Today the Church celebrates Saint John Paul II, Pope of …

CENTRAL DEED, October 22 20/05: 00 am (ACI) .- “No, don’t be afraid! Rather, it tries to open, rather, to open wide the doors to Christ ”, said Saint John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate. That date marked the history of the Polish Pope, so much so that the Church determined this same day October 22 as the date of the liturgical memory of the saint.

Karol Wojtyla was born on May 18, 1920 in the city of Wadowice, Poland, where he lived until 1938, when he moved to Krakow. He had a very tough youth due to the atmosphere of hatred and destruction of World War II with the Nazi invasion. In the fall of 1940, he worked as a laborer in stone mines and later in a chemical factory.

Staying steadfast in the faith, in October 1942 he entered the clandestine seminary in Krakow and was ordained a priest on November 1, 1946.

In 1958 he was ordained bishop adopting as episcopal motto the Marian expression Totus tuus (all yours) of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort. Initially he was auxiliary bishop and, since 1964, archbishop of Krakow.

He participated in all sessions of the Second Vatican Council, having made important contributions to the dogmatic constitutions ‘Gaudium et Spes’ and ‘Lumen Gentium’. On June 26, 1967, he was named Cardinal by Blessed Pope Paul VI.

When João Paulo I died suddenly in 1978, Karol Wojtyla was elected Supreme Pontiff, on the afternoon of October 16, after eight votes. First Slavic pontiff in history and first non-Italian after almost half a millennium.

With a charismatic personality, he immediately asserts himself for his great communicative capacity and for his pastoral style outside the framework. With great vigor, he made many trips: they were 104 international and 146 in Italy; 129 countries visited on five continents. These data earned him the nickname of Pope pilgrim.

Brazil received the grace of his visit three times. The first, in 1980, was also the first time that a Pontiff was on Brazilian soil. On the occasion, he presided over the beatification of the Spanish Jesuit José de Anchieta, founder of the city of São Paulo, who was canonized in 2014 by Pope Francis. The second was in 1991, when he visited Blessed Sor Dulce, in Salvador. The third and last took place in 1997, on the occasion of the World Meeting of Families, in Rio de Janeiro.

This meeting with families, in fact, was designed by Saint John Paul II. This initiative, along with other actions in favor of life and the family (among them the apostolic exhortation ‘Familiaris Consortio’ and the encyclical ‘Evangelium Vitae’), made him known as the Pope of the Family.

World Youth Day was also his initiative, in which he met with millions of young people from around the world.

Among the numbers of his pontificate, we can mention the frequent beatification and canonization ceremonies, during which 1,338 blessed and 482 saints were proclaimed.

Saint John Paul II died on April 2, 2005 at 9:37 p.m., the night before Divine Mercy Sunday, a date that he himself instituted.

Twenty-six days after his death, Benedict XVI granted the dispensation of the prescribed five years of expectation allowing the start of the cause of canonization. On May 1, 2011, Benedict XVI proclaimed him blessed and on April 27, 2014, Pope Francis canonized him.

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