Pope John Paul II

Polish ecclesiastic, a Roman Catholic priest who rose in the hierarchy of the church to be elected the 264th Pope on 16 October 1978, ca. 5:15 PM, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy and Sovereign of Vatican City. A passionate anti-Communist, social activist and socialist, Pope John Paul II had much to do with bringing down the Iron Curtain in 1989 and believed the northern nations should share their wealth with the southern hemisphere. No pope in history had more scope of influence than he has through the modern media, and he once gave 25 speeches in a single day without repeating himself.

"Lolek" as he was known in childhood, was born in 1920, the second son of Karol Wojtyla (voy TIH wah) Sr., a retired army officer and tailor, and Emilia Kaczorowska Wojtyla, a schoolteacher of Lithuanian descent, strict Catholics. They lived a Spartan lifestyle in a one-room apartment, and his dad was strict with the boy, making him study in a cold room to learn concentration. There was no anti-Semitism in the family and the boy had Jewish playmates. Indeed, Wojtyla became the first pope to visit a synagogue and the first to visit the memorial at Auschwitz to victims of the Holocaust. In ending the Catholic-Jewish estrangement, he called Jews "our elder brothers."

He was an athletic kid who skied, hiked, kayaked and swam in the flooded Skawa River, later becoming goal-keeper in the school soccer team. Death was part of the family history, with an infant sister who died prior to his birth and a month before his 9th birthday, his mother’s death of heart and kidney problems. When he was 12, his older brother, Edmund, 26, died of scarlet fever. Lolek himself had two close brushes with death; once when he was hit by a streetcar and secondly, when he was nearly struck by a truck in 1944.