John Paul II (1920–2005)

John Paul II was the 262nd pope of the Roman Catholic Church (1978–2005). He was the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian to be elected Bishop of Rome in 455 years (since the Dutch pope Hadrian VI, 1522–1523). At age 58, he was the youngest man to be elected to the office and had the second longest pontificate after Pius IX in 1846. He was born Karol Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, in the small working-class town of Wadowice. As a student, he was both a poet and an actor, a talent he used to his advantage in his time as a media figure on the world stage. A devout young Catholic, he worked as a laborer during World War II. By 1942, Wojtyla began concentrating on priestly studies in a clandestine seminary, forced underground during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He had hoped to become a solitary monastic but was ordained a diocesan priest in 1946 in a country marked by years of war and then domination as a satellite of Soviet communism. After study in Rome, he returned to Poland for pastoral duties and seminary teaching. Fiercely opposed to totalitarianism, he diplomatically worked with the communists in Poland, determined to eradicate their power. He worked up the hierarchical ranks and became Archbishop of Krakow in January 1964. He particularly used his influence as pope to support workers' democratic rights as well as civil and religious liberties in his native Poland. Given his public support for Eastern European pleas for freedom from Soviet domination, he was an essential catalyst in the chain of events leading to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Elected pope after the short reign of John Paul I, he took the name John Paul II, ostensibly to indicate his interest in maintaining the spirit of reform begun by his predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI, who called and carried out the Second Vatican Council. Although committed to the spirit of Vatican II, much of his papacy contained or halted the ideas and practices of progressive Catholics who worked for the renewal of the Church that the Council inspired. For this reason, while seen as a spiritual leader and social reformer who advocated the rights of people to live without fear, to work freely, and to practice their religion without opposition, John Paul II's papal legacy is conservative and restorationist. He was a man of contradictions: publicly warm and charismatic but in matters of faith, doctrine, and obedience to central authority, rigid and unyielding. For example, he ordered that various contemporary theological matters, such as the ordination of women to the priesthood or permission for male priests to marry, not be considered or even discussed by Roman Catholics. The worldwide scandal of child sexual abuse by priests, abetted by a hierarchy of enabler bishops, came to light publicly during his administration. John Paul II's response to the scandal has been criticized by some Catholics as ineffectual.

John Paul II became the most traveled pope in history. He visited 129 foreign countries as an international figure supporting human rights, political freedom, and the sanctity of life from conception through debilitating illness to death, a point he exemplified in his own painful and public struggles with Parkinson's disease. He also survived assassination attempts in 1981 and 1982.

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