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by Prof. Israel Gutman, Chief Historian of Yad Vashem

Karol Wojtyla—Pope John Paul II since 1978—was born in 1920 in Wadowice, a small city in southwestern Poland between Krakow and Auschwitz. As a young man, he had a penchant for writing and authored poetry and plays. He completed his studies with a doctoral degree in philosophy and theology and served as a professor at the universities of Lublin and Krakow. He was ordained into the priesthood in 1946 and was named to the College of Cardinals in 1963. John Paul II is the first non-Italian pope in more than four centuries.

The choice of Karol Cardinal Wojtyla to head the Catholic Church marked a transition to the recognition of the candidate’s personal qualities. It was also a deliberate, demonstrative step, on the part of the Church, to install at its head a man from a country that, although under the fetters of the Communist Bloc, adhered to its Christian-Catholic faith.

Since then, Pope John Paul II has earned the respect of the faithful and has become sweepingly popular. Although wounded by a would-be assassin at the beginning of his papacy, he has been continually active. Apart from his routine duties in Rome, he has traveled extensively around the globe, delivering sermons and conducting masses for enormous congregations in numerous languages. He regularly expresses his views on basic political and social problems, orally and in writing, and often meets and exchanges words with ordinary people—groups and individuals—along with statespeople and luminaries.

John Paul II is considered a conservative cleric who is not eager to reform the existing dogmatic structure of the Church and rarely swerves from the conventional political attitudes of the Vatican State. The Holy See’s relations with Israel and the Palestinians, as reflected in the political dialogue with Israel in 1993 and with the Palestinians in 1996, and its recent agreement with Yasser Arafat concerning Jerusalem, should be viewed in this context.

In several respects, however, John Paul II has left his personal imprint by hastening processes and making innovations. Examples are his trailblazing initiatives in understanding and outreach between various Christian churches and the monotheistic faiths and, especially, his calls for dialogue with Jews.

John Paul II considers religion-based ethics and humanism a solution to the conflicts and disasters embodied in extreme ideologies, revolutions, totalitarian regimes, and wars that have beset Europe and the world in the twentieth century. In his opinion, the dangers that menace humankind may be averted by an intensification of faith and ecumenical outreach.

In his public appearances, in visits to Poland and in encounters with Jewish groups, he often refers to the Holocaust (he often uses the Hebrew term, Shoah) and antisemitism. In his 1998 letter, marking the publication of the document, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” produced by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, he states, “On numerous occasions during my Pontificate, I have recalled with a sense of deep sorrow the sufferings of the Jewish people during the Second World War. The crime which has become known as the Shoah remains an indelible stain on the history of the century that is coming to a close. Remembrance of the Holocaust, is an essential component in fashioning the future.

The Church’s attitude toward Judaism and Jews had already been improved considerably by Pope John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli), whose papacy began in 1958 and ended in 1963, and in the 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate, which inaugurated what has been termed an ongoing dialogue with Judaism and Jews. Pope John Paul II’s remarks are sometimes couched in a strongly personal tone that indicates the impact of his experiences in, and recollections of, World War II on his attitude toward the Holocaust.

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