S. Ioannis Pauli II, papæ

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in Wadowice, Poland, on 18 May 1920, the youngest child of Karol Wojtyła, an army non-commissioned officer, and Emilia Kaczorowska. His mother died in 1929; his elder brother Edmund, a physician, died in 1932; his father died in 1941. He received First Communion at nine and Confirmation at eighteen. After graduating from the gymnasium in Wadowice, he entered the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1938 to study literature and poetry, already drawn to the stage and to the Rhapsodic Theatre.

When Nazi forces closed the university in 1939, he labored from 1940 to 1944 in a quarry and then in the Solvay chemical plant to earn a living and avoid deportation. From 1942, sensing a call to the priesthood, he joined the clandestine major seminary of Kraków under Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha while continuing underground cultural work. After the war he completed seminary and theological studies and was ordained a priest in Kraków on 1 November 1946. Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome, where he earned a doctorate in theology in 1948 with a thesis on faith in the writings of Saint John of the Cross; during vacations he ministered among Polish emigrants in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Returning to Poland in 1948, he served as curate at Niegowić and then at Saint Florian's in Kraków, and as chaplain to university students until 1951. He resumed advanced studies, presenting in 1953 a thesis on founding Christian ethics upon Max Scheler's system, and became professor of moral theology and ethics in the Kraków seminary and at the Catholic University of Lublin. On 4 July 1958 Pope Pius XII named him auxiliary bishop of Kraków (titular of Ombi); he was consecrated on 28 September 1958 in Wawel Cathedral. Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków on 13 January 1964 and created him cardinal on 26 June 1967. He took a notable part in the Second Vatican Council, especially in the drafting of Gaudium et spes, and later in synods of bishops.

Elected pope on 16 October 1978, he began his ministry as universal pastor on 22 October, taking the name John Paul II in tribute to his predecessor. The first non-Italian pope in centuries, he made 104 apostolic journeys abroad and 146 pastoral visits in Italy, and as Bishop of Rome visited hundreds of Roman parishes. He issued fourteen encyclicals and many other major documents, promulgated the Codes of Canon Law for the Latin and Eastern Churches and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and instituted World Youth Day, the Year of the Redemption, the Marian Year, the Year of the Eucharist, and the Great Jubilee of 2000. He beatified 1,338 servants of God and canonized 482 saints, created numerous cardinals, and met millions of the faithful in general audiences and worldwide pilgrimages.

On 13 May 1981 he was gravely wounded in an assassination attempt in Saint Peter's Square. Attributing his survival to the maternal hand of the Mother of God, he later forgave his attacker and, conscious of a new gift of life, intensified his pastoral labors with heroic generosity. He defended the dignity of the human person, the family, and the unborn; fostered dialogue with Judaism, Islam, and the Orthodox; and is widely credited with encouraging the peaceful end of Communist rule in Poland and beyond Europe. Weakened by illness, he died in the Apostolic Palace on 2 April 2005, the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, which he had instituted. His funeral was celebrated on 8 April; he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 1 May 2011 and canonized by Pope Francis on 27 April 2014.

May Saint John Paul II intercede for us, that we may practice courageous mercy and entrust every trial to Divine Mercy.