58 Fun Facts About Pope John Paul II

In 1979 John Paul II became the first pope to visit which Nazi death camp?

Auschwitz came on his first trip home as pope; his boyhood friend Jerzy Kluger had lost his mother and sister in the Nazi camps, and the pope made reconciliation with Jews a priority of his reign.

John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since which Dutchman, elected in 1522?

Adrian VI, the only Dutch pope, had tutored the future emperor Charles V; Romans resented him as an outsider, and after his death in 1523 no other non-Italian was elected for 455 years.

In which small Polish town was John Paul II born?

Wadowice heard him recall, on a visit as pope in 1999, how he and his classmates went for cream cakes after their final exams; the town's cake has been sold as 'papal' ever since.

As a schoolboy, the future pope played football in which position?

Goalkeeper was his position, at times for the Jewish side in school matches; his Jewish classmate Jerzy Kluger later became his go-between with Israel.

During the Nazi occupation, Wojtyła avoided deportation by working where?

A quarry and a chemical plant: the Solvay works counted as essential to the German war effort, so the job shielded him from deportation while he studied for the priesthood in secret.

After a 1944 Gestapo sweep of Kraków, where did the future pope and other secret seminarians hide until the Germans left?

The archbishop's residence became their refuge when Adam Sapieha moved his underground seminary indoors after Black Sunday, 6 August 1944, when the Gestapo rounded up Kraków's young men.

Wojtyła was ordained a priest on 1 November 1946, which Catholic feast day?

All Saints' Day was the date; the next morning he said his first Mass in a crypt of Kraków's Wawel Cathedral, and two weeks later he left for Rome.

Wojtyła's Rome doctoral thesis examined faith in which Spanish mystic, author of Dark Night of the Soul?

St. John of the Cross reached him through Jan Tyranowski, a Kraków tailor whose wartime prayer circle introduced the young Wojtyła to the Carmelite mystic's writings.

Which friar reportedly told Wojtyła in 1947 he would one day hold 'the highest post in the Church'?

Padre Pio heard the young priest's confession at San Giovanni Rotondo that year; as pope, Wojtyła made the friar a saint in 2002.

Which gesture became John Paul II's trademark on arriving in a new country?

Kissing the ground began in 1948, when the young priest knelt as he crossed into his first parish, a village outside Kraków; as pope he repeated it at airports around the world.

What nickname did Wojtyła, as a young priest, ask student hiking companions to use so outsiders would not know his calling?

Wujek (Uncle) let him lead student trips in plain clothes without communist-era police spotting a priest, and his friends kept using the name for the rest of his life.

Under the pen name Andrzej Jawień, Wojtyła published The Jeweller's Shop, a meditation on which sacrament?

Marriage: the 1960 work follows three couples whose stories cross at a jeweller's shop, and it later reached the screen with Burt Lancaster as the jeweller.

What was Wojtyła doing on holiday in 1958 when he was summoned to hear he had been named a bishop?

Kayaking in northern Poland's lake country, he was summoned to Warsaw, where the primate, Cardinal Wyszyński, told him he was to be an auxiliary bishop of Kraków at 38.

Which pope appointed Wojtyła Archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and made him a cardinal in 1967?

Paul VI also invited Cardinal Wojtyła to preach the Vatican's Lenten retreat in March 1976, with the pontiff listening.

How long had John Paul I reigned before his death triggered the conclave that elected Wojtyła?

33 days made 1978 the first year of three popes since 1605, and Wojtyła took the double name John Paul in tribute to his short-lived predecessor.

In which language did John Paul II give his first speech from the balcony in 1978?

Italian he first called 'your' language, then 'our', and he asked the crowd to correct him if he slipped; Vienna's Cardinal König had proposed him as a compromise in a deadlocked conclave.

Which Polish saint's name did the new pope reportedly want, before the cardinals talked him out of it?

Stanislaus, the martyred bishop of Kraków and patron saint of Poland, was reportedly his first choice, but the cardinals are said to have objected that it was not a Roman name.

At 58, John Paul II was the youngest pope elected since which pontiff, the longest-reigning on record?

Pius IX was 54 at his election in 1846 and reigned almost 32 years; the cardinals who chose a 58-year-old in 1978 got the next-longest verified reign, over 26 years.

John Paul II's motto, Totus Tuus ('totally yours'), declared his devotion to whom?

The Virgin Mary was the 'you' of the motto, which he took from a prayer of consecration in Louis de Montfort's True Devotion to Mary; a large M for her sits on his coat of arms.

A January 1995 Mass by John Paul II drew millions, then the largest papal crowd ever, in which city?

Manila's Mass went ahead days after a fire in a rented room in the city led police to explosives, priests' robes and a plan to assassinate the pope.

Which US president welcomed John Paul II in October 1979 as the first pope ever to visit the White House?

Jimmy Carter hosted the visit four years before the United States and the Holy See had full diplomatic relations, which were established only in 1984.

In 1982 John Paul II was the first reigning pope to visit which country, meeting Elizabeth II?

He knelt in prayer with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the spot where Thomas Becket was killed.

In 2001 John Paul II became the first pope to pray in a mosque, the Umayyad Mosque in which city?

Damascus's Umayyad Mosque holds a shrine said to contain the head of John the Baptist, and the pope went chiefly to visit those relics, taking off his shoes at the door.

John Paul II's June 1979 trip to Poland is credited with inspiring which movement founded the next year?

Solidarity was born at Gdańsk's Lenin Shipyard in August 1980, and its leader Lech Wałęsa later credited the pope with giving Poles the courage to demand change.

Which Soviet leader said the Iron Curtain could not have fallen 'without John Paul II'?

Mikhail Gorbachev first met him at the Vatican in December 1989, weeks after the Berlin Wall fell, and recalled the pope saying, 'I don't serve any political parties, I serve God.'

Which recurring international Catholic gathering did John Paul II start in the 1980s and lead in cities from Buenos Aires to Toronto?

World Youth Day began with young people invited to Rome for Palm Sunday in 1984 and 1985; he then made it a yearly event, with an international gathering every few years.

In 1986 John Paul II invited leaders of the world's religions to pray for peace in which town?

Assisi, the town of St Francis, hosted the religious leaders on 27 October 1986; they fasted and prayed for peace, each in their own tradition, and the pope called another such day there in 2002.

In 2002 John Paul II added five new 'Luminous Mysteries' to which centuries-old Catholic prayer?

The Rosary gained the Luminous Mysteries, scenes from Christ's public life such as his baptism and the wedding at Cana, in a letter that also declared a Year of the Rosary.

John Paul II's teaching on human sexuality, delivered in general audiences, is known by what name?

Theology of the Body filled 129 of his Wednesday talks between 1979 and 1984, building on Love and Responsibility, the 1960 book in which he defended church teaching on marriage.

Which 1917 text did John Paul II replace in 1983?

The Code of Canon Law, the Church's legal rulebook, took 24 years to revise: the overhaul was announced in January 1959, on the same day as the Second Vatican Council.

Which universal doctrinal summary, the first since the 16th century, did John Paul II issue in 1992?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church was requested by a 1985 synod of bishops marking twenty years since Vatican II; he called the result 'a sure norm for teaching the faith'.

On 13 May 1981 John Paul II was shot in St. Peter's Square by which Turkish gunman?

Mehmet Ali Ağca had murdered a Turkish newspaper editor in 1979 and escaped from prison within months, two years before he opened fire with a Browning pistol.

The 1981 assassination attempt fell on the anniversary of which Marian apparition?

Fátima's first apparition was reported on 13 May 1917, 64 years to the day earlier; convinced he had been protected, the pope travelled to the Portuguese shrine a year later to give thanks.

In 1986 John Paul II made the first known papal visit to which kind of house of worship, in Rome?

A synagogue: at Rome's Great Synagogue he prayed beside Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff and called Jews the 'elder brothers' of Christians.

What did John Paul II do about his would-be assassin at Christmas 1983?

Visited him in prison and forgave him: the two spoke alone for about twenty minutes, and the pope said afterwards that what passed between them would remain a secret.

The man who shot John Paul II was pardoned by Italy's president in June 2000 at whose request?

The pope himself asked for clemency; the gunman was then deported to Turkey to serve time for an earlier murder and walked free only in January 2010.

A traditionalist priest lunged at John Paul II in May 1982, a year after the shooting, wielding what?

A bayonet from a Mauser rifle was the weapon; the Spanish priest, ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre, believed the pope was a communist agent and served three years in prison.

What was John Paul II riding in when he was shot in 1981?

An open-topped car, a white Fiat Campagnola, was carrying him through the crowd in St Peter's Square; bulletproof glass walls were the response.

Which scientist's 17th-century condemnation by the Church did John Paul II publicly admit was an error in 1992?

Galileo Galilei was condemned in 1633 for holding that the Earth moves around the Sun; the pope asked scholars to re-examine the case in 1979, and a commission worked on it from 1981.

Which medium did John Paul II use for the first time in November 2001 to send an apology for clerical abuse?

E-mail carried his message to the bishops of Oceania from a laptop in the Vatican, because he could not travel there; it also apologised for the Church's part in Australia's Stolen Generations.

What did John Paul II reportedly reply when cardinals questioned the cost of a swimming pool at his summer residence?

'Cheaper than another conclave' was his joke about the pool at Castel Gandolfo: a pope who kept fit would spare the cardinals the cost of electing his successor too soon.

Which long-suspected illness did the Vatican acknowledge John Paul II had in 2003?

Parkinson's disease later figured in his own sainthood cause: the miracle approved for his beatification was a French nun's recovery from the same illness.

On the 1999 album Abba Pater, what does John Paul II do?

He recites and chants prayers and homilies; rather than record in a studio, producers lifted his voice from Vatican Radio's archive and set it to new music for the 2000 Jubilee.

Where did John Paul II die in April 2005?

His Vatican apartment, on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, was where he wished to stay rather than go back to hospital; he died there on 2 April 2005 with tens of thousands in the square below.

John Paul II's last words, spoken in Polish, translated as what?

'Let me go to the house of the Father', he murmured to his aides at about half past three in the afternoon; he fell into a coma some four hours later and died that evening.

Who celebrated John Paul II's funeral Mass as Dean of the College of Cardinals?

Joseph Ratzinger, as dean, went on to preside over the conclave that elected him pope eleven days after the funeral, when he took the name Benedict XVI.

What chant rose from the crowds at John Paul II's funeral in St Peter's Square?

'Santo subito!', or 'sainthood now', got its answer within weeks: his successor waived the usual five-year wait so the cause for his beatification could open at once.

John Paul II was first buried in a grotto alcove left empty when which beatified pope's body was moved into the basilica?

John XXIII had been carried up into St Peter's after his beatification; in 2011 John Paul II's own coffin made the same journey, to the Chapel of St Sebastian.

On which feast day was John Paul II beatified in 2011 and then canonised in 2014?

Divine Mercy Sunday was his own addition to the calendar in 2000, and he died on its eve in 2005, shortly after the Mass for the feast was said at his bedside.

Which Polish nun, whose cause Wojtyła opened as Archbishop of Kraków, did he canonise in 2000?

Faustina Kowalska's diary of visions had been under a Vatican ban for almost two decades; it was lifted in April 1978, six months before Wojtyła, who had championed her cause, became pope.

Which nun did John Paul II beatify in 2003, only six years after her death?

Mother Teresa died in 1997 and was beatified in St Peter's Square in October 2003; having simplified the process in 1983, he named over 480 saints, more than the popes of the previous five centuries combined.

Which US president presented John Paul II with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004?

George W. Bush presented the medal at the Vatican in June 2004; in his reply the pope reminded him of the Holy See's 'unequivocal position' on Iraq.

Which private secretary, later Archbishop of Kraków, was at John Paul II's side from 1966?

Stanisław Dziwisz was asked in the pope's will to burn his private notes, but weeks after the funeral he said he had kept them, calling them a treasure that should be preserved.

Which sport did John Paul II slip out of the Vatican to enjoy on unannounced trips to the mountains?

Skiing was a habit from his youth: as a cardinal he reportedly quipped that it was 'unbecoming for a cardinal to ski badly', and as pope he slipped away to nearby slopes whenever he could.

Before becoming a bishop, the future John Paul II held a university chair in which subject?

Ethics was his field: he took the chair at the Catholic University of Lublin in 1956, two years after the authorities shut Kraków's theology faculty, having written his thesis on the philosopher Max Scheler.

John Paul II's Easter and Christmas greetings, given in many languages, included from 1994 which invented one?

Esperanto joined his Urbi et Orbi greetings at Easter 1994; it was devised in 1887 by Ludwik Zamenhof, an eye doctor from Białystok, in today's Poland, who hoped a shared second language would bring peoples together.

From 1959 Bishop Wojtyła said Christmas Midnight Mass in an open field at which churchless workers' town near Kraków?

Nowa Huta was planned as a model socialist town with no church; residents had asked for one since 1952, and Wojtyła finally consecrated the Ark of the Lord there in 1977.

Which country did John Paul II visit for the first time in January 1998, at the invitation of its communist government?

Cuba's government and bishops jointly invited him; he said Mass in Havana and three other cities and openly criticised the American embargo of the island.