On April 2, 2005, Pope John Paul II died in his Vatican apartment at age 84.
He led the Roman Catholic church for 27 years and helped topple communism in Eastern Europe.
“Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ…. Christ knows ‘what is in man.’ He alone knows it.” — Pope John Paul II in his Inaugural Address, St. Peter’s Square, October 22, 1978
Cardinal Wojtyła was elected Pope on October 16, 1978, and took the name John Paul II. He was the 263rd successor to Peter, and was to have one of the longest pontificates in the history of the Church, lasting nearly 27 years.
The election of a Pole to the papacy in October 1978 stirred up emotions around the world. The conclave broke the rule that the Supreme Pontiff had to be Italian and elected a man from behind the Iron Curtain. “It came as a shock to Communists that it was possible to elect someone from the area they controlled without asking them for permission.
The Western world, in turn, was shocked at the election of a person from behind the Iron Curtain as it was generally known that a great majority of the region’s inhabitants were controlled by communist authorities,” Paweł Skibiński, Ph.D., historian at the University of Warsaw and director of Warsaw’s Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszyński, tells Polska.pl in an interview.
The reaction to his death is the best proof that the world held the Polish pope in high regard. I remember when George Bush Junior, who is not Catholic, said that for him John Paul II had been a man of the highest standing. Bush was the first American president to ever attend a papal funeral.
It was during John Paul II’s pontificate that the United Stated established diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1984. But it was not the Polish Pontiff’s only diplomatic success. For the first time since the Reformation, he restored diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and Sweden. Finally, he established diplomatic ties with Israel and with the Soviet Union, not long before its dissolution. John Paul II strengthened the Holy See’s status as an authority, mainly because he was an authority himself.
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyła, was officially declared a saint by the Vatican on 27 April 2014.
The Polish Pope also prevented several armed conflicts, for instance Chile and Argentina at the very beginning of his pontificate, when thanks to him it was possible to solve the territorial dispute without using force.
In popular belief Karol Wojtyła played a significant role in overthrowing communism.
John Paul II was a spiritual authority behind the overthrowing of communism. Poles finally had an international non-communist figure to look up to. The Pope used this, fighting not against the communists but against the abnormal situation of Poland as a totalitarian country.
If it hadn’t been for John Paul II’s first pilgrimage to Poland in 1979, there would have been no Solidarity. The pilgrimage was a groundbreaking, sociologically powerful event, since an entire generation of Poles became aware of their power and felt a surge of courage to act. People believed that it was possible to remain faithful to the truth despite the brutal and powerful regime. Solidarity became a nation-wide movement that clearly identified itself with John Paul II.
It was no coincidence that the Gdańsk Shipyard’s entrance gate, with its John Paul II’s portrait, became the movement’s symbol. In this sense, the Pope took part in the overthrow of communism, though not as a political actor but rather as an initiator of an ethical movement.
