St John Paul II
Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in Wadowice, Poland, in 1920, and served as Archbishop of Kraków under the Communist regime before being elected pope on 16 October 1978, taking the name John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, and his 26-year pontificate is the second-longest in documented Church history. A philosopher and former actor, he was a central figure in the collapse of Communism, beginning with his transformative 1979 pilgrimage to Poland.
He survived an assassination attempt in St Peter's Square on 13 May 1981, and later forgave his attacker. His pontificate was marked by relentless travel, the founding of World Youth Day, a vast programme of canonizations, and a substantial body of magisterial teaching. After years of decline from Parkinson's disease, he died on 2 April 2005, and was canonized by Pope Francis on 27 April 2014.
No pope has divided traditional opinion more sharply. To his great credit, it was John Paul II who first cracked open the door that Paul VI had shut: the 1984 indult, and above all Ecclesia Dei (1988), which called for a ‘wide and generous’ provision of the old Mass and gave birth to the Fraternity of St Peter and the Ecclesia Dei communities. Thousands worship in the traditional rite today because of that act.
And yet the same pope gave us Assisi (1986, 2002), the kiss of the Qur’an (1999), and a procession of novel, theatrical liturgies that traditionalists found hard to bear. He advanced the cause of the old Mass with one hand while wounding the Catholic instinct for it with the other.
A mixed inheritance, then — a benefactor of Tradition who was, in his ecumenical adventures, often its trial.