T’shuvah Hero: Pope John Paul ll
“More change for the better took place in his twenty-sevenyear papacy than in the nearly two thousand years before.” Pope John Paul II was a Catholic, but his biography includes one story that is important to Jews. Karol Jozef Wojtyla Pope John Paul II was born Karol Jozef Wojtyla in the Polish town of Wadowice, a small city fifty kilometers from Krakow. He reigned as Pope from October 16, 1978 until his death almost twentyseven years later. His Catholic Story He was baptized on June 20, 1920 in the parish church of Wadowice, made his First Holy Communion at age nine and was confirmed at eighteen. Upon graduation from Marcin Wadowita high school he enrolled at Krakow’s university in 1938. The Nazi occupation forces closed the university in 1939, and young Karol had to work in a quarry and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living. In 1942, deciding to be a priest, he began courses in the underground seminary of Krakow. He was ordained to the priesthood on November 1, 1946. After years of service to the Catholic Church, he was elected Pope by the Cardinals at the Conclave of October 16, 1978. He took the name John Paul II.
His Jewish Story From the beginning, relationships between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people have not been good. The Church had often been guilty of anti-Semitism and was seen as silent during the Holocaust. Pope John Paul II set out to heal this relationship. In 1979 he became the first Pope to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In 1998 he issued We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (Holocaust). He also became the first pope known to have made an official visit to a synagogue. In 1994, in honor of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel, Pope John Paul II hosted the Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocaust. In March 2000 John Paul II visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli national Holocaust memorial, and later made history by touching the Western Wall (ha-Kotel) and placing a letter in it. The letter was a prayer for forgiveness for actions against Jews in the past. Immediately after the pope’s death the AntiDefamation League issued a statement that Pope John Paul II had revolutionized Catholic–Jewish relations, saying that “more change for the better took place in his twenty-seven-year papacy than in the nearly two thousand years before.”
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