Pope John Paul II
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| John Paul II | |
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| Papacy began | 16 October 1978 |
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| Papacy ended | 2 April 2005 |
| Predecessor | John Paul I |
| Successor | Benedict XVI |
| Birth name | Karol Józef Wojtyła |
| Born | 18 May 1920 Wadowice, Poland |
| Died | 2 April 2005 (aged 84) Apostolic Palace, Vatican City |
| Signature |  |
| Papal styles of Pope John Paul II |
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| Reference style | His Holiness |
| Spoken style | Your Holiness |
| Religious style | Holy Father |
| Posthumous style | Servant of God |
Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II) born Karol Józef Wojtyła [ˈkaɾɔl ˈjuzεf vɔi̯ˈtɨwa]; (18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) reigned as Pope and Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death, almost 27 years later. His was the third-longest pontificate after Pius IX's 32-year reign and St. Peter's 34+ years. He was the only Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI (Dutch) in the 1520s.
John Paul II was pope during a period in which the Catholic Church's influence declined in developed countries, but expanded in the Third World. During his reign, the pope traveled extensively, visiting over 100 countries, more than any of his predecessors. He remains one of the most-traveled world leaders in history. He was fluent in numerous languages: his native Polish and also Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Croatian, Portuguese, Russian, and Latin.[1]
As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he canonized a great number of people. He beatified 1,340 people (many online over the Internet, some listed here), more people than any previous pope. The Vatican asserts he canonized more people than the combined tally of his predecessors during the last five centuries, and from a far greater variety of cultures.[2] Whether he had canonized more saints than all previous popes put together, as is sometimes also claimed, is difficult to prove, as the records of many early canonizations are incomplete, missing, or inaccurate. However, it is known that his abolition of the office of Promotor Fidei ("Promoter of the Faith") streamlined the process.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Karol Józef Wojtyła (English: ‘Charles Joseph Wojtyla’ ) was born on 18 May 1920 in the Polish town of Wadowice and was the youngest of three children of Karol Wojtyła, an ethnic Pole and Emilia Kaczorowska; who was of Lithuanian ancestry.[3] His mother died on April 13, 1929, [4] when he was just nine years old, and his father supported him so that he could study. His eldest brother Edmund, a doctor, died in 1932, when Wojtyła was twelve. His youth was marked by extensive contacts with the then thriving Jewish community of Wadowice. He played sports during his youth, and was particularly interested in football (soccer)[5] as a goalkeeper.[6]
After completing his studies at the Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, in 1938 Wojtyła enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and in a school for drama.[3] He worked as a volunteer librarian and did compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but refused to hold or fire a weapon. In his youth he was an athlete, actor and playwright and he learned as many as ten languages during his lifetime, including Latin, Ukrainian, Croatian, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, English, Yiddish, Hebrew as well as his native Polish. He also had some facility with Russian.
In 1939, Nazi German occupation forces closed the Jagiellonian University. All able-bodied males had to have a job. From 1940 to 1944 Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant and a manual labourer in a limestone quarry, and then as a salesman for the Solvay chemical factory to avoid being deported to Germany.[3] His father, a non-commissioned army officer, died of a heart attack in 1941. Karol had lost everyone in his family - sister, brother, mother and father - before he became a priest. In 1942, aware of his call to the priesthood, he began courses in the clandestine seminary of Kracow. B'nai B'rith and other authorities have said that during this period he helped Jews find refuge from the Nazis.
On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was knocked down by a German truck. In sharp contrast to the harshness normally expected from the occupiers and especially from the racialist officials among them, the German Wehrmacht officers and driver tended him and commandeered a passing truck to get him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there with a severe concussion and a shoulder injury. This accident and his survival seemed to Wojtyła a confirmation of his priestly vocation. On 6 August 1944, "Black Sunday", just after the Warsaw uprising began, the Gestapo rounded up young men in Kraków to avoid a similar uprising. Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his home as it was searched, then escaped to the Kraków Archbishop's residence, where he stayed until after the war.
On the night of 17 January 1945, the Germans quit the city, and the seminarians reclaimed the ruined seminary. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the odious task of chopping up and carting away piles of frozen excrement from the lavatories.[7] That month, Wojtyła personally helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer[8] who had run away from a Nazi labor camp in Częstochowa. Zierer was attempting to reach her family in Kraków but had collapsed from cold and exhaustion on a train platform in Jędrzejów. No one helped but Wojtyła, who gave her some hot tea and food, personally carried her to a train and accompanied her to Kraków. Zierer credits Wojtyła for saving her life that day. She would not hear of her benefactor again until she read that he was elected as the Pope in 1978.[9][10][11]
[edit] Priest
In 1942 he entered the underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha. Karol Wojtyła was ordained a priest on 1 November 1946, by Cardinal Sapieha. Not long after, he was sent to study theology at the Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum[12] in Rome, where he earned a licentiate and later a doctorate in sacred theology. This doctorate, the first of two, was based on the Latin dissertation Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce (The Doctrine of Faith According to Saint John of the Cross). Even though his doctoral work was unanimously approved in June 1948, he was denied the degree because he could not afford to print the text of his dissertation (an Angelicum rule). In December of that year, a revised text of his dissertation was approved by the theological faculty of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and Wojtyła was finally awarded the degree.
He returned to Poland in the summer of 1948 with his first pastoral assignment in the village of Niegowić, fifteen miles from Kraków. In March 1949, he was transferred to Saint Florian's parish in Kraków. He taught ethics at the Jagiellonian University there and subsequently at the Catholic University of Lublin. Wojtyła gathered a group of fewer than 20 young people, who began to call themselves Rodzinka, the "little family", who met for prayer, philosophical discussion, and helping the blind and sick. Eventually there were some 200 people in his circle, which came to be called Środowisko, meaning roughly "milieu". The group went on both skiing and kayaking trips annually.
Fr Wojtyła wrote a series of articles in Kraków's Catholic newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny ("Universal Weekly") dealing with contemporary church issues, and his literary work blossomed in his first dozen years as a priest. War, life under communism, and his pastoral responsibilities all fed his poems and plays. These were published under two pseudonyms-Andrzej Jawień, and Stanisław Andrzej Gruda. He used these pseudonyms firstly to distinguish his literary from his religious writings, which were published under his own name, and also so that his literary work would be considered on their own merits rather than as clerical curiosities.
He earned a second doctorate, based on an evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of phenomenologist Max Scheler (An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler), in 1954. As was the case with the first degree, he was not granted the degree upon earning it. This time, the faculty at Jagiellonian University was forbidden by communist authorities from granting the degree. In conjunction with his habilitation at Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, he finally obtained the doctorate of philosophy in 1957 from that institution, where he had assumed the Chair of Ethics in 1956.
[edit] Bishop and cardinal
On 4 July 1958 Pope Pius XII named him titular bishop of Ombi and auxiliary to Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak, apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Kraków. He was consecrated to the Episcopate on 28 September 1958. Archbishop Baziak was the principal consecrator; the co-consecrators were Bishop Franciszek Jop and then-Bishop Boleslaw Kominek, who would become the Cardinal Archbishop of Wroclaw, Poland. At 38 Karol Wojtyła was the youngest bishop in Poland. Pope John Paul II recounts in his book Rise, Let us be on our Way how he entered a room full of priests, after news had been received of his appointment as auxiliary Bishop, when Archbishop Baziak called out "Habemus papam" ("We have a Pope"). Baziak died in June 1962 and on 16 July Karol Wojtyła was elected as Vicar Capitular, or temporary administrator, of the Archdiocese until an Archbishop could be appointed.
Starting in October 1962 Bishop Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council, and in December 1963 Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków. On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals with the title of Cardinal Priest of San Cesareo in Palatio.
He made contributions to two of the most historic and influential products of the council, the Decree on Religious Freedom (in Latin, Dignitatis Humanae) and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes).
In 1960, Wojtyła had published the influential book Love and Responsibility, a defense of the traditional Church teachings on sex and marriage from a new philosophical standpoint. In 1967, he was instrumental in formulating the encyclical Humanae Vitae which deals with those same issues and forbids abortion and artificial birth control.
[edit] A Pope from Poland
In August 1978 following Paul's death, he voted in the Papal conclave that elected Pope John Paul I, who at 65 was considered young by papal standards. However, John Paul I died after only 33 days as pope, thereby precipitating another conclave.
Voting in the second conclave was divided between two particularly strong candidates: Giuseppe Siri, the Archbishop of Genoa; and Giovanni Benelli, the Archbishop of Florence and a close associate of Pope John Paul I. In early ballots, Benelli came within nine votes of victory. However, Wojtyła secured election as a compromise candidate, in part through the support of Franz Cardinal König and others who had previously supported Cardinal Siri.
He became the 264th Pope according to the chronological List of popes. At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope elected since Pope Pius IX in 1846. Like his immediate 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 Wyszynski knelt down, stopped him from kissing the ring and hugged him (SABC2 "The Greatest souls" documentary 2005). As Bishop of Rome he took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, on 12 November 1978.
| “ | “I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.” | ” |
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—Pope John Paul II [13] |
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[edit] Assassination attempts
On 13 May 1981 John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, an expert and trained Turkish gunman who was a member of the militant group Grey Wolves, as he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience. He was rushed into the Vatican complex, then to the Gemelli Hospital. The Pope had lost almost three-quarters of his blood, a near-exsanguination, despite the fact that the bullets missed his mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his massive blood loss and abdominal wounds. En route to the hospital, he lost consciousness. Ağca was caught and restrained by a nun and other bystanders until police arrived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after Christmas 1983, John Paul II visited the prison where his would-be assassin was being held. The two spoke privately for 20 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." The pope also stated that Our Lady of Fatima helped keep him alive throughout his ordeal.
| “ | Could I forget that the event [Ali Ağca's assassination attempt] 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. | ” |
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—Pope John Paul II -Memory & Identity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, p.184 |
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On 2 March 2006, an Italian parliamentary commission concluded that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt, in retaliation for John Paul II'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 report stated that certain Communist Bulgarian security departments were utilized to prevent the Soviet Union's role from being uncovered.[14] Although the Pope declared during a May 2002 visit to Bulgaria that this country had nothing to do with the assassination attempt, his secretary, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, alleges in his book A Life with Karol, that the pope was convinced privately that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt.[15] Bulgaria and Russia disputed the Italian commission's conclusions, pointing out that the Pope denied the Bulgarian connection.
Another assassination attempt took place on 12 May 1982, just a day before the anniversary of the last attempt on his life, in Fatima, Portugal when a man tried to stab John Paul II with a bayonet, but was stopped by security guards. On October 15, 2008 it was claimed by Stanisław Cardinal Dziwisz that John Paul II had in fact been effectively harmed during the attempt but managed to hide the non-life threatening wound, which did show blood.[16] The assailant, a right wing Spanish ex-priest named Juan María Fernández y Krohn, ordained a priest by the Archdiocese of Madrid, reportedly opposed the changes caused by the Second Vatican Council and called the pope an agent of Communist Moscow and of the Marxist East bloc. Fernández y Krohn subsequently left the Roman Catholic priesthood and served a six-year sentence.[17] He was treated for mental illness and was expelled from Portugal afterwards, only to become a lawyer in Belgium, where he would try to assassinate King Juan Carlos I of Spain.[citation needed]
Pope John Paul II was also one of the targets of the Al-Qaeda-funded Operation Bojinka during a visit to the Philippines in 1995. The first plan was to kill Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines during the World Youth Day 1995 celebrations. On January 15, 1995, a suicide bomber would dress up as a priest, while John Paul II passed in his motorcade on his way to the San Carlos Seminary in Makati City. The assassin planned to get close to the Pope, and detonate the bomb. The planned assassination of the Pope was intended to divert attention from the next part of the phase. However, a chemical fire inadvertently started by the would-be assassins alerted police to their whereabouts, and they were arrested nearly a week before the Pope's visit.
[edit] Health
When he became pope in 1978, John Paul II was already an avid sportsman, and he traveled extensively during his papacy. At the time, the 58-year old was extremely healthy and active, jogging in the Vatican gardens, weightlifting, swimming and hiking in the mountains. He was also fond of football.
John Paul's obvious physical fitness and athletic good-looks earned much comment in the media following his election, which compared his health 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 keep-fit regime had been Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) who was an avid mountain climber. An Irish Independent article in the 1980s labeled John Paul the "the keep-fit pope."
In 1981, John Paul II's health suffered a major blow after the first failed assassination attempt. He went on to a full recovery, and sported an impressive physical condition throughout the 1980s. In 1994 he fell down a flight of stairs and broke the largest bone in his body, the femur. He, subsequently rarely walked in public and began to suffer from an increasingly slurred speech and difficulty in hearing. Most experts agreed that the frail pontiff suffered from Parkinson's disease, although it wasn't until 2003 that the Vatican finally confirmed it. From being strikingly fitter than his predecessors, he had declined physically to far more ill health than was the norm among more elderly popes.
In February 2005 John Paul II was taken to the Gemelli hospital with inflammation and spasm of the larynx, the result of influenza. He was released from the hospital, then taken back after a few days because of difficulty breathing. A tracheotomy was performed, which improved the Pope's breathing but limited his speaking abilities, to his visible frustration. In March 2005, speculation was high that the Pope was near death; this was confirmed by the Vatican a few days before John Paul II died.
[edit] Death
On 31 March 2005 Pope John Paul II developed septic shock, a widespread form of infection with a very high fever and profoundly low blood pressure, but was not taken to the hospital. Instead, he was offered medical monitoring 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.[18] 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 rushed to the Vatican, filling St. Peter's Square and beyond with a vast multitude, and held vigil 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 about 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words, "pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca", ("Let me go to the house of the Father"), to his aides in his native Polish and fell into a coma about four hours later.[19] He died in his private apartment, at 21:37 CEST (19:37 UTC), 46 days short of his 85th birthday. The mass of the vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter, that is, Divine Mercy Sunday which was put into the Church's calendar by him on the occasion of the canonization of St. Faustina on 30 April 2000,[20] had just been celebrated at his bedside. Several aides were present, along with several Polish nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, who ran the papal household.
A crowd of over two million present in Vatican City mourned the death of John Paul II. The public viewing of his body in St. Peter's Basilica drew over four million people to Vatican City and was one of the largest pilgrimages in the history of Christianity. Many world leaders expressed their condolences and ordered flags in their countries lowered to half-staff. Numerous countries with a Catholic majority, and even some with only a small Catholic population, declared mourning for John Paul II.
On his death certificate, the primary cause of death was listed as (refractory) septic shock leading to profound hypotension and complete circulatory collapse.
[edit] Funeral
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 to 7 April at St. Peter's Basilica. The Testament of Pope John Paul II published on April 7[21] revealed that the pontiff contemplated being buried in his native Poland but left the final decision to The College of Cardinals. The College of Cardinals in passing preferred burial beneath St. Peter's Basilica, honoring the pontiff's request to be placed "in bare earth". The Mass of Requiem on 8 April was said to have set world records both for attendance and number of heads of state present at a funeral.[22][23][24] (See: List of Dignitaries) It was the single largest gathering of heads of state in history, surpassing the funerals of Winston Churchill (1965) and Tito (1980). Four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religions were attending alongside the faithful.[22] It is also likely to have been the largest pilgrimage of Christianity in history, with numbers estimated in excess of four million mourners gathering in Rome.[23][24][25] The Dean of the College of Cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger, who would become the next pope, 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 Blessed 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.
| “ | “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.” | ” |
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—Pope John Paul II [13] |
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[edit] Titles
His title was: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of Saint Peter, Head of the College of Bishops, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West (this title was recently removed from the papal list of titles by the reigning pope, Benedict XVI), Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, Servus Servorum Dei, Pope John Paul II.
[edit] Posthumous recognition and cause for canonization
[edit] Title "the Great"
Since the death of John Paul II, a number of clergy at the Vatican and laymen throughout the world have been 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.[26][27] 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. 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 Benedict XVI, referred to him as "the great Pope John Paul II" in his first address from the loggia of St Peter's Church. Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, stirred excitement by some devotees of the pope when in his published written homily for the Mass of Repose, he referred to Pope John Paul II as "the Great."
Since giving his homily at the funeral of Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict XVI has continued to refer to John Paul II as "the Great." At the 2005 World Youth Day in Germany, 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."
In addition to the Vatican calling him "the great," numerous newspapers have also done so. For example 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."
In San Diego, California, New Catholic University has renamed itself John Paul the Great Catholic University.[28]
[edit] Beatification
On 9 May 2005, Benedict XVI began the beatification process for his predecessor, John Paul II. Normally five years must pass after a person's death before the beatification process can begin. However, in an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome and the one responsible for promoting the cause for canonization of any person who dies within that diocese, cited "exceptional circumstances" which suggested that the waiting period could be waived.
The "exceptional circumstances" possibly refer to the people's cries of "Santo Subito!" ("Make him a Saint Now!" in Italian) during the late pontiff's funeral.[29] Therefore the new Pope waived the five year rule "so that the cause of Beatification and Canonization of the same Servant of God can begin immediately."[30] The decision was announced on 13 May 2005, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima and the 24th anniversary of the assassination attempt on John Paul II at St. Peter's Square.[31] John Paul II often credited Our Lady of Fatima for preserving him on that day. Cardinal Ruini inaugurated the diocesan phase of the cause for beatification in the Lateran Basilica on 28 June 2005.[32]
In early 2006, it was reported that the Vatican was investigating a possible miracle associated with John Paul II. A French nun, confined to her bed by Parkinson's Disease, is reported to have experienced a "complete and lasting cure after members of her community prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II".[33][34] The nun was later identified as Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, a member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Wards from Puyricard, near Aix-en-Provence.[35] Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, 46, is working again, now in Paris at a maternity hospital run by her order. She met reporters March 30, 2006 in Aix-en-Provence during a press conference with Archbishop Claude Feidt of Aix, the archdiocese where the cure took place. [36]
“I was sick and now I am cured,” she told reporters. “I am cured, but it is up to the church to say whether it was a miracle or not.” [36]
On 28 May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said Mass before an estimated 900,000 people in John Paul II's native Poland. During his homily he encouraged prayers for the early canonization of John Paul II and stated that he hoped canonization would happen "in the near future."
In January 2007, it was announced by Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz of Krakow, his former secretary, that the key interviewing phase in Italy and Poland of the beatification process was nearing completion. Cardinal Dziwisz had been giving an interview that featured the introduction of his new book in Polish and Italian, Living With Karol, when he made the announcement. In February 2007, the website of the late pope's sainthood cause has stated that relics of Pope John Paul II — pieces of white papal cassocks he used to wear — were being freely distributed with prayer cards for the cause to interested parties; this distribution and prayerful use of relics is a typical praiseworthy pious practice after a saintly Catholic's death.
On 8 March 2007 it was announced that the Vicariate of Rome announced that the diocesan phase of John Paul's cause for beatification is 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, who will conduct an investigation of their own.
Not all Catholic theologians agree with the call for beatification, though they have no authority or say in the matter whatsoever. Eleven dissident theologians, including Jesuit professor Jose Maria Castillo and Italian theologian Giovanni Franzoni raised seven points, including his 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."[37].
[edit] Life's work
[edit] Teachings
As pope, one of John Paul II's most important roles was to teach people about Christianity. He wrote 14 papal encyclicals (List of Encyclicals of Pope John Paul II) that many observers believe will have long-lasting influence on the church.[citation needed]
In his Apostolic Letter At the beginning of the third millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte), he emphasized the importance of "starting afresh from Christ": "No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person." In what he called a "program for all times," he placed "sanctity" as the single most important priority of all pastoral activities in the entire Catholic Church. He canonized many saints around the world as exemplars for his vision and he supported the prelature of Opus Dei, whose aim is to spread the message of the universal call to holiness and the sanctification of secular activities, which he said is a "great ideal" and a "characteristic mark" of the Second Vatican Council.
In The Splendour of the Truth (Veritatis Splendor) he emphasized 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 skepticism, 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 promotes a renewed interest in philosophy and an autonomous pursuit for Truth in theological matters. Drawing on many different sources (such as Thomism), he describes the mutually supporting relationship between faith and reason, and emphasizes why it is important that theologians should focus on the relationship. John Paul proposes that philosophy has lost its meaning (e.g., the pursuit for objective truth), and that restoring it will ultimately help cure the nihilistic condition of our current age; and, moreover, lead to the Truth of sacred scripture.
John Paul II also wrote extensively about workers and the social doctrine of the Church, which he discussed in three encyclicals. Through his encyclicals, John Paul also talked about the dignity of women and the importance of the family for the future of mankind, and many Apostolic Letters and Exhortations.
Other encyclicals include The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) and Orientale Lumen (Light of the East). Despite critics who accused him of inflexibility, he explicitly asserted Catholic moral teachings about murder, euthanasia and abortion that had remained unchanging for two thousand years. Like all statements on faith and morals asserted in official papal capacity, these statements were infallible according to Roman Catholic doctrine, and were so defined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
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 aloud 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, e.g., still condemning the taking of unborn human life through abortion as an "unspeakable crime". John Paul II continued to declare that contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts were gravely sinful, and, with Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI), opposed Liberation theology.
He believed in the Church's exaltation of the marital act of sexual intercourse between a baptized man and woman within sacramental marriage as proper and exclusive to the sacrament of marriage that was, in every instance, profaned by contraception, abortion, divorce followed by a 'second' marriage, and by homosexual acts. Often mistakenly assumed to be a rejection against women[citation needed], he definitively explained and asserted in 1994 for all time the Church's lack of authority to ordain women to the priesthood, without such authority such 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. (Apostolic Letter 'Ordinatio Sacerdotalis') 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.
John Paul II, as a writer of philosophical and theological thought, was characterized by his explorations in phenomenology and personalism. He is also known for his development of the Theology of the Body.
Philosophers and theologians influenced by him include[citation needed]-among countless others: his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, Jurgen Habermas, John Haas, Andrew Greeley, Rocco Buttiglione, Hans Köchler, George Weigel, Scott Hahn, Mary Beth Bonacci, Deirdre McQuade, Antoinette Bosco, Hans Küng, Yves Congar, Avery Dulles, SJ, John J. Myers, Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Joseph Bernardin, Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Timothy M. Dolan, Edward Egan, John O'Connor, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, Christoph Schonborn, Stanisław Dziwisz, Franciszek Macharski, Józef Glemp, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., Paolo Dezza, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa, Walter Kasper, Michael Fitzgerald, Jean-Marie Lustiger, André Vingt-Trois, Jarosław Gowin, and Elio Sgreccia.
| “ | “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” | ” |
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—Pope John Paul II [13] |
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[edit] Pastoral trips
During his pontificate, Pope John Paul II made trips to 117 countries.[38] In total he logged more than 1.1 million km (725,000 miles). He consistently attracted large crowds on his travels, some amongst the largest ever assembled in human history. All these travels were paid by the money of the countries he visited and not by the Vatican.
One of John Paul II's earliest official visits was to Poland, in June 1979, where he was constantly surrounded by ecstatic crowds.[39] The first trip to Poland sparked the formation of the Solidarity movement in 1980 which brought freedom and human rights to his troubled country. On later trips to Poland, he gave tacit support to the organization. Successive trips reinforced this message and Poland began the process that would finally defeat the domination of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe in 1989.
While some of his trips (such as to the United States and the Holy Land) were to places previously visited by Pope Paul VI (the first pope to travel widely), many others were to places that no pope had ever visited before, including Mexico in January, (1979) for a Bishops Synod, even before going to Poland for the first time, Ireland later that year in September 1979, Japan (in 1982), South Korea and Puerto Rico (both in 1984). He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982,[40] where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. In the first visit by a pontiff to Cuba (1998), he sharply criticized Cuba's stance on religious expression, as well as US sanctions against Cuba. In 2000, the first modern Catholic pope to visit Egypt met with the Coptic pope 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 Umayyad Mosque, where John the Baptist is believed to be interred.
In 1988 he made a trip to Lesotho to beatify Joseph Gerrad.[41] On 15 January 1995, during the X World Youth Day, he offered Mass to an estimated crowd of between four and eight million in Luneta Park, Manila, Philippines, considered the largest gathering in Christian history. In March 2000 as the first Pope in history, John Paul the Great visited Jerusalem and prayed by the Western Wall. In September 2001 amid post-September 11 concerns, he travelled to Kazakhstan, with an audience of largely Muslims, and to Armenia, to participate in the celebration of the 1700 years of Christianity in that nation.
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Pope John Paul II’s World Travels:[42]
1. January 25–February 1
5. May 2–12 |