the village of
  Niegowic, fifteen miles from Kraków. Arriving at
  Niegowic during harvest time, his first action
  was to kneel down and kiss the ground. This
  gesture would become one of his trademarks
  during his Papacy, but it was not his own, since
  he acknowledged that he had adopted it from a
  19th-century French saint, Jean Marie Baptiste
  Vianney the Curé d'Ars

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• He was ordained to the Episcopate on 28 September
  1958. At the age of 38, he was the youngest
  bishop in Poland. Baziak died in June 1962 and on
  16 July Karol Wojtyla was selected as Vicar
  Capitular, or temporary administrator, of the
  Archdiocese until an Archbishop could be
  appointed.
• 1963 Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of
  Kraków. On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced
  Archbishop Wojtyla's promotion to the Sacred
  College of Cardinals.

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• In August 1978 Wojtyla became the 264th Pope
  according to the chronological List of
  popes. He took the name John Paul II and at only
  58 years of age, he was the youngest pope elected
  since Pope Pius IX in 1846, who was 54.

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• On Saturday 2 April 2005, Pope John Paul II died.