Titans of History

A tireless traveler and a master of modern media, John Paul II was a relentless critic of totalitarian tyranny and of the inequalities created by materialism. He strove to build bridges between the Catholic Church and the Jewish and Islamic peoples. And in old age he battled bravely against illness and frailty, dying a truly iconic spiritual leader for people throughout the world.

As a young man in Poland, Wojtyla knew the harsh reality of totalitarian rule. After the Nazis invaded his country in 1939, he was forced to take on menial work, such as laboring in a limestone quarry. It was a time when the Vatican under Pope Pius XII failed to show moral leadership and equivocated over Nazi oppression in Poland and elsewhere in occupied Europe. Wojtyla put his life at risk to smuggle Jews out of Poland and was placed on a Nazi death list. Fortunately he escaped detection during a Gestapo raid on the Archbishop of Kraków’s house in 1944 and survived the Second World War.

In 1946 Wojtyla was ordained as a priest. He rose rapidly through the Church ranks to become archbishop of Kraków in 1963 and a cardinal in 1967. By this time he was established as one of the most important religious figures in Poland, where he was frequently at odds with the communist authorities. He was no unthinking firebrand, but he was more than willing to stand up to the authorities, as when he supported industrial workers in Nowa Huta in their efforts to build a new church.

Wojtyla’s profile increased rapidly at the Vatican, where he was a trusted adviser to Paul VI. So when Paul and his successor, John Paul I, both died in 1978, it was he who won a tight ballot of the cardinals. At the age of just fifty-eight he became pope.

International attention was lavished upon the first non-Italian pope for nearly half a millennium. This suited John Paul II, who set about spreading a global message of freedom for those in need. On his first foreign trip, to Mexico, he spoke up for the unemployed and oppressed, though he held back from advocating political regime change.

After bringing great pressure to bear on the authorities, in 1979 John Paul was permitted to return to Poland, becoming the first reigning pope to visit a communist country. Announcing his arrival as a “pilgrim,” he was given a rapturous welcome that was broadcast around the communist world. The sight of crowds chanting “We want God” caused an international sensation. Having shaken up the communist authorities, John Paul then visited a number of countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In Ireland he denounced sectarian violence and terrorism, and in America he spoke passionately against the selfishness of consumerism and capitalism.

In 1981 John Paul was shot at close range in Rome by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Ağca. The pope had fiercely criticized communism, and it later emerged that the gunman had connections to the Bulgarian secret police, and therefore to the Soviet KGB. The bullets missed his vital organs by millimeters, which he took as a sign from God to continue his work. He publicly forgave his attacker.

Throughout the 1980s John Paul continued his spiritual opposition to communism. After the peaceful revolution of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—who admitted that without John Paul II there would have been no such speedy end to communism—paid a humble visit to the pontiff in Rome, opening diplomatic relations between most of the former Soviet capitals and the Vatican.

During the next decade John Paul took on the task of extending the hand of peace to the Jewish and Islamic peoples. He allowed the first mosque to be built in the Vatican, and in 1993 he signed an agreement to open relations with Israel. In 2000 he made a high-profile trip to the Holy Land and visited a Holocaust memorial. He also promoted many cardinals from the developing world.

Throughout his long pontificate John Paul stood up for freedom with unwavering resolve. His inspiring voice carried huge authority. His condemnation of Paraguay’s dictator Alfredo Stroessner helped to bring down the latter’s regime, while a speech opposing the death penalty led to its abolition in Guatemala. An appearance on Italian television led to a Mafia don surrendering himself.

Pope John Paul II was generally inflexible over doctrine, remaining doggedly conservative in matters such as the ordination of women and the use of contraception, even in the face of Africa’s AIDS epidemic. Nevertheless, he will be remembered as one of the most outstanding popes in history. To the end he was an inveterate opponent of oppression and inequality. This man of peace used his position nobly and made the papacy relevant again—even for non-Christians. The first steps have been taken to canonizing John Paul.

SAKHAROV

1921–1989