Our Pope John Paul II is tired and old, but strong in His Spirit... here is Biography... The young KAROL JOSEPH WOJTYLA didn't seem a likely candidate for the papacy. He loved literature and mountain climbing and aspired to be a professional actor. But his experiences during the Nazi occupation of Poland changed his path. While working as a stonecutter, he became active in a Christian democratic underground group that helped Jews escape the Nazis. Before World War II ended he had decided to become a priest. He was ordained in 1946 and spent eight years as professor of ethics at Catholic University in Lublin before being named archbishop of Krakow in 1964. Pope Paul VI elevated him to cardinal in 1967. Eleven years later, on Oct. 16, 1978, Karol Joseph Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, the first Polish leader of the Roman Catholic Church and the youngest pope in this century. John Paul II has been a well-traveled, popular and political pope. Since his election by the college of cardinals after a deadlock between two Italian candidates, he has drawn huge crowds in well over 100 countries and every continent but Antarctica. He was a vocal critic of the communist regimes in East Germany, the Soviet Union and his native Poland, and has opposed economic sanctions against Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq, saying they hurt the people and are politically ineffective. His frequent political appearances made him an easy target: in 1981, a Turkish gunman tried to assassinate him in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. The pope spent nearly three months in the hospital and later visited his attacker in prison. The pope has denounced abortion, capital punishment, homosexuality and the ordination of women, dismissing dissenters as "cafeteria Catholics." But despite his doctrinaire conservatism, John Paul II has tried to move his church into the modern world, encouraging priests to make the church more accessible and writing a best-selling book on theology, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope." Once noted for his vigor, he has been in declining health recently, but this exceptional pope is determined to lead Catholics into the third millennium. |