John Paul II (UPDATED)

What a week, but we knew this next was coming. I’m not Catholic, but you don’t have to be to admire the man, born Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II. It appears that the rest of his life can only be measured in hours. After a health spiral started by an assassination attempt in 1981 (possibly perpetrated by the old Stasi and the KGB it’s been lately revealed) and which included Parkinson’s disease and, ironically, a feeding tube through his nose, septic shock is finally doing him in.

Mentally and spiritually, however, he has always seemed tough and sharp, which appears to have added to his physical stamina, even in its decline. Surviving Nazi and Soviet occupation of one’s homeland will do that.

Here are a few interesting facts about John Paul II’s ascendance to the Papacy:

1.After being elected Pope on October 16, 1978, he named himself after his immediate predecessor, John Paul I, who died on September 28, 1978 of a heart attack only thirty-four days after succeeding Pope Paul VI. (1978 is known as the year of the three Popes for this reason.)

2. He was the first non-Italian pope in 456 years. The last one was Pope Adrian VI, a Dutchman, who was elected in 1522 and died in 1523.

3. The election of a non-Italian seems to have been a political compromise among the then Italian-dominated cardinals. Sounds to me as if none of them trusted each other.

The 26 Italian cardinals were too sharply divided to agree on an Italian candidate and their disunity led the way to the election of a non-Italian candidate, according to the October 19 [1978] Washington Post. Although church sources said there was no bloc voting, the inability of the Italians to agree on one candidate increased Wojtyla's strength. His name had been submitted from the beginning and he added a few more votes on each ballot.

Wojtyla's acceptability to the U.S. and West German cardinals, who knew him from his tours to those countries, was said to have been crucial to his election.

They picked the cool Polish guy that everybody liked and that the Soviets would come to hate and fear. That sunny disposition was apparently a front for a spine of steel.

Along with US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II turned out to be the late USSR’s undoing. If the KGB did have a hand in the attempt on his life, it would make perfect sense. His visit to then Soviet-controlled Poland in 1979 galvanized his countrymen.

Church bells throughout Poland began to ring at 10:05 a.m., as soon as Pope John Paul II set foot on Polish soil. Upon arrival, he kissed the ground and was greeted by President Henryk Jablonski, the ceremonial head of state, and Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, primate of Poland. Hundreds of thousands of Poles lined the road from the airport to Warsaw.[SNIP]

"Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe," {said John Paul II in] an indirect rebuttal to the official atheism of communist ideology.

If you’re old enough to remember that time, you remember what a powerhouse the Soviet bloc seemed to be in those days: the 'evil empire.' Pope John Paul II has shown that he is more than some nice man wearing a white frock and a little white cap again and again, but the revelation started there. Though I despise this phrase, it fits John Paul II more than most: he spoke ‘truth to power.’ As it turned out, the power he served was infinitely stronger than that of the Soviets.

More from the 1979 visit to Poland:

As archbishop of Krakow, John Paul had visited Auschwitz many times, and he was the first Pope to travel to a Nazi camp. He called it "a place built on hatred and on contempt for man in the name of a crazed ideology, a place built on cruelty." [SNIP]

At the main Auschwitz camp, the Pope visited the cell where Reverend Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan monk, was imprisoned in July 1941. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a Polish prisoner who had been condemned to die of starvation as punishment for the escape of another prisoner. Kolbe was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1971.

The Pope then laid a wreath and said a prayer at the Wall of Death, where an estimated 20,000 people were shot during the five years the camp was in operation.

(Emphasis mine; no comment)

The Soviets recognized what a danger he was to their grip on power in Eastern Europe.

Soviet television broadcast its first report on the Pope's visit to Poland June 3, two days after the pontiff's arrival. A commentator observed that "some circles in the Polish church...are trying to use [the visit] for anti-state purposes." Cameras showed the Pope arriving at the Warsaw airport but did not show the large crowd that turned out to welcome him.

The Soviets are gone but the Pope is still here. For the moment.

Question: Will this Pope be missed by millions, Catholic and non-Catholic alike?

Answer (sort of): Is the Pope Polish?

(All quotes come from Facts.com)

UPDATE: The Anchoress has a great roundup of Pope-blogging.

UPDATE: Don Singleton has some excellent photos of the young Karol Wojtyla and a detailed description of what happens after a pontiff goes to his reward.