The people's Pontiff who influenced world events

BY E. Weerapperuma

HIS HOLINESS Pope John Paul II the people's pontiff who held the longest papacy in the history of the Roman Catholic church will be best remembered for his undaunted activism which brought about a revolutionary transformation of the Catholic church and which also had a profound influence on world events.

Pope John Paul II the Supreme Shepherded of the Catholic Church passed away peacefully at 9.37 p.m. Vatican time (April 3, Sunday 1.30 am Sri Lanka time) after a long battle with Parkinsons disease.

The frail pontiff whose condition suffered a relapse eventually died of complications following heart and lung failure after slipping into unconsciousness.

He will also be remembered by history as the Pope who raised his voice against the contemporary evil in our "culture of death". His uncompromising limitations as well as his extraordinary accomplishments, all reflect the impress of a vanished world.

He had issued 14 encyclicals and was responsible in establishing Pope John Paul II Institute, Populorum Progression Institute for the indigenous people of South Africa, setting up of the Papal Academy for Life and the Papal Academy of Social Sciences. He also designated the World Patients' Day and the World Youth Day.

Pope John Paul II began His papacy on October 16th, 1978, celebrated the Silver Jubilee of His Pontificate in 2003. He entered history as the longest pontiff who occupied the seat of St. Peter wearing the Fisherman's Ring for 26 years and was to celebrate his 85th birthday on May 10.

As Vicar of Christ becoming the third Pope to have served the Church for over 25 years, was the 264th Pope in the line of the Apostolic tradition of succession to don the shoes of the fisherman.

According to Church chronicles, after St. Peter, the First Vicar of Christ who served the Church from 33 A.D. to 64 A.D. at the times of the first Apostles, the next to have served the longest term were Popes Blessed Pius IX and Leo XIII.

The Pope to have had the shortest tenure was Stephen II (752 A.D.). He died before installation. The Catholic Church celebrated the Silver Jubilee of the present Pope, almost after one hundred years. Pope Leo XIII who was the Vicar of Christ from 1878 to 1903 served 25 years and five months.

The elevation of Karol Josef Wojtyla as the second non-Italian Pope after 455 years, injected a revolutionary outlook to the office of the future popes. Analysts of world politics are of the view, his Papacy had an impact on the fall of the iron curtain, destabilising the USSR and the Red Block.

Before him, the other non-Italian Pope was Adrian VI of 1522, a Netherlander.

Pope John Paul II who escaped assassination in 1981 was the only Pope to be featured in a comic book.He will go down in history as the pontiff who precipitated the fall of Communism; who gave diplomatic recognition to Israel, the pope who travelled the extra mile to reconcile with the Jews; He was the first Pope to have gone into a Synagogue and the first to visit the memorial at Auschwitz to pray for the victims of the Holocaust. In ending the Catholic-Jewish estrangement he called Jews " our elder brothers".

The Holy Father, as Vicar of Jesus Christ and successor to St. Peter, had taken the Church to the door-step of every nation and country he travelled.

His mission round the globe, pushed back the boundaries of the Old Christian Europe - proselytizing, reforming, opening new Churches in Latin America, the United States, the East and Africa or wherever he went. He wooed and won the media with his personal charm and humanliness.

He was also tagged as the skiing pope, the poet pope, the best selling-CD pope, the designer robes pope, the intellectual pope. But he never descended to the level of an unimportant, celebrity, dignitary - or a luminary.

He was also branded the "infuriating", the "retrograde" pope, who ignored the calls for a revolutionary changes in the status of women. He had visited 129 countries and crossed more than one million kilometres on his voyages for a total of 575 days covering 600 sites and had given 2,400 speeches.

His father, Lieutenant Karol senior, an administrative officer of the Polish army, married school teacher Emilia Kaczorowska of Lithuanian descent, in 1906.

Karol was born as the third child of the family. Emilia, who was very fond of her son and used to tell her neighbours, that one day her son would be a great man, a priest. She died on April 13, 1929, when Karol was just eight.

The Lieutenant was a force of rectitude and piety, one of several key influences in the Pope's religious life. He was taken to Kalwaria, Marian Shrine close to Wadowice that instilled in him a devotion to Mary.

When his only brother Edmund graduated from the School of Medicine at the Jagellonian University, his father took both of them to Black Madonna, the Queen of Poland, in Czestochowa, the heart of Polish Christianity.

During the Nazi occupation, Karol clandestinely pursued both his studies and his acting while working as a stonecutter to support himself and to hold the work permit he needed to avoid deportation or imprisonment.

He was active in the UNIA, a Christian democratic underground organisation. While convalescing from an accident Karol decided to become a priest and by 1942 he was studying for the priesthood, at the Theological faculty of the Jagaiellonian University.

Being ordained a priest on November 1, 1946, he was sent to Rome for further studies by Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapeha.

Back from Rome, he joined Lublin University and in 1958 Pope Pius XII named him the auxiliary bishop of Ombi and was consecrated as Bishop September 28, 1958, at the age of 38. Pope Paul VI appointed him as the Archbishop of Krakow on January 13,1964 and made him a Cardinal on June 26, 1967.

Pope John Paul II was hospitalised on February 01 with a breathing problem to the Gemelli Polyclinic and left Thursday, February 10 but for the first time during His pontificate, He was unable to offer Ash Wednesday Mass.

Subsequently he was admitted once more with breathing difficulties and although He was out of hospital during the Holy Week as he could not talk, he did nor preside at the Holy Week Services including the Easter Sunday Service.

But He was shown at the window of his room trying to talk. But he was unable to do so and was seen blessing the crowd while the curtains came down. Beginning of the final week of March, doctors treating him inserted a intravenous drip for him to take his food.

When the world celebrated the 2000 birthday of Jesus Christ, some in the Church thought that the Pope who was 80 would retire as he was suffering from Parkinsons disease and because the five major operations had left him visibly frail. But the Pope gave no hint of going into retirement. He was renowned for his saying" Heaven is the time to rest. Now is the time to work".

The world reacted at the time saying the Pope should continue as he was going great at the time visiting Slovakia despite his failing health.