John Paul II

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. By the age of twenty he had lost his mother, his older brother and his father. He studied at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and acted in a theater group, but during the German occupation, when the university was closed, he worked in a quarry and a chemical factory and studied in secret for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1946, earned doctorates in theology and philosophy, and taught ethics. He became a bishop in 1958, archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and a cardinal in 1967, and he took part in the Second Vatican Council. In 1978 he was elected pope, taking the name John Paul II; he was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the sixteenth century. He traveled to more than a hundred countries and supported the Solidarity movement in Poland. In 1981 he was shot and seriously wounded in St Peter's Square; he later visited his attacker in prison. His encyclicals include Centesimus Annus, Evangelium Vitae and Fides et Ratio. He died in 2005 and was canonized in 2014.

John Paul II is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Polish Catholic priest and archbishop of Kraków who was pope from 1978 to 2005; a Catholic saint. Source: Wikipedia