From Wadowice to the Vatican The boy who would be pope was born on May 20, 1920, in Wadowice, near Krakow, in an independent and multiethnic Poland. When Karol Wojtyla played soccer as a boy, the school teams were divided into Catholics and Jews. If the Jews were short a player, Lolek, as Karol was known, sometimes played goalie for them.
The young Lolek was devoted to his mother, a seamstress who died when he was 8. Three years later, his brother died. His father, a retired military officer with a small pension, tried to fill the void.
Father and son moved to a small apartment in Krakow in 1938 for Karol to enter the university. His father cooked and kept house while Wojtyla studied, wrote poetry and acted in amateur theater. On September 1, 1939, the idyll was shattered when the Nazis invaded Poland from the west and south. Two weeks later, the Soviets invaded from the east. Wojtyla worked as a laborer and studied in clandestine classes. In 1945, the Soviets occupied a Poland completely transformed by war. More than 6 million Poles died in World War II; 3 million of them were Jews. The Poland Wojtyla had grown up in was gone. Within the new post-War borders, 98 percent of the population was Polish and, for the most part, Catholic. The young priest was savvy in his dealings with the communist Polish government, and similarly astute in his career within the Church. He advanced rapidly: 1958, bishop of Krakow; 1963, archbishop of Krakow; 1967, a cardinal.
By Nancy Doyle
The journey from Wadowice to Vatican City cannot be measured in miles alone. The story of John Paul II is the story of the wrenching events of this century: World War II, the Cold War, the fall of Communism.
Nazi authorities closed seminaries and churches were taken over for Nazi use. In 1942, his father died and Wojtyla began studying secretly for the priesthood. 
Karol Wojtyla was ordained a priest in 1946, the same year his first collection of poems was published. He continued to publish throughout his life, often under a pen name. Wojtyla moved to Rome to study and earned a doctorate. He returned to Poland, where he served as a parish priest and then as a professor.Ascending the papal throne, and a brush with death
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