John Paul II

John Paul II
Birth name	Karol Józef Wojtyła
Papacy began	October 16, 1978
Papacy ended	April 2, 2005
Predecessor	John Paul I
Successor	Benedict XVI
Born	1920 May 18(18-05-1920) Wadowice, Poland
Died	2005 April 2 (aged ) Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Other popes named John Paul

Styles of Pope John Paul II
Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	Servant of God

Coat of Arms of Pope John Paul II. The Letter M is for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to whom he held strong devotion

Pope John Paul II, born [ˈkaɾɔl ˈjuzεf vɔi̯ˈtɨwa]; May 18, 1920 – April 2, 2005) reigned as the two-hundred and sixty-fourth Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City from October 16, 1978, until his death more than 26 years later, making his the second-longest pontificate in modern times after Pius IX's 31-year reign. He is the only Polish pope, and was the first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Adrian VI in the 1520s. He is one of only four people to have been named to the Time 100 for both the twentieth century and for a year into the twenty-first.

His early reign was marked by his opposition to communism, and he is often credited as one of the forces which contributed to its collapse in Eastern Europe. In the later part of his pontificate, he was notable for speaking against war, fascism, dictatorship, materialism, abortion, contraception, relativism, unrestrained capitalism, and what he deemed the "culture of death."

John Paul II was Pope during a period in which the Catholicism's influence declined in developed countries, but expanded in the Third World. During his reign, the pope traveled extensively, visiting over 100 countries, more than any of his predecessors. He remains one of the most-traveled world leaders in history. He was fluent in numerous languages: his native Polish and also Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Croatian, Portuguese, Russian, and Latin. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he canonized a great number of people.

In 1992, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. On April 2, 2005 at 9:37 p.m. local time, Pope John Paul II died in the Papal Apartments while a vast crowd kept vigil in Saint Peter's Square below. Millions of people flocked to Rome to pay their respects to the body and for his funeral. The last years of his reign had been marked by his fight against the various diseases ailing him, provoking some concerns as to leadership should he become severely incapacitated/vegetative, and speculation as to whether he should abdicate. On May 9, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II's successor, waived the five-year waiting period for a cause for beatification to be opened.

Overview

John Paul II emphasized what he called the "universal call to holiness" and attempted to define the Roman Catholic Church's role in the modern world. He spoke out against ideologies and politics of communism, Marxism, Socialism, imperialism, hedonism, relativism, materialism, fascism, Nazism, racism and unrestrained capitalism. In many ways, he fought against oppression, secularism and poverty. Although he was on friendly terms with many Western heads of state and leading citizens, he reserved a special opprobrium for what he believed to be the corrosive spiritual effects of modern Western consumerism and the concomitant widespread secular and hedonistic orientation of Western populations.

Map indicating countries Pope John Paul II visited.

John Paul II affirmed traditional Roman Catholic teachings against abortion, contraception, and pioneered the Church's stance on matters such as embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, evolution, interfaith matters, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and unjust wars. He also defended traditional teachings on marriage and gender roles by opposing divorce, same-sex marriage, and the ordination of women and called upon followers to vote according to Catholic teachings. While conservative views were sometimes criticized as regressive his liberal views were sometimes criticized as unChristian.

The pope, who began his papacy when the Soviets controlled his native country of Poland, as well as the rest of Eastern Europe, was a harsh critic of communism, and supported the Polish Solidarity movement. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once said the collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II.

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John Paul II became known as the "Pilgrim Pope" for traveling greater distances than had all his predecessors combined. According to John Paul II, the trips symbolized bridge-building efforts (in keeping with his title as Pontifex Maximus, literally Master Bridge-Builder) between nations and religions, attempting to remove divisions created through history.

Millions cheer Pope John Paul II during his first visit to Poland as pontiff in 1979

His extensive travels brought him into contact with believers from many divergent faiths. He constantly attempted to find common ground, both doctrinal and dogmatic. At the World Day of Prayer for Peace, held in Assisi on October 27, 1986, more than 120 representatives of different religions and Christian denominations spent a day together with fasting and praying.

He beatified 1,340 people, more people than any previous pope. The Vatican asserts he canonized more people than the combined tally of his predecessors during the last five centuries, and from a far greater variety of cultures. Whether he had canonized more saints than all previous popes put together, as is sometimes also claimed, is difficult to prove, as the records of many early canonizations are incomplete, missing, or inaccurate. However, it is known that his abolition of the office of Promotor Fidei ("Promoter of the Faith" and the origin of the term Devil's advocate) streamlined the process.

In February 2004, Pope John Paul II was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize honoring his life's work in opposing Communist oppression and helping to reshape the world. Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005 (buried April 8, 2005) after a long fight against Parkinson's disease and other illnesses. Immediately after his death, many of his followers demanded that he be elevated to sainthood as soon as possible, shouting "Santo Subito" (meaning "Saint immediately" in Italian). Both L'Osservatore Romano and Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II's successor, referred to John Paul II " The Great" (Ioannes Paulus PP. II Magnus).

John Paul II was succeeded by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who had led the Funeral Mass for John Paul II.

Biography

Early life

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice in southern Poland, and was the youngest of three children of Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Kaczorowska. His mother died in 1929 when he was just nine years old, and his father supported him so that he could study. His brother, who worked as a doctor, died when Karol was 12. His youth was marked by extensive contacts with the then-thriving Jewish community of Wadowice. He practiced sports during his youth, and was particularly interested in football (soccer).

After completing his studies in 1938 at the Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, Karol enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and in a school for drama. He worked as a volunteer librarian and did compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but refused to hold or fire a weapon. In his youth he was an athlete, actor, and playwright, and he learned as many as 10 languages during his lifetime, including Latin, Ukrainian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and English, other than his native Polish. He also had some facility with Russian.

In 1939, Nazi occupation forces closed the Jagiellonian University; its academics were arrested and the university was suppressed throughout the Second World War. All able-bodied males had to have a job. From 1940 to 1944, Karol variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant and a manual laborer in a limestone quarry, and then as a salesman for the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany.

His father also died in 1941, when Karol was 20.

Church career

Karol Wojtyła as a priest in Niegowić, Poland, 1948

In 1942, he entered the underground seminary run by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha. Karol Wojtyła was ordained a priest on November 1, 1946, by Cardinal Sapieha. Not long after, he was sent to study theology at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, commonly known as the Angelicum, where he earned a licentiate and later a doctorate in sacred theology. This doctorate, the first of two, was based on the Latin dissertation Doctrina de fide apud S. Ioannem a Cruce (The Doctrine of Faith According to Saint John of the Cross). Even though his doctoral work was unanimously approved in June 1948, he was denied the degree because he could not afford to print the text of his dissertation (an Angelicum rule). In December of that year, a revised text of his dissertation was approved by the theological faculty of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and Wojtyła was finally awarded the degree.

He earned a second doctorate, based on an evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of phenomenologist Max Scheler (An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler), in 1954. As was the case with the first degree, he was not granted the degree upon earning it. This time, the faculty at Jagiellonian University was forbidden by communist authorities from granting the degree. In conjunction with his habilitation at Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, he finally obtained the doctorate of philosophy in 1957 from that institution, where he had assumed the Chair of Ethics in 1956.

On July 4, 1958, Pope Pius XII named him titular bishop of Ombi and auxiliary to Archbishop Baziak, apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Kraków. He was consacrated to the Episcopate by Arcbishop Baziak on September 28, 1958. Karol Wojtyła found himself at 38 the youngest bishop in Poland.

In 1962, Bishop Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council, and in December 1963 Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków. On June 26, 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals with the title of Cardinal Priest of San Cesareo in Palatio.

A Pope from Poland

Statue of Pope John Paul II, Catedral de la Almudena, Madrid

In August 1978, following Paul's death, he voted in the Papal Conclave that elected Pope John Paul I, who at 65 was considered young by papal standards. However, John Paul I was in poor health and he died after only 33 days as pope, thereby precipitating another conclave.

Voting in the second conclave was divided between two particularly strong candidates: Giuseppe Siri, the Archbishop of Genoa; and Giovanni Benelli, the Archbishop of Florence and a close associate of Pope John Paul I. In early ballots, Benelli came within nine votes of victory. However, Wojtyła secured election as a compromise candidate, in part through the support of Franz Cardinal König and others who had previously supported Cardinal Siri.

He became the two-hundred and sixty-fourth Pope, according to the chronological List of popes. At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope elected since Pope Pius IX in 1846. Like his immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul II dispensed with the traditional Papal coronation and instead received ecclesiastical investiture with the simplified Papal inauguration on October 22, 1978. During his inauguration, when the cardinals knelt before him, and took their vows and kissed his ring, he stood up as the Polish primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski knelt down, and he stopped him from kissing the ring and hugged him. As Bishop of Rome he took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, on November 12, 1978.

Assassination attempt

On May 13, 1981, John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turkish gunman, as he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience. He was rushed into the Vatican complex, then to the Gemelli Hospital, where Dr. Francesco Crucitti, a noted surgeon, had just arrived by police escort after hearing of the incident. The Pope had lost almost three-quarters of his blood, a near-exsanguination, despite the fact that the bullets missed his mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his massive blood loss and abdominal wounds. En route to the hospital, he lost consciousness. Ağca was caught and restrained by a nun until police arrived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after Christmas 1983, John Paul II visited the prison where his would-be assassin was being held. The two spoke privately for 20 minutes. John Paul II said, "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust." The pope also stated that Our Lady of Fatima helped keep him alive throughout his ordeal.

“	Could I forget that the event [Ali Ağca's assassination attempt] in St. Peter’s Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fátima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.	”
—Pope John Paul II -Memory & Identity, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, p.184

File:FahriKoruturkJeanPaulII.jpg

Pope John Paul II visiting with Turkish President Fahri Koruturk in Ankara, Turkey

On March 2, 2006, an Italian parliamentary commission concluded that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt, in retaliation for John Paul II's support of Solidarity, the Catholic, pro-democratic Polish workers' movement, a thesis which had already been supported by Michael Ledeen and the United States Central Intelligence Agency at the time. The report stated that certain Communist Bulgarian security departments were utilized to prevent the Soviet Union's role from being uncovered. Although the Pope declared during a May 2002 visit to Bulgaria that this country had nothing to do with the assassination attempt, his secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, alleges in his book A Life with Karol that the pope was convinced privately that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt. Bulgaria and Russia disputed the Italian commission's conclusions, pointing out that the Pope denied the Bulgarian connection.

Health

The ailing Pope John Paul II riding in the Popemobile on September 22 2004

When he became pope in 1978, John Paul II was an avid sportsman, enjoying hiking and swimming. In addition, John Paul II traveled extensively after becoming pope; at the time, the 58-year old was extremely healthy and active, jogging in the Vatican gardens (to the horror of Vatican staff, who informed him that his jogging could be seen by tourists climbing to the summit of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. The pope's response, according to media reports, was "so what?"), weightlifting, swimming, and hiking in mountains.

John Paul's obvious physical fitness and athletic good-looks earned much comment in the media following his election, which compared his health and trim figure to the poor health of John Paul I and Paul VI, the portliness of John XXIII and the constant claims of ailments of Pius XII. The only modern pope with a keep-fit regime had been Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) who was an avid mountain climber. An Irish Independent article in the 1980s labeled John Paul the "the keep-fit pope."

In 1981, though, John Paul II's health suffered a major blow after the first failed assassination attempt. After being shot, John Paul II was rushed to the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic in Rome, where he received extensive emergency surgery. The bullet-wound caused severe bleeding, and the Pope's blood pressure dropped. Due to intestinal damage, a colostomy was also performed. He nevertheless managed to recover, and in his speeches from the hospital window, which would always attract large crowds, he defined "the Gemelli" as "the third Vatican" (the first being St. Peter's, and the second the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo). He went on to a full recovery, and sported an impressive physical condition throughout the 1980s.

Starting about 1992, John Paul II's health slowly declined. He began to suffer from an increasingly slurred speech and difficulty in hearing. In addition, the Pope rarely walked in public. Though not officially confirmed by the Vatican until 2003, most experts agreed that the frail pontiff suffered from Parkinson's disease. The contrast between the athletic John Paul of the 1970s and the declining John Paul of later years was striking. From being strikingly fitter than his predecessors, he had declined physically to far more ill health than was the norm among more elderly popes.

In February 2005, John Paul II was taken to the Gemelli hospital with inflammation and spasm of the larynx, the result of influenza. Though later released from the hospital, he was taken back after a few days because of difficulty breathing. A tracheotomy was performed, which improved the Pope's breathing but limited his speaking abilities, to his visible frustration. In March 2005, speculation was high that the Pope was near death; this was confirmed by the Vatican a few days before John Paul II died.

Death

President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, former Presidents Bush and Clinton pay their respects to John Paul II as he lies in state in St. Peter's Basilica, April 6, 2005.

On March 31, 2005, the Pope developed a very high fever and profoundly low blood pressure, but was neither rushed to the hospital nor offered life support. Instead, he was offered medical monitoring by a team of consultants at his private residence. This was taken as an indication that the pope and those close to him believed that he was nearing death; it would have been in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican. Later that day, Vatican sources announced that John Paul II had been given the Anointing of the Sick by his friend and secretary Stanisław Dziwisz. During the final days of the Pope's life, the lights were kept burning through the night where he lay in the Papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace.

Tens of thousands of people rushed to the Vatican, filling St. Peter's Square and beyond with a vast multitude, and held vigil for two days. Upon hearing of this, the dying pope was said to have stated: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you."

On Saturday, April 2, at about 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words, "Let me go to the house of the Father," to his aides in his native Polish and fell into a coma about four hours later. He died in his private apartment, at 21:37 CEST (19:37 UTC), 46 days short of his eighty-fifth birthday. The mass of the vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter, that is, Divine Mercy Sunday, which was put into the Church's calendar by him on the occasion of the canonization of St. Faustina on April 30, 2000, had just been celebrated at his bedside. Several aides were present, along with several Polish nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, who ran the papal household.

A crowd of over two million within Vatican City, over one billion Catholics world-wide, and many non-Catholics mourned John Paul II. The Poles were particularly devastated by his death. The public viewing of his body in St. Peter's Basilica drew over four million people to Vatican City and was one of the largest pilgrimages in the history of Christianity. Many world leaders expressed their condolences and ordered flags in their countries lowered to half-mast. Numerous countries with a Catholic majority, and even some with only a small Catholic population, declared mourning for John Paul II.

On his death certificate, (refractory) septic shock was listed as a primary cause of death along with profound arterial hypotension leading to complete circulatory collapse. In cases of fatal sepsis, the normal cause of death is complete circulatory collapse.

Funeral

The tomb of John Paul II

The death of Pope John Paul II set into motion rituals and traditions dating back to medieval times. The Rite of Visitation took place from April 4 through 22:00 CET (20:00 UTC) on April 7 at St. Peter's Basilica. On April 8, the Mass of Requiem was conducted by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger, who would become the next pope under the name of Benedict XVI. It has been estimated to have been the largest attended funeral of all time.

John Paul II was interred in the grottoes under the basilica, the Tomb of the Popes. He was lowered into a tomb that had been created in the same alcove that had been occupied by the remains of Blessed Pope John XXIII. The alcove had been empty since Pope John's remains had been moved into the main body of the basilica after his beatification by John Paul II in 2000.

The funeral of Pope John Paul II saw the single largest gathering of heads of state in history, who had come together to pay their respects. In his memory, a number of Catholic schools have named their houses after him.

Titles

John Paul II's titles were: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of Saint Peter, Head of the College of Bishops, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West (this title was recently removed from the papal list of titles by the reigning pope, Benedict XVI), Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the City State of the Vatican, Servant of the Servants of God, and Pope John Paul II.

Teachings

John Paul II‘s statue in Košice, Slovakia. The statue was unveiled by Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, a former private secretary to Pope John Paul II.

As pope, one of John Paul II's most important roles was to teach people about Christianity. He wrote 14 papal encyclicals (List of Encyclicals of Pope John Paul II) that many observers believe will have long-lasting influence on the church. These include: his Apostolic Letter At the beginning of the third millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte), where he emphasized the importance of "starting afresh from Christ;" The Splendour of the Truth (Veritatis Splendor), where he stressed the dependence of man on God and his law; and Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and Reason), in which John Paul promotes a renewed interest in philosophy and an autonomous pursuit for Truth in theological matters.

John Paul II also wrote extensively about workers and the social doctrine of the Church, which he discussed in three encyclicals. Through his encyclicals, John Paul also talked about the dignity of women and the importance of the family for the future of mankind, and many Apostolic Letters and Exhortations.

John Paul II, who was present and very influential at the Vatican II (1962–65), affirmed the teachings of that Council and did much to implement them. Nevertheless, his critics often wished aloud that he would embrace the so-called "progressive" agenda that some hoped would evolve as a result of the Council. In fact, the Council did not advocate "progressive" changes in these areas, e.g., still condemning the taking of unborn human life through abortion as an "unspeakable crime." John Paul II continued to declare that contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts were gravely sinful, and, with Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI), opposed Liberation theology.

He believed in the Church's exaltation of the marital act of sexual intercourse between a baptized man and woman within sacramental marriage as proper and exclusive to the sacrament of marriage that was, in every instance, profaned by contraception, abortion, divorce followed by a 'second' marriage, and by homosexual acts. Often mistakenly assumed to be a rejection against women, he definitively explained and asserted in 1994 for all time the Church's lack of authority to ordain women to the priesthood, without such authority such ordination is not legitimately compatible with fidelity to Christ. This was also deemed a repudiation of calls to break with the constant tradition of the Church by ordaining women to the priesthood. (Apostolic Letter 'Ordinatio Sacerdotalis') In addition, John Paul II chose not to end the discipline of mandatory priestly celibacy, although in a small number of unusual circumstances, he did allow certain married clergymen of other Christian traditions who later became Catholic to be ordained as Catholic priests.

The Pope for youth

Father Karol Wojtyła on kayak trip

John Paul II had a special relationship also with Catholic youth and is known by some as "The Pope for Youth." Before he was pope, he used to camp and mountain hike with the youth. He still went mountain hiking when he was pope. He was a hero to many of them. Indeed, at gatherings, young Catholics, and conceivably non-Catholics, were often fond of chanting the phrase "JP Two, We Love You," and occasionally John Paul would reply "JP Two, He Loves YOU!" He was particularly concerned with the education of young future priests, and made many early visits to Roman seminaries, including to the Venerable English College in 1979.

He established World Youth Day in 1984, with the intention of bringing young Catholics from all parts of the world together to celebrate their faith. These week-long meetings of youth occur every two or three years, attracting hundreds of thousands of young people, who go there to sing, party, have a good time, and deepen their faith. Some of his most faithful youths gathered themselves in two organizations: "papaboys" and "papagirls."

Legacy

Posthumous recognition

File:Plaza Juan Pablo II.jpg

Statue of John Paul II in Caracas, Venezuela

Since the death of John Paul II, a number of clergy at the Vatican and laymen throughout the world have been referring to the late pontiff as "John Paul the Great"—only the fourth pope to be so acclaimed, and the first since the first millennium.

His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, referred to him as "the great Pope John Paul II" in his first address from the loggia of St Peter's Church. Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, stirred excitement by some devotees of the pope when in his published written homily for the Mass of Repose, he referred to Pope John Paul II as "the Great."

Since giving his homily at the funeral of Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict XVI has continued to refer to John Paul II as "the Great." At the 2005 World Youth Day in Germany, Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Polish, John Paul's native language, said, "As the great Pope John Paul II would say: keep the flame of faith alive in your lives and your people." In May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI visited John Paul's native Poland. During that visit he repeatedly made references to "the great John Paul" and "my great predecessor."

File:Eurovatican.jpg

Pope John Paul II appears on the Vatican's €1 coin.

In addition to the Vatican calling him "the great," numerous newspapers have also done so. For example the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera called him "the Greatest" and the South African Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross, has called him "John Paul II The Great."

Scholars of Canon Law say that there is no official process for declaring a pope "Great"; the title establishes itself through popular, and continued, usage. The three popes who today commonly are known as "Great" are Leo I, who reigned from 440–461 and persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw from Rome, thus saving Christianity and Catholicism in Europe from destruction; Gregory I, 590–604, after whom the Gregorian Chant is named; and Nicholas I, 858–867, who also withstood a siege of Rome (in this case from Carolingian Christians, over a dispute regarding marriage annulment).

One of many John Paul II statues

Canonization process

On May 9 2005 Benedict XVI began the beatification process for his predecessor, John Paul II. Normally five years must pass after a person's death before the beatification process can begin. However, in an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome and the one responsible for promoting the cause for canonization of any person who dies within that diocese, cited "exceptional circumstances" which suggested that the waiting period could be waived.

The "exceptional circumstances" presumably refer to the people's cries of "Santo Subito!" ("Saint now!") during the late pontiff's funeral. Therefore the new Pope waived the five year rule "so that the cause of Beatification and Canonization of the same Servant of God can begin immediately." The decision was announced on May 132005, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima and the 24th anniversary of the assassination attempt on John Paul II at St. Peter's Square. John Paul II often credited Our Lady of Fatima for preserving him on that day. Cardinal Ruini inaugurated the diocesan phase of the cause for beatification in the Lateran Basilica on 28 June 2005.

In early 2006, it was reported that the Vatican was investigating a possible miracle associated with John Paul II. A French nun, confined to her bed by Parkinson's Disease, is reported to have experienced a "complete and lasting cure after members of her community prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II". The nun was later identified as Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, a member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Wards from Puyricard, near Aix-en-Provence.

On May 28, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said Mass before an estimated 900,000 people in John Paul II's native Poland. During his homily he encouraged prayers for the early canonization of John Paul II and stated that he hoped canonization would happen "in the near future."

In January 2007, it was announced by Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz of Krakow, his former secretary, that the key interviewing phase in Italy and Poland of the beatification process was nearing completion. Cardinal Dziwisz had been giving an interview that featured the introduction of his new book in Polish and Italian, Living With Karol, when he made the announcement. In February 2007, the website of the late pope's sainthood cause has stated that relics of Pope John Paul II—pieces of white papal cassocks he used to wear—were being freely distributed with prayer cards for the cause to interested parties; this distribution and prayerful use of relics is a typical praiseworthy pious practice after a saintly Catholic's death.

On 8 March 2007 it was announced that the Vicariate of Rome announced that the diocesan phase of John Paul's cause for beatification is at an end. Following a ceremony on 2 April 2007—the second anniversary of the Pontiff's death—the cause proceeded to the scrutiny of the committee of lay, clerical, and episcopal members of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who will conduct an investigation of their own.

Not all Catholic theologians agree with the call for beatification. Eleven dissident theologians, including Jesuit professor Jose Maria Castillo and Italian theologian Giovanni Franzoni raised seven points, including his stance on contraception, the role of women, and Church scandals that presented "facts which according to their consciences and convictions should be an obstacle to beatification."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Buttiglione, Rocco. Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997. ISBN 978-0802838480
• O'Connor, Gary. Universal Father, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005, ISBN 91-37-12870-1
• Paul II, John. Memory and Identity - Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, Rizzoli, 2005. ISBN 0-8478-2761-5
• Paul II, John. Theology of the Body: Human Love In The Divine Plan, Pauline Books and Media, 1997. ISBN 0-8198-7394-2
• Simpson, Peter. On Karol Wojtyła, Wadsworth Publishing, 2000. ISBN 053458375X
• Weigel, George. Witness to Hope, HarperCollins, 2001. ISBN 0-06-018793-X
• Wojtyła, Karol. Love and Responsibility, Ignatius Press, 1993. ISBN 0-89870-445-6

External links

• The Holy See - The Holy Father - John Paul II
• http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/JPII/tributes.html Link to collected tributes, writings and commentary on John Paul II
• Ascension of John Paul the Great. Serapis Bey announced on May 1, 2005: "John Paul II has entered into the Oneness of the Eternal Life with his own God Presence."
• Tomb of John Paul II

Preceded by: The Peacemakers: Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin	Time's Man of the Year 1994	Succeeded by: Newt Gingrich
Papal succession Born: 18 May 1920;
Religious titles
Preceded by: Eugeniusz Baziak	Archbishop of Kraków 1963–1978	Succeeded by: Franciszek Macharski
Preceded by: Pope John Paul I	Pope 1978–2005	Succeeded by: Pope Benedict XVI

Template:John Paul II

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