What are facts about Pope John Paul II?

Answer 1

He was the first pope in 400 years that didn't come from Italy but from Poland. His name is Karol Wojtyla.

John W. O'Malley, S.J. (A History of the Popes) does not regard Pope John Paul II as a good leader, saying that he sometimes displaying a wilfulness that startled even his most fervent admirers. Although John Paul convoked a number of Bishops' Synods dealing with different aspects of church life, it soon became clear to the bishops that his mind was made up on most of the questions before they had a chance to speak. Another flawed aspect of his leadership style was that John Paul II insisted that the prime consideration in the appointment of new bishops was the candidates' willingness to stand unconditionally with him on a number of potentially explosive issues, a consideration that overrode virtually all others.

The papacy of John Paul II occurred at the time when rampant paedophilia in the Catholic Church was at last becoming publicly known. John Paul's greatest challenge was to excise this evil from the Church, a challenge he failed. Reports say he hindered the investigation into the charges of sexual immorality levelled against Father Marcial Maciel Degollado and hindered Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) who allegedly was attempting to prevent sex abuse. The pope allowed diocesan bishops to continue to transfer pedophile priests from one parish to another instead of reporting their crimes to the authorities, and provided safe haven for several of the most egregiously negligent prelates. Cardinal Bernard Law, who had been forced to testify before a grand jury concerning his gross negligence in failing to address rampant homosexual predation of young boys by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston was offered a prime position in the Vatican, out of reach of the secular authorities.

During his long pontificate, financial scandals involved the Vatican. On 29 January 1981, a group of Milanese shareholders in Banco Ambrosiano, fearing that their shares would soon be worthless, wrote a long letter to Pope John Paul II, pleading with him to investigate the unholy alliance between Bishop Marcinkus, head of the Vatican Bank, and various criminal associates, and the huge flow of money into the corporations under the "patronage" of the Vatican. The letter was written in Polish so that the pope could read it in his native tongue. He never responded, instead deciding to reward Bishop Marcinkus for his service to the Holy See by elevating him to the position of president of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City, in addition to his role at the Vatican Bank. At one point the pope placed Marcinkus at the top of a list of new cardinals he was going to create, but advisors managed to persuade him that the elevation of Marcinkus would create an uproar in the international banking community with serious repercussions for the Holy See.

On the positive side, Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, which previous popes had accepted. John Paul helped in the overthrow of communism in Poland. He said that theologians must keep themselves constantly informed on scientific developments to see whether they need to incorporate them, or revise their ideas. In line with this, he expressed support for the Theory of Evolution. He also issued apologies for:

• The legal process on Galileo Galilei, around 1633 (31 October 1992).
• Catholics' involvement with the African slave trade (9 August 1993).
• The Church Hierarchy's role in burnings at the stake and the religious wars that followed the Protestant Reformation (May 1995).
• The injustices committed against women, the violation of women's rights and the historical denigration of women (10 July 1995, in a letter to "every woman").
• The inactivity and silence of many Catholics during the Holocaust ( (16 March 1998).
• Catholic sex abuse cases (20 November 2001), email from a laptop in the Vatican
• The Church-backed "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children in Australia
• The behaviour of Catholic missionaries in China in colonial times.

John Paul's successor, Pope Benedict waived the customary five-year waiting period for beatification and allowed the investigation into John Paul's life and virtues to begin immediately. The sole miracle was the cure of a young French nun from Parkinson's disease, after she had prayed to him for relief and one morning two months after John Paul died, woke up completely, inexplicably cured. This can not properly be attributed to a miracle, as it is reported that Sister Marie Simon-Pierre subsequently had a relapse. However, the beatification of Pope John Paul II stands, once accepted. Then, in the absence of a credible second miracle, Pope Francis decided to proceed to the canonisation of Pope John Paul II in April 2014, without the normal requirement for a second miracle.