Book Description
In October 1978, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, archbishop of Kraków, was elected Pope, taking the name John Paul II in honor of his predecessor, who died after just thirty-three days in office. John Paul II was a surprising choice: Not only was he relatively young, at fifty-eight, but he was also the first non-Italian to be elevated to the papacy for more than 450 years. Eight months later, Wojtyla returned to his native Poland as Pope, receiving a rapturous welcome from his fellow Poles, who were then still living under communism. This was the beginning of John Paul II's extraordinary engagement with the world--work that remade the Catholic Church and reached out to people of all faiths in every nation.Karol Wojtyla was born near Kraków in 1920. Having studied theology secretly during the German occupation, he was ordained a priest in 1946, becoming archbishop in 1964 and cardinal in 1967. Outspoken and often controversial, John Paul II became one of the best-known figures in the world as the Cold War drew to an end. The most traveled Pope there has been, he had visited 123 countries by his eightieth birthday. By his eighty-third birthday, in 2003, he had become the fourth-longest-serving Pope in history, having worked diligently to secure his theological legacy within the church. This volume demonstrates the breadth and depth of John Paul II's life and interests. A Life in Prayer collects prayers and public speeches from the four volumes of The Private Prayers of Pope John Paul II. The selections illustrate his devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Rosary, the foundations of his spiritual life, the profound range of his compassion, and the poetry of his life and language. A Life in Prayer also includes extracts from Tad Szulc's biography of John Paul II that describe the key moments in Wojtyla's life. In 1994, John Paul II was named Time magazine's Person of the Year. The magazine said, "His power rests in the word, not the sword....He is an army of one, and his empire is both as ethereal and as ubiquitous as the soul."

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From John Paul II: The BiographyBy Tad Szulc1920Karol Józef Wojtyla was born together with the Polish Miracle. On Tuesday, May 18, 1920, the day of Wojtyla's birth in the small southern Polish town of Wadowice, Marshal Józef Pilsudski was being triumphantly received in Warsaw, the capital of the newly independent Poland, as the conquering hero of the war with the Soviet Union. Only ten days earlier, Pilsudski's young army had seized Kiev, the principal city of the Soviet Ukraine--Poland's first major military victory in over two centuries.Three months later, on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, Polish forces commanded by the marshal repulsed at the gates of Warsaw a powerful Soviet counterattack. It became immediately known as the "Miracle on the Vistula," the river bisecting the capital.The Soviet defeat at Warsaw doomed the advance that, if unchecked, might have continued toward war-shattered Germany and Western Europe, implanting communist rule there. Lenin and Stalin had elaborated a plan to achieve this goal and the Soviets had already occupied Lithuania and Byelorussia in their westward offensive.The 1920 Miracle on the Vistula was reminiscent of the battle of Vienna in 1683, when the Polish King Jan Sobieski destroyed the Turkish armies of the Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, thereby preventing the Ottoman sweep across the face of Europe.Indeed, Karol Wojtyla and the resurrected Poland, partitioned for 123 years among her three predatory neighbors--Russia, Prussia, and Austria--came to life virtually at the same time.Karol Jósef WojtylaTo understand John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope elected in 456 years, one must strive to understand Karol Józef Wojtyla, the man. And to do so, it is crucial to grasp and comprehend the fact of his Polishness. This is the essential trait of his personality, an often disorienting blend of conservatism and modernity.He is the pontiff of the Universal Church of nearly one billion Roman Catholics and a key player on the world diplomatic scene, but he remains a Polish patriot, a Polish philosopher, a Polish poet, and a Polish politician. During his first papal visit to Poland in June 1979, the embroidered insignia on his chasuble--the orphrey--was the Polish royal crowned white eagle with gold letters on blue proclaiming Polonia Semper Fidelis (Poland Always Faithful). At Christmas, he sings Polish carols with Polish friends visiting Rome in an informal family atmosphere. He keeps in touch with the Church and political situation in Poland on a daily basis. In his youth, Wojtyla was an actor in dramas celebrating the cult of Polishness, an experience he fondly remembers to this day.The pope's philosophical and theological thoughts, his reaction to international occurrences, and his interpretation of history must therefore be examined in the light of his personal background along with his familiarity with world problems and politics, acquired in travel on five continents, his towering intellect and erudition, and his massive literary output.The son of a deeply patriotic and religious retired career army officer and baptized by a military chaplain, Karol Wojtyla is above all the product of the historical Polish renewal whose foundations are rooted in a sense of national identity. The Roman Catholic Church had helped to preserve it over the centuries through the protection of language and culture--the mystical and messianic spirituality.But as the prolific poet and playwright that he once was, Wojtyla may be even better understood in his human dimension than as a philosopher or theologian. His writings reflect his experiences.Like no other pope, Karol Wojtyla had to work for years as a poverty-stricken manual laborer--under the wartime German occupation of his country. This had the merit of exposing him directly to hardships and experiences in human relationships few other priests had known. It taught him how to suffer in silence and dignity, and instilled in him a habit of absolute discipline, which, as pope, he seeks to impose on an increasingly rebellious Church. Wojtyla has always identified with peasants and workers: it is not uncommon for him to appeal publicly for justice for the "working class," an unusual phrase on the lips of the pope--but one, he says, that dates back to Jesus Christ.He is also identified with the messianic concept of Polish Catholicism, the national idea and religion being inseparable. As a child (and later as priest and cardinal), Wojtyla was irresistibly attracted to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, a Bernardine Fathers monastery, thirty miles from his hometown of Wadowice, where tens of thousands of rural inhabitants gathered at Easter to witness the reenactment of the death and resurrection of Christ, and at the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady in August, the Virgin's taking up into heaven. Kalwaria Zebrzydowska has a Way of the Cross, and crowds of believers moved behind the actor playing Christ from station to station, praying and chanting. It was a monumental display of popular piety, and, as a child, Wojtyla was a part of the Passion Play observance. Later, as a seminarian, he had hoped to become a Discalced Carmelite monk, a most mystical calling, and his first doctoral thesis was on St. John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic.On still another level, Wojtyla is the product of great personal tragedy and great personal suffering and loneliness, having lost his entire family before he reached the age of twenty-two: his parents' second-born baby, a girl who died in infancy, his mother when he was eight, his older brother when he was eleven, and his beloved father three months before his twenty-first birthday.His family tragedies inevitably shaped Wojtyla's character as a man and priest. He speaks of them often in private, especially of his poignant loneliness when his father died. And his proclivity for mysticism and romanticism has given him a sense, if not premonition, of martyrdom. He has been at least four times at the door of death.The figure Karol Wojtyla always venerated most is Stanisław, the Polish bishop murdered at a church altar in Kraków, then the royal capital, on the orders of a tyrannical king over nine centuries ago. He is now a saint, canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, and a patron saint of Poland. Preparing to leave for Rome to attend the history-making Vatican Council II in 1962, Wojtyla, then a young bishop, told the faithful at Mass in Kraków that "I am leaving the tomb of St. Stanisław for the tomb of St. Peter...their greatness is comparable, they complement each other...." He used virtually the same words as cardinal when he left Kraków for the 1978 conclave that would elect him pope.Today, John Paul II alludes to St. Stanisław when he talks privately about the assassination attempt that almost cost him his life in St. Peter's Square in May 1981. In public comments, he constantly emphasizes that the martyred bishop "always was the patron of moral order in our motherland" and remains "a moral force in our time." Wojtyla, himself Bishop of Kraków for many years, identifies totally with his predecessor, a fervent Polish patriot, at the dawn of the present millennium.Wojtyla is mystically contemplative, but he is a creature of enormous toughness and stamina, which helped him survive the wounds from the assassin's bullets, major abdominal surgery, serious infections, and numerous accidents over the years, without ever allowing himself to be diverted from the pursuit of his myriad objectives.Friends who have known Wojtyla over decades insist that prayer and meditation are the principal source of his mental and physical strength and his astonishing capability of restoring his energy--and even his appearance--notwithstanding his punishing schedule at the Vatican and exhausting globe-girdling jet travel. By any normal standards, this is much too much for a man in his mid-eighties, but until recently no one would dare to suggest that he curtail his activities even by a minute a day. John Paul II is a man with a mission, imposing an overwhelming impression that he fears time is running out for him, with so much more still left to accomplish for humanity and his Church. Yet, by mid-1994, his health failing, he had to start cutting back on his schedule. His final drama had begun.Wojtyla is said to pray as many as seven hours a day: at his private chapel at dawn, sometimes prostrate before the altar, then with invited guests before breakfast, often in his study next to his bedroom, at Masses and services in Rome or on the road, aboard the plane, and on the back seat of his black Mercedes limousine. The pope has a power of concentration that wholly insulates him from his temporal surroundings as he slides into prayer or meditation, even facing huge crowds at an outdoor Mass. The expression on his broad face is otherworldly, he shuts his eyes so tight that he seems to be in pain, and, occasionally, his lips move lightly in silent prayer. Then the moment passes, and Wojtyla is alert again, the happy smile is back on his face, and his eyes scan the clergy and the rows of faithful in front of him.Addressing university students at a Kraków church in 1972, as cardinal, Wojtyla preached that prayer "is a conversation," but it also means "contact with God," and then went on to explain in his methodical way: "Human prayer has different dimensions, very deep ones. And not only different external dimensions: when, for example, a Moslem prays with his great courage, calling out to his Allah everywhere at prescribed times; when a Buddhist prays, entering complete concentration as if removing himself in that concentration; when a Christian prays, receiving from Christ the word 'Father.'...So when I pray, when we pray, then all these roads are as one road, completing one another."As pope, Wojtyla confided, "When I was young, I thought that prayer could be--should be--only in thankfulness and adoration. A prayer of supplication seemed to me something unworthy. Afterwards I changed my opinion completely. Today I ask very much." When John Paul II comes to pray every morning at his private chapel in the papal apartments, a list of special prayer "intentions," prepared by nuns attached to the household, await him on the prie-dieu. A visitor, hesitatingly inquiring after a private lunch whether the pope would pray for his non-Catholic son-in-law awaiting a heart transplant, was told with great warmth: "Naturally, I shall pray for him. What is his name?"At the same time, this spiritual pope is an activist and workaholic, busy from before dawn until close to midnight. His bedroom window is the last to turn dark along the facade of the Apostolic Palace that adjoins St. Peter's Basilica. And Wojtyla is a lifetime athlete who gave up skiing, his favorite sport, only after fracturing his hip in a bathroom accident when he was just shy of his seventy-fourth birthday. What turned out to be his farewell skiing trip was an overnight excursion to the Italian mountains north of Rome early in February 1994. The Vatican kept secret the fact that the pope did ski on that occasion because doctors advised against it following a fall in November 1993, when he broke his shoulder. However, he was allowed to hike in the mountains, another of his preferred outdoor activities--but not too much--and he is encouraged by his doctors to swim in the pool at the summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.His determination to achieve his goals is as steely as his single-mindedness in defending his profoundly conservative theological, ethical, and moral beliefs, so unexpected in an otherwise worldly and modern man. For John Paul II is exceedingly open-minded to new ideas and concepts, from philosophy to science and psychiatry. It was this pope who in 1992 formally pronounced Galileo Galilei innocent of the charges brought against him by the Inquisition three and a half centuries earlier for insisting (heretically, a Church court said in 1633) that the sun is the central body of our solar system. As it happened, this notion was first developed by Copernicus, a Polish astronomer known in Kraków as Mikolaj Kopernik. And Wojtyla is captivated by astrophysics and theories on the creation of the universe (he is said to accept the theory of the Big Bang so long as it is recognized that it was God's work). Genetics and its impact on Christian ethics fascinates him, although, in the opinion of scientists at the Vatican, genetics may be as much a controversy for John Paul II's Church as Galileo was for the seventeenth-century papacy.In preparation for the Third Millennium, John Paul II directed the College of Cardinals to rethink the correctness of the actions of the Church in past centuries, including its stand in religious wars and on the Inquisition, in an undertaking that might, in effect, lead to a fresh version of Roman Catholic history.The Sistine Chapel (where John Paul II was elected by the College of Cardinals, as most popes have been since the sixteenth century) was restored on his watch, a monumental fourteen-year project. Michelangelo's Last Judgment, perhaps the world's greatest artwork, can now be admired in the pure beauty of the colors with which he painted it on the wall of the chapel behind the altar, after completing the famous ceiling frescoes.John Paul II personally celebrated High Mass at the Sistine Chapel immediately after Easter of 1994, with all the cardinals present in Rome in attendance, to mark the end of the lengthy restoration enterprise.The Polish pope is a man of touching kindness and deep personal warmth, a quality that evidently he communicates to the hundreds of millions of people who have seen him in person, as he crisscrosses the globe by jet airplane (and hops, skips, and jumps by helicopter from ceremony to ceremony), or on satellite or local television. His smiling face is probably the best known in the world, John Paul II having elevated his mastery of modern communications technology in the service of his gospel to the state of art.But he really thrives on direct contact with people--individuals or huge crowds--which invigorates him even at moments of utter physical fatigue. In public, he likes to joke, often in a slightly self-deprecatory fashion, in whatever language he happens to be using at the time, and he enjoys the crowd's laughing, applauding responses. It may be the actor in him.But notwithstanding his extrovert public persona, Wojtyla is a very private man who keeps even those closest to him at arm's length, sometimes imperceptibly. He possesses a very private sense of humor, which he displays at intimate moments, complete with a mischievous glint in his gray-blue eyes and, sometimes, a remark that quite pointedly goes to the heart of the matter--not always in a way complimentary to the person under consideration.At a lunch or dinner in the plain dining room in the Papal Apartments at the Apostolic Palace--on the third floor--with only a single guest and his two private secretaries, the pope is an amiable host, conducting the conversation in a fashion so relaxed that the visitor quickly forgets that he is in the presence of His Holiness. There are no formalities about second helpings or accepting a second (or third) glass of wine--Wojtyla likes to add a touch of water to his wine--and the meal, an interesting mix of Italian and Polish cuisine prepared by Polish nuns and served by the pope's Italian valet, is abundant; the host himself eats heartily between smiles and makes comments on a variety of themes. It is difficult not to like him.From earliest childhood, Wojtyla had displayed an extremely rare but wholesome devotion to God and religion that may suggest in retrospect that he is a "chosen one," if, indeed, God works in this way. Family tragedies were an added component in strengthening his faith. Polish traditions of mysticism and messianism, surrounding him as a youth, inevitably played a crucial role in turning him toward the priesthood. In fact, Wojtyla was directly involved with the Church and its organizations and activities from his youngest years, not as convenient pietism in a religion-oriented society, but as a perfectly natural and logical endeavor for him. A succession of dramatic events and astounding coincidences, bordering on the mystical, occurred during the period preceding the start of his secret theological studies.As priest, Karol Wojtyla threw himself joyfully into the practice of his calling, deeper and deeper theological and philosophical studies and reflection, and an enormous workload. His spiritual and intellectual qualities and his warm and attractive personality were noticed higher up in the Church where he was able to command vital support along with the friendship of his secular and clerical contemporaries.Wojtyla always had powerful protectors and advocates--from Kraków's Archbishop (and later Cardinal) Adam Stefan Sapieha, even before he entered the underground seminary, to Pope Paul VI, who held him in the highest esteem, powerfully aiding his ecclesiastic career. His rise in the Church was meteoric.The entire trajectory of Karol Wojtyla's life adds up to a formidable project to improve himself in preparation for a predestined future or, simply, for God's greater glory.No bishop or cardinal in recorded memory has toiled harder as pastor, scholar, intellectual, and de facto political leader (in and out of the Church) than Wojtyla in the prepontifical period. It took thirty-two years for him to traverse the distance from the Kraków priesthood to the Holy See, achieving it at the fairly young age of fifty-eight, with every year bringing fresh accomplishments. In education and erudition as well as in theological, philosophical, and literary output in the formative period, he could be compared only to Gregory the Great, who became pope at age fifty in a.d. 590. He would resemble Gregory, too, in "inexorable severity."Wojtyla began composing remarkably good poetry in his late teens, appeared at sixteen in the first amateur theatrical play in Wadowice (a Polish messianic drama that he also co-directed), and wrote two biblical dramas at twenty. He spoke fluent Latin and read Greek and German when he graduated from high school. He was awarded his first doctorate (in mystical theology) at twenty-two and his second (in philosophy, accentuating his beloved phenomenology) at thirty-two. His first "political" newspaper article (on French worker-priests) was published when he was twenty-nine.He served as a Kraków university chaplain and taught ethics at three Polish theological seminaries and at Lublin Catholic University, making friends and impressing people in all walks of life wherever he went. He made lifetime friends among workers at the Kraków quarry and chemical plant where he was a wartime laborer (and simultaneously a secret seminarian), remembering them fondly by name when he was cardinal. As student, worker, priest, or actor, Wojtyla was always the most popular person in his milieu.A bishop at thirty-eight, he began to be known in Kraków, in Poland, in Rome, and throughout the Church worldwide. A fine, instinctive politician in the best sense of the word, Wojtyla started to build a potential constituency (consciously or not) through more and more key friendships in the Church. He shone at Vatican Council II, delivering six intellectually puissant speeches in impeccable Latin. An increasingly frequent visitor in Rome with growing involvement in the activities of the Curia, he was soon noticed by Pope Pius VI, being named cardinal at forty-seven.Speaking a half-dozen foreign languages (Italian, Spanish, German, and French being his best), Wojtyla traveled all over Western Europe and attended international Church meetings in the United States, Canada, and Australia, accepting invitations whenever Polish communist authorities were willing to grant him a passport. Everywhere, he befriended cardinals and bishops. At the same time, he regularly invited foreign cardinals and bishops, many of them from the Third World (which would become very important at the right time) to visit him in Kraków, where they could observe his tireless pastoral labors.Before long, Wojtyla was the most important figure in the Polish episcopate, after the aging, old-fashioned Cardinal Stefan Wyszyn'ski of Warsaw, the Primate of Poland. There seemed to be no subject that did not captivate his attention: he organized symposia and conferences of theologians, philosophers, scientists, physicians, lawyers, writers, and journalists to learn their subjects and their concerns as they affected Polish society. As pope, he transplanted this system to the Vatican (and the Castel Gandolfo residence during the summer). He knew then and he knows now how to listen.Was it therefore logical--or predestined--that with this magnificent preparation Karol Wojtyla would crown his life as pope?1967In 1967, at the young age of forty-seven, Karol Wojtyla seemed to have reached the top of his ecclesiastic career.The cardinalate is a lifetime appointment, although cardinals, under rules established by the Second Vatican Council, must retire from governing, pastoral, or administrative activities at seventy-five. But they remain members of the College of Cardinals, being most pleasantly pensioned off, and they can vote in a conclave for a new pontiff until the age of eighty.For Cardinal Wojtyla, this meant, in practical terms, that he was guaranteed full-time occupation and great Church and political power for the next twenty-eight years. Because he was the governing Metropolitan Archbishop of Kraków, which is a function independent of the cardinalate title and prestige, he was the second most powerful and influential Church leader in Poland after Primate Wyszyn'ski, and many churchmen believed that in fact Wojtyla had more quiet influence.Wojtyla was, of course, deeply engaged in policymaking in the Polish episcopate and he was increasingly drawn by Pope Paul VI into Holy See matters. He was a Kraków-based Polish celebrity. Still, there were limitations on what he could do and say. His admirable and absolute loyalty to Primate Wyszyn'ski, notwithstanding Wojtyla's deep but silent reservations about the man and his ideas, was the principal limit--self-imposed--on his freedom of action and speech, aside from the observance of normal hierarchical deference.Did Karol Wojtyla ever think that he might be pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church?Obviously, he had heard the idea--or hope--mentioned on innumerable occasions, from Father Pio in Italy in 1947, to a little girl in the town of Ludz'mierz six weeks after he was anointed cardinal. A friend described the event in a memoir preserved in the archives of the Kraków archdiocese: "A little girl, welcoming the cardinal, recited a poem in which the final words expressed the expectation that he would now become pope. This caused general merriment. The Cardinal did not laugh. He leaned down gravely and kissed the little girl on the forehead."As a practical matter, papal prospects for him were dim at that stage, except for reasons of age. Though longevity has characterized popes in this century--both Pius XII and John XXIII died in their eighties--Paul VI was already seventy when he named Wojtyla cardinal in 1967. Even if he, too, lived past his eightieth birthday (which he would), Wojtyla would still be extremely young by pontifical standards.The real problems were that the idea of a non-Italian pope was still very farfetched (although Paul VI had mentioned it once) and that, at least when measured in 1967, Wojtyla had not yet acquired the necessary stature to be a plausible conclave candidate notwithstanding the excellent reputation he had acquired during the Second Vatican Council. He would use well the eleven years of cardinalate that lay ahead to augment this stature.1978Monday, October 16, the first order of business (after the morning Mass) was for the non-Italians to persuade the College of Cardinals that the time had come for a foreign pope. And Wojtyla supporters, now in growing numbers, had to make it plain--delicately--that he was the man.Cardinal Koenig [Cardinal Franz Koenig of Vienna] rose at the morning plenary session to make the basic case before his fellow electors. This is how he remembers the occasion: "I recall that before the previous conclave, I got several letters from unknown people in Italy, saying, 'Please vote for a non-Italian because our country is in such a mess, and it would help us if a non-Italian becomes pope.' A very curious argument. So, at the beginning, in my opinion, the reason [for the opposition to Wojtyla] was that he was young, and, much more than that, a non-Italian coming from an Eastern country."Koenig was making the point that while the cardinals realized that a younger pope was desirable, Wojtyla, only fifty-eight at that time, seemed too young to many. This view was shared by Primate Wyszyn'ski who, at seventy-seven, embarrassed some of his friends by suggesting during Sunday night Sistine Chapel conversations that he would be the "natural" foreign pontiff--if it came to that. Actually, the primate, who always had very mixed feelings about Wojtyla, believed, rather surprisingly, that the next pope should be an Italian. His biographer recounts that Wyszyn'ski "thought that tradition would be respected in the election of another Italian pope....What is more, he regarded such an outcome as fitting: not only did he think the Romans should have an Italian bishop, but he also feared the consequences of violating a 455-year-old tradition."Such, then, was the resistance Koenig and his allies had to overcome. As he recalls the Monday morning session, "I defended my opinion openly before the conclave. I said that 'it's time to change the system and to vote for a non-Italian. That is my opinion.' "After two ballots Monday morning, there still was no pope and, once more, black smoke poured out the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to the disappointment of the tens of thousands of the faithful in St. Peter's Square. Having no idea what was happening inside, the crowd was growing increasingly tense and worried. But as they sat down to lunch, the cardinals had finally made up their minds that they would pick a foreigner. Still, the question was, "Who?"As the Monday afternoon session opened, it was obvious that there were only four plausible foreign candidates: Wojtyla, who had received a few votes even on Sunday afternoon; Koenig, who definitely did not want the job; Cardinal Eduardo Francisco Pironio of Argentina (who was fifty-eight); and Cardinal Johannes Willebrands of the Netherlands, sixty-nine, who had earned much respect for his work in the realms of religious liberty and ecumenical unity among Christian churches. Willebrands, in fact, received twenty votes Monday morning before shifting his own support to Wojtyla.Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón recalled that "at noon of the second day I realized that it would be Wojtyla." He added that "the first day--Sunday--after four ballots, the cardinals were a bit disoriented, but on Monday morning we felt it would be Karol Wojtyla. We had seen on the first day that it couldn't be an Italian, so we had to search for a new way, and on the second day it was clear where we were going."Belgian Cardinal Suenens said that "on the second day, there wasn't too much discussion. It became the language of mathematics. And Karol Wojtyla was the most evident name."But the first ballot Monday afternoon--the seventh of the conclave--did not produce Wojtyla's victory. He was still short of the magic seventy-five votes. More black smoke. Cardinal Krol [Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia] had brought around the Americans, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the conservative German theologian, delivered the votes of the Germans, who in the morning had declined to go for the Pole. Brazil's Lorscheider, Argentina's Pironio, and Benin's Bernardin Gantin mobilized Latin American and African votes. But most of the Italians were still denying Wojtyla their twenty-five votes, and the outcome remained in doubt as the cardinals got ready for the afternoon's second vote.The problem was to make Wojtyla fully acceptable to all the Church factions and, evidently, this required a formidable last-moment effort. As Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón put it, "We were not looking for a conservative or a progressive, but someone 'sure' in line with Vatican Council II. It was not in ideological terms. Besides, Wojtyla was a pastoral bishop, which was vital."Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, the white-bearded Dean of the College of Cardinals, called for the eighth ballot shortly after 5:00 p.m. The tension inside the Sistine Chapel was unbearable; many feared an unbreakable deadlock over the Italian question, which would plunge the Church into a profound crisis. Koenig said that "there was enormous tension the whole time."Then the break came. Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, the powerful Italian Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, decided to back Wojtyla, followed by just enough recalcitrant Italian cardinals. As votes were called out by the counters, the cardinals wrote down the numbers on their pads. Koenig, who sat directly ahead of Wojtyla, recalls that "when the number of votes for him approached one-half [of the needed total], he cast away his pencil and sat up straight. He was red in the face. Then he was holding his head in his hands."Koenig went on to say: "My impression was that he was completely confused. Then the final majority number turned up. He had two-thirds of the votes plus one...."As the ballot reached ninety-four for him--seventeen cardinals refused to accept him--Wojtyla leaned down over the desk and began writing furiously.At 6:18 p.m., Cardinal Tisserant announced in the chapel that Karol Wojtyla of Kraków had been elected pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Villot, the chamberlain, approached Wojtyla to ask in Latin: "In accordance with the canon law do you accept?"Wojtyla had no hesitation. "It is God's will," he replied. "I accept."The cardinals broke out in applause. Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón summed up later what had just happened in the Sistine Chapel: "God forced us to break with history to elect Karol Wojtyla."In the back of the chapel, Cesare Tassi's stove spewed out white smoke to the world. It announced that a pope had been chosen, but his identity was not made known at that moment. Suspense gripped St. Peter's Square as night fell.Taking the name of John Paul II--out of respect for his predecessor--Karol Wojtyla became the 263rd successor of St. Peter, the 264th pope of his Church, and thereby head of seven hundred million Roman Catholics, the single largest and oldest religious institution in the world.As pope, he also became "The Bishop of Rome, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, the Supreme Pontiff who has the primacy of jurisdiction and not merely of honor over the Universal Church, the Patriarch of the West, the Primate of Italy, the Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, the Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God." He was to be addressed as "His Holiness the Pope" or, more informally, as "Holy Father."At the age of fifty-eight and a half years (almost to the day), the rugged, athletic Polish cardinal, standing five feet ten and a half inches, was the youngest pope since 1846, and, of course, the first foreigner since 1523. And John Paul II wasted no time demonstrating to the cardinals and then to the rest of the world that he would be a very different kind of pope.As soon as Karol Wojtyla accepted the papacy, Cesare Tassi, the Sistine official, led him out of the chapel through a small door to the left of the altar, below The Last Judgment, to a whitewash-walled narrow room to don the white papal vestments awaiting the new pontiff (actually, the room held three sets of vestments in portmanteaus: in small, medium, and large sizes, to fit whoever was chosen).Returning to the chapel, Wojtyla found an armchair placed in front of the altar where, according to tradition, he would sit to receive the cardinals' vows of obedience. But, as Cardinal Enrique y Tarancón recalled, Wojtyla had other ideas."When the Master of Ceremonies invited the pope to sit down," he said, "Wojtyla replied, 'No, I receive my brothers standing up....' " One by one, the cardinals came to Wojtyla to be embraced by him. The longest embrace was for Primate Wyszyn'ski. Then the cardinals sang the Te Deum. The ceremony in the chapel lasted nearly one hour (the paper ballots were burned at the same time to assure eternal secrecy over the election proceedings).Next, Wojtyla left the Sistine Chapel through the back door, past the partition, leading the papal procession across the vast Regal and Ducal Halls of St. Peter's Basilica to the Loggia, the central balcony overlooking the vast darkened square filled with over two hundred thousand faithful--Italians, foreign pilgrims, and tourists.Cardinal Felici was the first to step out on the balcony at 6:44 p.m. as the great cross on the facade of the basilica lit up and the Swiss Guards marched into the square, the band playing and the huge papal flag unfurled. In sonorous Latin, Felici shouted: "I announce to you a great joy....We have a Pope!--Habemus Papam!"As the first roar of the crowd died down, Felici identified him: "Carolum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Wojtyla...Ionnaem Paulum Secundum!"Silence swept St. Peter's Square. Wojtyla was a totally unknown name to the multilingual crowd. People looked at one another questioningly, wondering who was this Wojtyla? An African? No, someone said, "He's Polish!"Now John Paul II, red chasuble over his white robe, the papal cross over his chest, and a happy smile over his broad face, moved forward to bestow his first "Urbi et Orbi" (City and World) blessing. It was 7:20 p.m. But first, departing from custom, he delivered a brief address in Italian:May Jesus Christ be praised!...Dearest brothers and sisters, we are still grieved after the death of our most beloved Pope John Paul I. And now the most eminent cardinals have called a new bishop of Rome. They have called him from a distant country, distant but always so close through the communion in the Christian faith and tradition....I do not know whether I can explain myself well in your--our Italian language. If I make a mistake you will correct me. And so I present myself to you all to confess our common faith, our hope, our confidence in the Mother of Christ and of the Church, and also to start anew on this road of history and of the Church, with the help of God and with the help of men.It was, in effect, his acceptance speech--his bid to be accepted as a non-Italian pope in Italy--and he had drafted it in the Sistine Chapel after the cardinals' votes for him had exceeded seventy-five. And John Paul II found that he was accepted in Italy and across a fascinated world with extraordinary speed and ease. He also imposed himself instantly upon the Church and the Roman Curia.As he faced the great Roman crowd in St. Peter's Square, Monsignor Dziwisz, his chaplain and secretary, scurried across the city to bring the pope's meager belongings from his Polish College apartment on Piazza Remuria to the temporary lodgings in the Apostolic Palace where he would spend the first night as pontiff.* * *John Paul II concentrated on what were for him four immensely important activities on Tuesday, October 17, his first full day as pope.In the morning, he concelebrated solemn Mass at the Sistine Chapel with all the cardinals, again bestowing the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing.In the afternoon, he was driven in the black Mercedes papal limousine to the Gemelli Polyclinic to visit his paralyzed friend, Bishop Deskur. "He taught me how to be pope," John Paul II said as he walked into Deskur's room. A crowd had gathered in the clinic's corrdiors for a glimpse of him, but the pope had to be reminded that they expected a blessing. Smiling sheepishly, he made the sign of cross, remarking, "I'm not used to it yet...."In the late afternoon, John Paul II received Polish friends at an informal ceremony he called "Farewell to the Motherland" in a room behind the stage of the Paul VI Auditorium next to the basilica. Each friend was summoned individually over a loudspeaker to come to greet the pope. Jerzy Kluger, Wojtyla's Jewish friend and classmate from Wadowice high school, and his English wife were the first to be called.In the evening, Wojtyla gave orders for his cardinal's red zucchetto--skullcap--to be placed at the altar of the Polish Virgin of Ostrabrama in Vilnius in Soviet Lithuania. It had to be smuggled there.That was how the pontificate of John Paul II began.Pope John Paul II1979John Paul II landed in Warsaw on the morning of June 2, 1979, eight months to the day after he had left as Cardinal Wojtyla for the Vatican conclave, and from the moment he knelt to kiss the Polish ground at Okecie Airport, he lived nine days of national ecstasy.At least ten million Poles (of a population of thirty-five million) saw him in person in the nine cities, towns, and sanctuaries where he appeared, prayed, and spoke before the masses of humanity. The country had exploded in color: white-and-red Polish flags and white-and-yellow papal flags were everywhere, and portraits of a smiling Wojtyla decorated with papal pennants seemed to be in every window along the routes of his motorcades. His appearances drew the biggest crowds in Polish history.Others watched him on Polish state television although the ever-zealous party officials had ordered their cameramen to keep the lenses on John Paul II in tight shots and avoid showing the huge throngs in attendance at Mass and other events. It was foolish totalitarian behavior because every citizen knew that millions had turned out to cheer the pontiff and intone the ancient song, "We want God!" Poles spoke of "our nine days of freedom."The pope set the tone for his visit--his second foreign papal trip--with admirable diplomatic deftness, again blending the spiritual and the temporal in defining his Polish mission as well as his overall policies. Responding to airport welcoming remarks by President Henryk Jablon'ski, John Paul II announced that "my visit is dictated by strictly religious motivation" although "I earnestly hope that [it] will serve the great cause of closeness and cooperation among nations...mutual understanding, reconciliation and peace in the contemporary world...[and] the internal unity of my compatriots...."Religion and patriotism always went hand in hand in Polish history, and the pope elevated the sentiment to magnificent heights on Jasna Góra--the Luminous Mountain--at Cz,estochowa, the shrine of the Black Madonna, the Queen of Poland. He went there after appearances in Warsaw and Gniezno, the see of the oldest Polish diocese. Spending three days in the Cz,estochowa-Jasna Góra area, John Paul II spoke twenty-three times--surely a record in papal annals--before audiences ranging from sealike crowds at solemn Mass to groups of fathers and mothers superior of male and female religious orders, the Polish Episcopal Conference, young people, and the sick and the infirm.And the pope's homilies and speeches from the most hallowed ground in Poland were not the usual sort, pious exhortations to which worshippers there were accustomed. Some were lengthy and complex essays on Polish history in the context of Cz,estochowa's salvation by the Madonna from besieging Swedish armies in the seventeenth century--but moving into the modern age as well--or in the context of St. Stanisław, his martyrdom, and human freedom. Others were lectures on the state of the Church following the Second Vatican Council. As an American reporter wrote from Cz,estochowa: "Every papal gesture, every deft historical reference had political connotations in this setting."Thus John Paul II had come back to Poland as preacher and teacher, historian and patriot, philosopher and theologian. It was his greatest tour de force to date, and he was only halfway through the Polish pilgrimage.But the most personal and emotionally charged part of Wojtyla's Polish homecoming was the return to his archdiocese: Kraków, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Wadowice, Oświecim, Nowy Targ....And adoring throngs turned out to welcome him home, filling every square foot of the sprawling, triangular Blonia Meadow, just east of Jagiellonian University and the Old Town, where he spoke lovingly to his fellow Krakowians, calling the city "this Polish Rome." He talked nostalgically about his Kraków youth, the university, the Nazi occupation, his work at the stone quarry and the Solvay plant, his priestly calling, and his years as bishop and cardinal. His every word was heard in reverent silence, then shouts and applause would soar to the blue spring sky like cannon salvos.The next day, June 7, John Paul II followed his sentimental memory route to his favorite Kalwaria Zebrzydowska sanctuary and its Stations of the Cross, reminiscing about his childhood and adult visits there, always drawing inspiration from them. He also recalled that his grandfather and his great-grandfather had served as guides to pilgrims at the sanctuary.Two hours later, the pope was really home--in Wadowice. His old religion teacher and parish priest Edward Zacher greeted him tearfully, and Karol Wojtyla loved every moment in his town, recognizing every person in sight, embracing quite a few, shaking many hands. He praised the local band that played for him, but remarked that "before the war, we oldsters remember but the young know nothing about, we had the superb band of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment...."After the jokes and laughter of Wadowice came the sorrow and sadness of the Oświecim-Brzezinka concentration camp later that afternoon. Wojtyla had gone there many times in the past, but, as he said during the Mass he celebrated at the camp, "This is a very special sanctuary, and I couldn't have failed to come here as pope." And, once more, John Paul II mentioned St. Stanisław, the nation's first martyr.Walking slowly along the paths of the camp, preserved intact by the Poles as an eternal memory of the Holocaust, the pope knelt before a stone tablet inscribed in Hebrew, a tablet inscribed in Russian, and a tablet inscribed in Polish. The Hebrew words, he said, "bring to mind the memory of a nation whose sons and daughters were condemned to total extermination. This nation has its beginning with Abraham, who is 'the father of our faith.'...And this nation, which received from God Jahwe the Commandment, 'Thou Shall Not Kill,' has itself experienced killing in a particular manner....Nobody may walk past this tablet in indifference...."A Mass at the market town of Nowy Targ in the foothills of the Carpathians and three more breathless days in Kraków completed John Paul II's Polish pilgrimage. At churches, the Jagiellonian University, and meetings with bishops, theologians, monks, nuns, the young, and the sick, the pope kept up the drumbeat of his message of religious faith and patriotism--and of his devotion to St. Stanis'law. In the end, he had had his way, spiritually and politically, in this virtuoso management of his journey.1981The horror was the pistol shot fired at John Paul II from less than twenty feet in St. Peter's Square on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 13, 1981, in an assassination attempt by a Turkish terrorist.The bullet from the powerful 9mm Browning Parabellum penetrated his abdomen, shattering the colon and the small intestine, and went through the sacral vein system. Miraculously, in the words of attending surgeons, the projectile passed a few millimeters from the central aorta. Had it hit the aorta, John Paul II would have died instantly. The bullet missed other vital organs, such as the iliac artery and the ureter, and even nerve centers near them went untouched.Still, it was touch-and-go during the five hours and twenty minutes of surgery at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic, twelve minutes by screaming ambulance from the Vatican. The pope was rushed there from St. Peter's Square within minutes of being struck by one of the two bullets fired by Mehmet Ali Agca in the midst of twenty thousand pilgrims and tourists at the weekly General Audience (the second bullet missed the pontiff altogether). John Paul II had been standing in his open jeep, and Agca had to fire at an upward angle from the pavement.John Paul II lost consciousness as he reached the hospital, and Monsignor Dziwisz, his private secretary, who was with him during the attack, decided to administer the sacraments of Extreme Unction before the surgery began. When Dr. Francesco Crucitti, the chief surgeon, opened the abdomen, he found it filled with blood, some six pints of it. The sacral system was pouring out blood, the pope's pressure was down to 70 and falling, the pulse had nearly vanished, and Dr. Crucitti realized that his patient had already lost three quarters of his blood.Stanching the hemorrhage and starting a massive transfusion, he discovered deep lacerations in the colon; it had to be sewn up and twenty-two inches of intestine had to be cut away. Finally, the doctors had to treat the injury to the pope's right shoulder and a finger of his left hand caused by the bullet as it exited his body (two American women tourists standing nearby were badly wounded by the same bullet). And a tooth had been broken during anesthesia.Monsignor Dziwisz remembered that John Paul II, in great pain after being shot, whispered a short prayer in Polish, "Mary, my mother...!" before losing consciousness. He said that the pope later told him that while still conscious, he was certain that his wounds were not fatal and that he would survive. And just a month after the shooting, John Paul II received at his Vatican apartments a Rural Solidarity delegation from Poland, encouraging the farmers in their free trade union struggle and blessing their loaves of bread. His robust constitution and his excellent physical condition helped to speed his recovery.At his first public appearance in St. Peter's Square after four months of convalescence, John Paul II explained to the crowd of pilgrims that the assassination attempt had been a "divine test" for which he was grateful to God. In his own mystical way, the pope said that "during the last months God permitted me to experience suffering, and the danger of losing my life. He also allowed me to understand clearly...that this was one of his special graces for me as a man and at the same time...for the Church."His suffering included a return to the hospital late in June for the treatment of a dangerous cytomegalovirus infection--most likely transmitted with blood during the emergency transfusion--and a second surgical intervention. It was necessary to reverse the colostomy performed as part of the original surgery so that the pope could resume his natural gastric functions. The doctors had wanted to delay the second operation well into August, fearing a cytomegalovirus relapse if done prematurely, but John Paul II insisted on August 5, the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows, in order to be back at the Vatican on August 15, the very important Feast of the Assumption.The pope had his way, the stitches were taken out on August 13, and he went home the next day. After Assumption, he flew by helicopter to the Castel Gandolfo summer residence to convalesce.A man who wrote 462 speeches in his first 257 days of papacy (then he slowed down a bit), John Paul II could not stand idleness, even in the hospital with his insides ruptured, and he wasted no time. He met daily with Secretary of State Casaroli to discuss and decide a multitude of matters, worked on the galleys of the Laborem exercens encyclical (which would be published on September 14), celebrated Mass in his room, and taped messages to the faithful to be played in St. Peter's Square, starting with the first one on May 18, the fifth day after the shooting and his sixty-first birthday.In it, John Paul II said: "I am praying for the brother who wounded me and whom I sincerely forgive."1990John Paul II has grown increasingly emotional and confrontational in his vision of the world and its ills as he progresses through the eighth decade of his life. He turned seventy on May 18, 1990. His old Kraków friends say that he had never before displayed such emotionalism, but they believe, as do many observers in Rome and elsewhere, that his attitudes and rhetoric reflect accurately the concerns of many others in the world over the condition of contemporary society.In this sense, the pope's instincts may be very much attuned to global trends and fears, especially among young people, and his message may fit well into the context of the time toward the end of the century and millennium even if his tone often tends to be messianic, apocalyptic, and verging on hyperbole.On the mercilessly hot morning of August 15, 1993, the Feast of Assumption, John Paul II summed up his own distress over the present state of the world as he addressed a half million young people gathered at Cherry Creek State Park near Denver for World Youth Day:A "culture of death" seeks to impose itself on our desire to live and live to the full. There are those who reject the light of life, preferring the "fruitless works of darkness." Their harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence. In every age, a measure of their apparent success is the death of innocents. In our own century, as at no other time in history, the "culture of death" has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, "final solutions," "ethnic cleansings," and the massive taking of lives of human beings even before they are born or before they reach the natural point of death....Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong, and are at the mercy of those with the power to "create" opinion and impose it on others.The evening before, during the prayer vigil at the park, the pope expressed grave warnings to his audience:Christ, the Good Shepherd...sees so many young people throwing away their lives in a flight into irresponsibility and falsehood. Drug and alcohol abuse, pornography and sexual disorder, violence: these are grave social problems which call for a social response from the whole of society, within each country and on the international level....In a technological culture in which people are used to dominating matter, discovering its laws and mechanisms in order to transform it according to their wishes, the danger arises of also wanting to manipulate conscience and its demands. In a culture which holds that no universally valid truth is possible, nothing is absolute. Therefore, in the end--they say--objective goodness and evil no longer really matter. Good comes to mean what is pleasing or useful at a particular moment. Evil means what contradicts our subjective wishes. Each person can build a private system of values.World Youth Days, established by John Paul II in 1986 as formal biennial gatherings to enhance the Church's efforts in pastoral work among young people, have been held, prior to Denver, in Rome, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and Cz,estochowa, each time in his presence. But the pope has succeeded in making them into joyful occasions rather than simply venues for collective prayer and ominous warnings. At the Colorado state park, for example, there were soloists and combos and a symphony orchestra on the huge stage where John Paul II sat for long hours in an armchair, smiling, waving, and tapping his foot to the music, and occasionally joking into the microphone. Giant closed-circuit television screens above the stage magnified his figure manyfold for those in the vast crowd too far away to see him in person. The mood had seized the audience, there was rhythmic applause, there was the wave.Colorado being fairly bilingual, a group began chanting, "Juan-Pablo-Segundo: Te-Ama-Todo-El-Mundo!" (John Paul the Second: The Whole World Loves You), which rhymes in Spanish, but the pope interrupted with a mock severe admonition, also in Spanish: "No, no, aqui se habla inglés!" (No, no, English is spoken here!), to the delight of the young crowd.ConclusionTheologians, philosophers, and historians--and just plain people around the world who have been touched by John Paul II in some fashion--will debate for years, if not decades, his merits and failures as pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.Some will argue that the Polish pope was a great world leader, morally and politically, but that he failed as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Others will offer differing interpretations as perspective on his papacy increases and more insights are gathered into his work and thought.In the end, events will define his role as the supreme pastor of his Church and provide judgments of his guidance of Catholicism into the third millennium of the Christian era. There is no question, however, that this man of broad smiles, brooding silences, steely stamina, and endless tenderness for the young, the sick, and humanity will have left a profound impact on our world. There has been no one quite like him in our time.To know John Paul II, even slightly, is sufficient to sense that he is at peace with himself, his God, and his world in a very simple human fashion.When he left Kraków for Rome in 1978, with a premonition of the future, Karol Wojtyla observed quietly that a straight line leads from the tomb of St. Stanisław, the martyred Polish bishop, at Wawel Cathedral to the tomb of St. Peter in the basilica in the Vatican. The same straight line leads back from Peter to Stanisław. Wojtyla has never forgotten it.He always looked homeward.Compilation copyright (c) 2005 by Libreria Editrice Rogate

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In October 1978, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, archbishop of Krak￯﾿ﾽw, was elected Pope, taking the name John Paul II in honor of his predecessor, who died after just thirty-three days in office. John Paul II was a surprising choice: Not only was he relatively young, at fifty-eight, but he was also the first non-Italian to be elevated to the papacy for more than 450 years. Eight months later, Wojtyla returned to his native Poland as Pope, receiving a rapturous welcome from his fellow Poles, who were then still living under communism. This was the beginning of John Paul II's extraordinary engagement with the world--work that remade the Catholic Church and reached out to people of all faiths in every nation.

Karol Wojtyla was born near Krak￯﾿ﾽw in 1920. Having studied theology secretly during the German occupation, he was ordained a priest in 1946, becoming archbishop in 1964 and cardinal in 1967. Outspoken and often controversial, John Paul II became one of the best-known figures in the world as the Cold War drew to an end. The most traveled Pope there has been, he had visited 123 countries by his eightieth birthday. By his eighty-third birthday, in 2003, he had become the fourth-longest-serving Pope in history, having worked diligently to secure his theological legacy within the church.

This volume demonstrates the breadth and depth of John Paul II's life and interests. A Life in Prayer collects prayers and public speeches from the four volumes of The Private Prayers of Pope John Paul II. The selections illustrate his devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Rosary, the foundations of his spiritual life, the profound range of his compassion, and the poetry of his life and language. A Life in Prayer also includes extracts from Tad Szulc's biography of John Paul II that describe the key moments in Wojtyla's life.