For the first half of my life, John Paul II was my pope. Yes, he was the pope of the entire Catholic Church, but he did not feel like a distant hierarch. Just a cursory scan of books and articles about him since his death in 2005 will show my feeling is not isolated. Somewhere between 3-4 million people came to Rome to view his body after his death. What kind of man could inspire people to travel from all over the world, to wait nearly 24 hours in line, for the privilege of viewing his body for a matter of seconds?

St. John Paul II has been called “the Great,” and I think he deserves that title. His old students called him “Uncle Karol” affectionally and to protect the identity of their priest in Nazi-occupied Poland. I’d like to propose a new nickname for him: the Everything Pope. He did so many things and was good at nearly all of them. JP2 brought Christ to the world in his travels, he evangelized, he stood firm against modernism (not without mistakes, sometimes), he was an athlete (sneaking out of the Vatican to ski), he could talk to people about sex & morality (not an easy task), as a world leader helped take down Communism, he was a gifted writer, philosopher, and on and on.  

The office of pope brings incredible weight and scrutiny; not everyone has the ability or the capacity to fill the shoes of the fisherman. John Paul II had a unique combination of gifts that were supercharged by grace. I don't know that the world will see someone like him again in my lifetime.  

Some Other Interesting Numbers

Statistically, he did the work of several men. JP2 visited 129 countries (out of 261 – that’s almost half the world!) and traveled a total of 723,723 miles. For those keeping score at home, that’s enough length to travel to the moon three times or go 30 times around the earth. He served as pope for almost 26 and a half years and was probably the most “seen” person in the world. In Rome, his general audiences had a total attendance of 17.6 million people. One of the largest crowds recorded (5 million) belongs to John Paul II’s Mass to close World Youth Day in Manila, Philippines, in 1995. Add on other World Youth Days, visits with foreign dignitaries, and apostolic pilgrimages. Only God knows how many people on earth saw His Vicar in person; it’s impossible to calculate the exact number, but it must be staggering. 

On top of being merely seen by so many, the Everything Pope was beloved by so many.  

Brief Biography

Karol Wojtyła came into the world on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. He was the baby of three children (called “Lolek”), but by the time he was 12, only Karol and his father were still alive. When he was 18 years old, he attended college in Krakow, studying Polish, literature, poetry, and theater. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and many things changed. The seminary that Karol attended had to go underground.  

Just a quick note: think of young Karol’s crosses. Losing his mother and siblings at a young age would be difficult for anyone. And most Americans and those in western Europe do not have a frame of reference for living in a conquered country. The Nazis were not just any conqueror, either! Add a secret seminary, and on top of that, in 1941, Karol’s father died. By the age of 21 he was without parents or siblings and his training for the priesthood had become a secret. Throughout his life, Karol was known for his warmth and vivacity. Those qualities were not just his natural temperament: they were rooted in the cross.  

Karol was ordained a priest on All Saints Day in 1946. After further studies in Rome, his mission was to a parish back home and also as a professor at his alma mater, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Over the next twelve years he served the Church. Karol was a magnet for young people, taking them on excursions in nature. In 1958, he was appointed the auxiliary bishop of Krakow. His clerical life continued and took a dramatic shift in 1960 with the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Making a long story only slightly less long: Karol was elected pope in 1979 and took the names of his three predecessors, John Paul II. 

Multiple skiing injuries, getting hit by a truck, broken bones, and two bullets from an assassin could not stop him. Parkinson’s disease dealt the final blow and John Paul II passed away in April 2005.  

Longevity and Stability after Vatican

In the Catholic world today, Vatican II and its effects are hotly debated. I don’t think anyone can deny that the 1960s and 1970s were a mess in the Catholic Church. By the time JP2 became the chief shepherd in 1979, the Church badly needed stability. As the world still reeled from the chaos, a weak papacy could have caused the barque of Peter to careen even further out of control. His longevity and willingness to stand with biblical, traditional, and divinely inspired morality came at a crucial time. The maelstrom unleashed by dissenting theologians, clergy, and laity against Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (1968) was just eleven years before JP2’s election and still within recent memory by 1993. That year, John Paul II’s encyclical on moral theology, Veritatis Splendor, called out certain avenues of dissent in moral theology. Rather than bring an inquisitorial hammer down, JP2 began with Scripture and built a Christocentric anthropology on it.  With that in place, dissent on objective moral evils has little ground on which to stand. Leave it to a giant-hearted, philosopher-poet-pastor-Everything Pope to offer such a comprehensive response to dissent.   

Here in the United States, JP2 inspired a new generation of priests. One of the fruits of his visit to World Youth Day in Denver (1993) were two brand-new, lay apostolates: the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and the Augustine Institute. That generation of priests are our pastors now. Those two apostolates now have a global reach and continue to bring the Catholic faith to the world through their efforts in the New Evangelization. 

One of the greatest gifts JP2 gave the Church, however, was a body of teachings specifically to counter the sexual revolution: the Theology of the Body. 

Standing Against the Sexual Revolution

During his usual weekly audiences from 1979 – 1984, JP2 gave a series of teachings on sex and the human person that is now known as the Theology of the Body. One of the best experts is Christopher West.  He has an introductory video on TOB here, an introductory article here, another separate course, a YouTube channel, and several books on the subject.  

For this work, I believe JP2 should be named a doctor of the Church. In the sexual revolution, the secular world threw off the divine and natural law in the name of “freedom.” That was the soil from which the current disaster has grown. Today, the secular world does not know what man is, what woman is, and lacks the ability to define the human person. Western, secular society has largely succeeded in exiling God—but does not understand why the world is spiraling out of control. In the final TOB general audience in 1984, JP2 summarized his whole project “can be summed up under the title: ‘Human love in the divine plan,’ or more precisely, ‘The redemption of the body and the sacramentality of marriage.’" Trying to tackle concepts like human freedom apart from God are doomed to failure. 

JP2 wrote letters and encyclicals of all kinds over the course of his 26-year pontificate. Related to TOB were Mulieris Dignitatem on the dignity and vocation of women (1988) and Redemptoris custos on the person and mission of St. Joseph in the life of Christ and of the Church (1989). The latter was essentially a treatise on authentic masculinity. He also wrote on the role of the family in the modern world, Familiaris Consortio in 1981.  

My Pope

St. John Paul II loved youth, kids, and families. He loved marriage, too. The proliferation of little boys named John Paul in Catholic circles attests to this. My wife and I do not have a little John Paul, but we credit JP2’s prayers with helping to bring us out of infertility. We were in that loop for a few years. On May 13, the feast of Our Lady of Fatima and the day John Paul II was shot, we found out my wife was pregnant with our first child. A couple years later, we again found out that my wife was pregnant with our second child; this time, it was on JP2’s birthday, May 18. For our third child, JP2 picked the anniversary of his death, April 2, for us to get a definitive pregnancy test. Baby number four was due on JP2’s baptism day. Besides being my pope, and good at nearly everything, he has been my great friend in heaven.  

Conclusion

Hundreds of books have been written about St. John Paul II. For his feast day, I recommend picking up one of his encyclicals as well as one of the many biographies about him. George Weigel’s 1,040 page masterwork remains the most exhaustive. JP2’s extraordinary life has yet to be exhausted with books by his personal secretary, the postulator of his cause for sainthood, one of his Swiss Guards, reporters, theologians, and more. It is still more evidence for the Everything Pope. JP2 brought Christ to people from every walk of life, and they loved him for it.