Pope John Paul II

Until Pope John Paul II begins to implement his own particular brand of papal policy, we can have nothing but speculation as to what his papacy will actually be like. Nevertheless, at this early stage, it will help enormously to recall the primary influences that have moulded his character as a man and as a churchman.

As a teenage member of the pre-war group Odrodzenie (Renaissance), Karol Wojtyla came under the influence of its organizer, Professor Stefan Wyszynski, sociologist at the University of Lublin. Today, Stefan Wyszynski is Cardinal Primate of Poland, a churchman angrily referred to by resentful members of the old-time Vatican bureaucracy as “our Holy Father of Central Europe”; known to his fellow Catholics behind the Iron Curtain as “the fox of the Soviet Empire”; and, together with Wojtyla, the principal architect of a Church policy which has successfully defied Stalinism, the most thoroughgoing enemy the Roman Church has ever faced in its long history.

Until Pope John Paul II begins to implement his own particular brand of papal policy, we can have nothing but speculation as to what his papacy will actually be like. Nevertheless, at this early stage, it will help enormously to recall the primary influences that have moulded his character as a man and as a churchman.

As a teenage member of the pre-war group Odrodzenie (Renaissance), Karol Wojtyla came under the influence of its organizer, Professor Stefan Wyszynski, sociologist at the University of Lublin. Today, Stefan Wyszynski is Cardinal Primate of Poland, a churchman angrily referred to by resentful members of the old-time Vatican bureaucracy as “our Holy Father of Central Europe”; known to his fellow Catholics behind the Iron Curtain as “the fox of the Soviet Empire”; and, together with Wojtyla, the principal architect of a Church policy which has successfully defied Stalinism, the most thoroughgoing enemy the Roman Church has ever faced in its long history.