MEGASTARS

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.

- Pope John Paul II 

Pope John Paul II:
Global Ambassador of Peace
(1920 - 2005)

By Essam Farag

The leader of the world's Catholics became history's most public spiritual leader. Going where no pope has gone before - to Africa, Asia, Americas, the homelands of Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism as well as godless communism, John Paul drew a crowd of 2 million for one mass in Manila. He offered reconciliation to Orthodox Christianity and apologized to Jews and Muslims for what had been done in the past towards them under the name of Catholicism.

By July 2004, John Paul II had proclaimed 1,330 blesseds in 145 ceremonies and had proclaimed 482 (as of May, 16, 2004) saints in 51 liturgical celebrations; his 17 predecessors from Pope Clement VIII to Pope Paul VI canonized a total of 302 people. He has held nine consistories for the consecration of cardinals and has named a total of 232 cardinals (not including the in pectore cardinals).

Through September 2004, John Paul II had covered over 750,000 miles during 103 pastoral visits outside Italy, over 144 within Italy, and over 300 to the parishes of Rome. In all, he has visited 133 countries and has held talks with 850 heads of state or government, making him the most traveled pope by far, Certainly he is the pope most prolific in literary output, having issued by his 84th birthday (May 2004) 14 encyclicals, 14 apostolic exhortations, 11 apostolic constitutions, 43 apostolic letters and 28 motu proprio. Until his death on April 2, 2005, one week after Easter, he was one of the longest serving popes in history.  He appointed more than 200 cardinals and authorized more than 475 saints.

As a result of his travels over the many years, he became recognized globally as a moral spiritual giant. In history, only two popes have been designated as "The Great". John Paul II, the 264th Vicar of Christ and Bishop of Rome will be the third to receive this title, after Leo The Great (440 - 461 AD) and Gregory The Great (590 - 604 AD).


Overcoming Tribulations to Papacy

Pope John Paul II, Karol Joseph Wojtyla, was born in Wadowice, a small city 50 kilometers from Cracow, on May 18, 1920. He was the second of two sons born to Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Kaczorowska.  had to endure much tribulations at a very young age. By the age of 20, he had already lost his mother and soon after had lost his older doctor brother and then his father. He had become an orphan and had to work to make a life for himself at a time of political conflicts in Europe.

A Polish soldier at 19-years-old, Karol Wojtyla attended a military training camp in Western Ukraine, then in eastern Poland only a couple of months before the outbreak of World War II, after which he took a different approach to life - one of spirituality. Upon graduation from Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, he enrolled in Cracow's Jagiellonian University in 1938 and in a school for drama. The Nazi occupation forces closed the university he had enrolled in for drama in 1939 and he had to work in a quarry (1940-1944) and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany.

In October 1942, he began studies for the priesthood in the underground seminary maintained by Cardinal Adam Sapieha of Cracow. He was struck by an automobile February 29, 1944, and hospitalized until March 12. In August of that year Cardinal Sapieha transferred him and the other seminarians to the Archbishop’s Residence, where they lived and studied until war’s end. Ordained a priest by the cardinal on November 1, 1946, he left Poland November 15 to begin advanced studies in Rome at the Angelicum University (the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas). He subsequently earned doctorates in theology and philosophy and was a respected moral theologian and ethicist.

Pope Paul VI died August 6, 1978. Cardinal Wojtyla participated in the conclave that chose Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice his successor on August 26. When the new Pope, who had taken the name John Paul I, died unexpectedly on September 28, Cardinal Wojtyla joined 110 other cardinals in that year’s second conclave. He emerged on the second day of voting, October 16, as Pope John Paul II. When he was enthroned, he became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, the youngest pope at age 58 in more than a century, and history's first Slavic pope.

Only three years after his election, Mehmet Ali Agca shot the pope in front of St. Peters Church, narrowly missing the aorta. The pope recovered the assassination attempt, while Mehmet Ali was sentenced to life in a Turkish jail. However, in one of the greatest moments of mercy in our times, Pope John Paul II visited to Mehmet Ali in his prison cell in December 1983, offering him forgiveness.

The pope experienced several health scares during his papacy, when  doctors removed a pre-cancerous tumor from his colon in 1992, in November 1993 he dislocated his shoulder after a fall, then he required a hip replacement while in his 70s, and in 1994, he fractured his thigh in a bathtub fall. He was also diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1995, which limited his ability to travel as extensively as he had done in the 1980s.

Pope John Paul II was a man of communications and media. He was featured in many international magazines throughout his papacy, including the cover story of 13 TIME magazine issues since his enthroning in 1978. He was the first pope to write a best-selling book in 1994, Crossing The Threshold of Hope which was published in 21 languages and sold in 40 countries. He received an advanced pay of $9 million, surpassing payments made to Ronald Reagan, Marlon Brando and Colin Powell for their books. 

Erasing Boundaries Through Peace

During his first international visit since becoming pope in Mexico in 1979, as many as five million people filled the streets of Mexico City to hail him. During his visit to Hiroshima, Japan he spoke about peace and this trip gave thousand times more meaning to that message.

In August 1985, the pope went on an African trip, visiting Togo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Zaire, Kenya and Morocco. The Morocco visit made him the first pope to be an official guest in an Islamic nation, where he told a crowd of about 80,000 Muslim youth that a dialogue between Christians and Muslims was more crucial than ever. He said, "God invites us today to change our old habits. We have to respect each other and also stimulate each other in good works on the road of God."

During his 10-day 1986 visit to India, thousands of militant Hindus demonstrated against him. However, he held up the work of Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun who worked with the poor in Calcutta as an example of the church's mission in India. In 2000, he visited St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Desert, where Moses received the ten commandments from God and he prayed in Jerusalem. He became the first pope to visit a synagogue when he entered one in Rome where he prayed. In May 2001, during his trip to Damascus, Syria, he became the first pope to visit a mosque.

Pope, The Messenger

As Pope, John Paul II's most important role was to teach people about the Christian faith. John Paul has written a number of important documents which many observers view as having a long-term impact on the Church and on the world.

A great achievement of John Paul II is the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which became an international best-seller because of its clarity of doctrine, an important solution together with his other writings, to the doctrinal confusion which happened during the Post-Vatican Crisis. This refers to the 1970s and 80s when hundreds of priests, nuns and lay faithful left the Catholic Church. John Paul II was able to turnaround the decline in the 1990s. His first encyclical letters focused on the Triune God; the very first was on Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. He maintained this focus on God throughout his pontificate.

In his master plan for the the new millennium, the Apostolic Letter At the beginning of the new millennium, a "program for all times," he emphasized the importance of "starting afresh from Christ." "No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person." Thus, the first priority for the Church is holiness: "All Christian faithful...are called to the fullness of the Christian life." And the "training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer." His latest Encyclical is on the Holy Eucharist, which he says "contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself." Building on his master plan further, he emphasized the need to "rekindle amazement" on the Eucharist and to "contemplate the face of Christ."

John Paul II was also considered to have halted the progressive efforts of Vatican II, becoming a flagship for the conservative side of the Catholic Church. He continued his staunch opposition of contraceptive methods, abortion and homosexuality.

A controversial point of the John Paul II papacy was his October 1, 1986 letter to all bishops that describes homosexuality as a "tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil" and "an objective disorder." His book Memory and Identity claims that the push for homosexual marriage may be part of a "new ideology of evil ... which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man."

Advocating Global Religious Dialogue

Ecumenical and interreligious relations have received much attention from Pope John Paul II. Two of his major documents, the encyclical Ut Unum Sint and the apostolic letter Orientale Lumen, both published in 1995, deal with these matters. He has met frequently with representatives of other religious bodies, has spoken frequently about the quest for unity, and has called for Catholics and others to pray and work to this end.

Among the important actions in this area have been the signings of common declarations with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople His Holiness Dimitrios (December 7, 1987) and his successor Bartholomew I (June 29, 1995); with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the Anglican Communion, Dr. Robert Runcie (May 29, 1982, in Canterbury Cathedral and again Oct. 2, 1989, in Rome) and his successor Dr. George Leonard Carey (December 6, 1996); with the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, His Holiness Karekin I (December 14, 1996), and with His Holiness Aram I Keshishian, Catholicos of Cilicia of the Armenians (January 26, 1997). On October 5, 1991, for the first time since the Reformation, two Lutheran bishops joined the Pope and the Catholic bishops of Stockholm and Helsinki in an ecumenical prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica marking the sixth centenary of the canonization of St. Bridget of Sweden.

Pope John Paul II has had Jewish friends since boyhood, and he has worked hard to strengthen Catholic-Jewish ties. The Holy See formally initiated diplomatic relations with the State of Israel at the level of apostolic nunciature and embassy on June 15, 1994. In March. 1998, the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews published an important document on the roots of the World War II Jewish Holocaust entitled We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah. In a letter dated March 12 to the commission chairman, Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, the Pope expressed “fervent hope” that it would “help to heal the wounds of past misunderstandings and injustices.”

On Sunday, March 12, 2000, Pope John Paul II presided over a Day of Pardon for those sins committed by members of the Church over the centuries. The Holy Father issued a formal apology for the misdeeds of the members of the Church in the past, including a renewed apology for all anti-Semitic actions by Catholics. This apology was given even greater depth by the Holy Father’s trip to the Holy Land in March 2000. During his historic visit to Israel, the pope placed a written apology to the Jewish people in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. He made further efforts at ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox Churches during his visits to Greece, Syria, and Ukraine in 2001 and at the Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi in January 2002. 


Ambassador For Diplomacy

At least since January 1979, when he accepted a request for mediation in a border conflict between Argentina and Chile, Pope John Paul II has worked for peace in many parts of the world. He has supported efforts to achieve reconciliation between conflicting parties in troubled areas like Lebanon, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf, where he sought to avert the Gulf War of 1991. He has advocated religious liberty and human rights during pastoral visits to many countries, including Cuba and Nigeria in 1998. Among the notable ecumenical and inter-religious events of the pontificate was the World Day of Prayer for Peace on October 27, 1986, which he convoked in Assisi and attended along with representatives of numerous other churches and religious groups.

In 1984 the Holy See and the U.S. established diplomatic relations, meeting with five presidents over the years. Relations with Poland were re-established in 1989. Diplomatic relations were established with the Soviet Union in 1990 and with the Russian Federation in 1992. Relations also have been established with other Eastern European countries and countries that were part of the former Soviet Union, with Mexico, and with other nations including Jordan, South Africa, and Libya. Working contacts of a “permanent and official character” were begun with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1994, leading to the signing of a formal Basic Agreement with the PLO on February 15, 2000. 

He publicly endorsed the Jubilee 2000 campaign on African debt relief fronted by Irish rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono. It was reported that during this period, U2's recording sessions were repeatedly interrupted by phone calls from the Pope, wanting to discuss the campaign with Bono.

In 2003, John Paul II also became a prominent critic of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He sent his Peace Minister, Pío Cardinal Laghi, to talk with US President George W. Bush to express opposition to the war. John Paul II says that it is up to the United Nations to solve the international conflict through diplomacy and that a unilateral aggression is a crime against peace and a violation of international law. Despite his disagreement about the Iraq War, the pope welcomed the country's new sovereign government in 2004 since he viewed it as a step towards reconciliation.


The peace messenger, His Holiness Pope John Paul II The Great, believed in the dignity of man and the dignity of work, and was willing to challenge boundaries to peace by confronting them with compassion, mercy and reconciliation. 

Pope John Paul II's Foreign Pastoral Visits

As noted, the pope's pastoral visits have been a striking feature of his pontificate. Many of his visits have been to nations in the Third World, of which the made following 104 trips outside Italy up until September 2004:

Selected books by John Paul II

Films about Pope John Paul II

The World Reflects on Pope John Paull II

"The Catholic Church has lost its shepherd. The world has lost a champion of human freedom, and a good and faithful servant of God has been called home."

-- US President George W. Bush

"I think we shall keep discovering how much the Holy Father worked for us and struggled for us. He spoke to us through his illness, and through his suffering, served to the very end ... [Without him] there would be no end of communism, or at least [it would have come] much later, and the end would have been bloody."

-- Lech Walesa, former president of Poland and leader of the Solidarity labor movement

"An enlightened and inspired priest, he devoted himself to responding to the search for sense and the thirst for justice that is expressed today on all continents ... [history] will retain the imprint and the memory of this exceptional sovereign pontiff, whose charisma, conviction and compassion carried the evangelical message with unprecedented resonance on the international stage."

-- French President Jacques Chirac

In speaking powerfully and eloquently for mercy and reconciliation to people divided by old hatreds and persecuted by abuse of power, the Holy Father was a beacon of light not just for Catholics, but for all people ... His Holiness is now at home with God, whom he served so faithfully for a lifetime."

-- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton

"I was deeply saddened by the death of Pope John Paul II ... I was always struck by his commitment to having the United Nations become, as he said during his address to the General Assembly in 1995, 'a moral center where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a 'family of nations.'"

-- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan

A man shaped by his own experience under Nazi occupation during World War II, he dedicated his life and vocation as instruments of peace throughout the world ... We will remember him with love and gratitude for his faithfulness to peace and human rights."

-- Former President Jimmy Carter

"In spite of increasing age and declining physical health, his relentless efforts to visit different parts of the world and meet the people who lived there to promote harmony and spiritual values, exemplified not only his deep concern but also the courage he brought to fulfilling it."

-- The Dalai Lama, Tibetan spiritual leader

"Humanity will preserve an emotional memory of the tireless work of His Holiness John Paul II in favor of peace, justice and solidarity among all people."

-- Cuban President Fidel Castro 


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