People & Histories
1978–2005

John Paul II, the pilgrim pope

A Polish pope helps bring down communism, travels the world and leaves a strong, conservative imprint on Catholic teaching through one of the longest reigns in history.

  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)

Well established politicsfaithinterfaith

Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, was elected on 16 October 1978, the first non-Italian pope in more than 450 years. In June 1979 he returned to communist Poland and told huge crowds in Warsaw, “Let your Spirit descend and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land.” A year later the Solidarity trade union was born, and many historians count his role among the forces that ended communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.

  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
He survived being shot in St Peter’s Square on 13 May 1981, and later visited and forgave his attacker.
  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)

He made 104 foreign journeys, launched World Youth Days and became the first pope to visit a synagogue (Rome, 1986) and a mosque (Damascus, 2001). In 2000 he asked forgiveness for the sins of Catholics through history and prayed at the Western Wall.

  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)
Doctrinally he was firm: he restated the ban on contraception, declared in 1994 that the church has no authority to ordain women, curbed Latin American liberation theology, and issued the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992.
He died on 2 April 2005 to cries of “Santo subito!” (“Sainthood now!”) and was canonised in 2014, though investigations into abusers like Theodore McCarrick and Marcial Maciel have since raised hard questions about his governance.
  • Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (2014)

Why it matters today

Catholicism

For many Catholics, especially in Poland, Africa and among "JPII generation" young people drawn by his World Youth Days, he was a hero and a saint. For others his era meant centralisation, closed debates on women and sexuality, and a failure to confront clerical abuse. Both memories shape the church today.