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60 free Pope John Paul II trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Karol Wojtyła was a goalkeeper, a quarry labourer, an actor and a poet before he was a priest, and this quiz follows him all the way from Wadowice to the tomb beneath St. Peter's. It covers the wartime seminary in occupied Kraków, the kayaking holiday interrupted by a bishop's appointment, the deadlocked 1978 conclave that turned to a 58-year-old Pole, and the pontificate that followed: 129 countries, the first papal visit to the White House, a mosque and the Western Wall, and the June 1979 trip home that lit the fuse under Polish communism. There are questions on the 1981 shooting in St. Peter's Square and the prison visit to Mehmet Ali Ağca two years later, on the encyclicals and the Catechism, on World Youth Day and the swimming-pool joke, and on the final chapter: Parkinson's, the last words in Polish, the crowds chanting 'Santo subito' and the fast-tracked canonisation on Divine Mercy Sunday 2014. Easy questions suit anyone who remembers the news; the expert tier asks about pen names, doctoral theses and Dives in misericordia. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the pope, the assassination attempt, his funeral and canonisation, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Pope John Paul II's birth name?
Karol Wojtyła
He was born in 1920, the youngest of three children of a former army officer and a schoolteacher.
Q 02John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since which 16th-century pontiff?
Adrian VI
The gap was 455 years; the run of Italian popes he ended had begun with Clement VII in 1523.
Q 03In which small Polish town was John Paul II born?
Wadowice
His mother, a schoolteacher, died when he was eight, and his elder brother Edmund, a doctor, died of scarlet fever.
Q 04As a schoolboy, the future pope played football in which position?
Goalkeeper
School games were often Jews against Catholics, and he frequently played on the Jewish side.
Q 05During the Nazi occupation, Wojtyła avoided deportation by working where?
A quarry and a chemical plant
A lorry accident in the quarry left him with one shoulder higher than the other and a permanent stoop.
Q 06Wojtyła studied for the priesthood in a clandestine wartime seminary run by which Archbishop of Kraków?
Adam Stefan Sapieha
Sapieha ordained him in November 1946 and sent him to Rome to study.
Q 07On what feast day in 1946 was the future pope ordained a priest?
All Saints' Day
He left for Rome three weeks later to study under the Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.
Q 08Wojtyła's Rome doctoral thesis examined the doctrine of faith in which Spanish mystic?
St. John of the Cross
The Angelicum still preserves the original typewritten copy.
Q 09Which stigmatic friar reportedly told Wojtyła in 1947 he would one day hold 'the highest post in the Church'?
Padre Pio
Wojtyła reportedly believed the prophecy was fulfilled when he was made a cardinal.
Q 10From which saint did Wojtyła borrow his gesture of kneeling to kiss the ground?
John Vianney
The village was Niegowić, 24 km from Kraków, and he arrived at harvest time.
Q 11What nickname did the young priest have his student hiking companions use so outsiders would not know his job?
Wujek (Uncle)
In Stalinist Poland priests were forbidden to travel with student groups; the name stuck for life.
Q 12Under what pen name did Wojtyła publish some of his poetry and plays?
Andrzej Jawień
He used pseudonyms so his literary work would be judged on its own merits, separate from his religious writing.
Q 13What was Wojtyła doing when he learned in July 1958 that Pius XII had named him an auxiliary bishop?
Kayaking
At 38 he became the youngest bishop in Poland.
Q 21The largest papal gathering ever, up to four million people, took place in January 1995 in which city?
Manila
The Al-Qaeda-funded Bojinka plot had planned to kill him during that same visit.
Q 22Which US president welcomed John Paul II in October 1979 as the first pope ever to visit the White House?
Jimmy Carter
Full US-Vatican diplomatic relations were only restored under Reagan in 1984, for the first time since 1870.
Q 23In 1982 John Paul II was the first reigning pope to visit which country, meeting Elizabeth II?
United Kingdom
He knelt in prayer with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the spot where Thomas Becket was killed.
Q 14Which pope appointed Wojtyła Archbishop of Kraków in 1964 and made him a cardinal in 1967?
Paul VI
He also helped draft Humanae vitae, the 1968 encyclical on birth control.
Q 15How long had John Paul I reigned before his death triggered the conclave that elected Wojtyła?
33 days
Wojtyła took his predecessor's double name in tribute to him.
Q 16Which cardinal proposed Wojtyła as a compromise when the October 1978 conclave deadlocked?
Franz König of Vienna
Wojtyła won on the eighth ballot on the third day, 16 October 1978.
Q 17Which Polish saint's name did the new pope reportedly want, before the cardinals talked him out of it?
Stanislaus
They told him it was not a Roman name.
Q 18How old was John Paul II when elected, making him the youngest pope since Pius IX in 1846?
58
Pius IX had been 54.
Q 19According to the chronological list of popes, John Paul II was pope number what?
264
He was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.
Q 20How many countries did John Paul II visit during his pontificate?
129
He covered more than 1.1 million kilometres, making him one of the most-travelled world leaders in history.
Q 24In 2001 John Paul II became the first pope to enter and pray in a mosque. In which city?
Damascus
The Umayyad Mosque is a former Byzantine church believed to hold the head of John the Baptist.
Q 25In March 2000 John Paul II became the first pope in history to visit and pray at which site?
The Western Wall
The same year he made Egypt the first modern papal visit and met the Coptic Pope Shenouda III.
Q 26John Paul II's June 1979 trip to Poland is credited with inspiring which movement founded the next year?
Solidarity
The union was born at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980 and Lech Wałęsa credited the pope with giving Poles courage.
Q 27Which Soviet leader said the Iron Curtain could not have fallen 'without John Paul II'?
Mikhail Gorbachev
The two men met at the Vatican in December 1989 and expressed mutual admiration.
Q 28Which recurring Catholic youth event did John Paul II pioneer, presiding over nine of them?
World Youth Day
He launched it in 1985; the press nicknamed it 'the Catholic Woodstock'.
Q 29How many papal encyclicals did John Paul II write?
14
They ranged from Redemptor hominis in 1979 to Ecclesia de Eucharistia in 2003.
Q 30What is the title of John Paul II's second encyclical, on divine mercy as God's greatest attribute?
Dives in misericordia
The theme ran through his whole pontificate and shaped the feast he created in 2000.