Apart from classical antiquity and the Middle Ages (Alexander the Great and Charlemagne), only two popes in history, Leo I (440-61) and Gregory I (590-604), have deserved the title of Magnus (Great). St. John Paul II the Great – Karol Wojtyla, Polish from Wadowice (Krakow), whose birth centenary falls this year (1920), is the third Roman pontiff to earn this honor, together with the glory of the altars and the admiration of the world. During his pontificate, one of the longest in history (27 years, 1978-2005, second only to that of Pius IX, with 32 years, 1846-78), the Polish pope had moved far more than all his predecessors.

The figures are impressive: 104 apostolic trips to the 5 continents and 463 pastoral visits throughout Italy including more than 300 to the parishes in the Diocese of Rome. The volume of documents he produced is also incredible: 14 encyclicals and 71 exhortations, constitutions, and apostolic letters. To these must be added 5 books, translated into different languages, which are essays, like the last one, Memory and Identity (2005), or interviews, given to Vittorio Messori (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 1994) and others.

But where Wojtyla surpassed all the previous popes put together was in promoting heroes of the spirit to the altars, proclaiming 1,338 new blesseds and 482 saints, including several married lay people such as Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of Thérèse of Lisieux, or Louis and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, he a friend of Sturzo and De Gasperi (proponents of Christian renewal in Italian politics), while she was a pedagogue and pioneer of Catholic associationism. In short, he was the pope of many firsts… Among these also, he celebrated the second most attended Mass ever, in Manila, on January 15, 1995, in front of 5 million faithful!

And yet now – 15 years after his funeral which was followed by 2 and a half million people in St. Peter’s and on the giant screens scattered around the city of Rome, where, for the first time, the crowds shouted: “Santo Subito!” (Saint Now!), this huge, historic figure appears somewhat forgotten or removed. On the one hand, the blame lies with the passage of time, filled with many things, events, characters, wars, two other popes, and now also the pandemic, which consume, and then forget everything, in the name of speed-urgency-surficiality, the three evils of today.

However, there is a second reason. Since his election, Pope Wojtyla did not lack opponents, dissatisfied and skeptical, at the end of the Italian monopoly of the papacy (John Paul II was the first non-Italian pontiff after 455 years), critics of the “too many” journeys of the 263rd successor of Peter and alarmed by his reformist attitude. On the other hand, the progressives had been all-out disputing this pope “from the left,” accusing him of conservatism and restorative spirit, especially on the role of women in the Church, sexuality, birth control, gay rights, celibacy, female priesthood and other hot topics for which, it is true, in principle John Paul II had reiterated the traditional position of the Church.

The two sides, by exaggerating and coming together during and after his pontificate, tried to erase, remove or at least “demythologize” and diminish the stature and memory of the Polish pope. But it is not easy to do so. The dimensions of the “Wojtyla phenomenon,” as it was called then, proof of the astonished admiration of his contemporaries, were something immense and polydirectional, as witnessed by the media that followed his universal ministry every day.

But let us see what are the main factors for this greatness, both spiritual and historical. First of all, we owe it to the Polish Pope – to his love of country, to his journeys in Poland, to his preaching for the human person and freedom, to his moral and concrete support for Solidarność, the first free trade union beyond the Iron Curtain – if communism collapsed, first in Warsaw and then throughout Eastern Europe and the rest of the Soviet Union.

The Pope, contrary to both communist nations and the capitalist and hyper-liberalist West, had perhaps a more “modest” objective: the defense of religious freedom in Marxist societies. But since the various freedoms are one and the same, fighting (and winning) for just one of them naturally leads to the rebirth of all. Therefore, communism had a natural, peaceful death, but it was Wojtyla who exposed its contradictions and hastened its death. 

Another active item in the Pope’s budget was the acceleration of dialogue and rapprochement between Catholics and Jews, whom he called “our elder brothers.” Here too, he acted in his own way, with impetus and heart, visiting as pontiff for the first time in history the synagogue of Rome (April 3, 1986), going to pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (March 26, 2000) and becoming a great friend of the Rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff. After that, he brought to an almost revolutionary turning point, of great worldwide resonance, interreligious understanding and exchange, inaugurating in Assisi (October 27, 1986) the meetings of common prayer for peace among the exponents of the great religions.

Ecumenism with Wojtyla made progress not so much with the “separated brethren” of the Reformation (here he insisted on the Petrine primacy), but rather with the Orthodox Church, especially after the meeting with the head of the Greek Church (May 4, 2001). After Cristodoulos, the then-Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, had reminded him of the “13 offenses” of the Roman Catholic Church against the Church of Constantinople, including the sack of the city by Crusader armies (1204), John Paul II asked him publicly for forgiveness, canceling much of the division that had existed between the two Churches up to that moment. A conservative pope does not behave like that.

Before that, he had pronounced others famous “mea culpas,” for the edict of Inquisition against Italian scientist Galileo, for example, or for Christians involved in the African slave trade, thus scandalizing the well-thinking and enthusing the young, whose fervent and lively consent was one of the hallmarks of his pontificate. The start of the World Youth Day in 1985, and the popularity of the “Papaboys” and the “Wojtyla generation” testify to the pope’s harmony with youth culture. After all, he was still Father Karol of the “apostolate of the excursion,” as he called it, when he was camping out with young people in Krakow.

It was one of them, I mean a boy, who shot him: Ali Agca was 23 years old in 1981. If he had looked into the eyes of the man he was about to shoot, as he later did on December 27, 1983, when they met in the Rebibbia prison, perhaps he would not have pulled the trigger. But it takes more than encyclicals and Popemobiles to become a saint.