Pope John Paul II came into the world in the church's shadow. From the apartment where he was born in 1920, it's just a few steps across a narrow cobbled lane to the door of the modest church where Karol Wojtyla was baptized and confirmed, served as an altar boy, and confessed.
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Our photo gallery spans the pope's youth to his last days at the vatican.
Then, as now, the unassuming gray church with the onion dome dominated the center of Wadowice, a provincial outpost in the rolling farm country outside Krakow. More than 80 years later, on Aug. 18, 2002, Karol Wojtyla flew over the church steeple in a papal jet that dipped its wings as 12,000 people packed the square to wave goodbye one last time. The day before, raising thousands of yellow-and-white flags and homemade banners into the air, 2.5 million Poles gathered in Krakow to see the aging, ailing pope celebrate mass. His last trip home was a combination of national holiday and religious celebration, like Christmas and the Fourth of July rolled into one. "The pope is the incarnation of all things Polish," says Warsaw-based journalist Adam Szostkiewicz, a former Solidarity activist. "He's both a national leader and a religious leader."
From its humble beginnings, John Paul II's story closely follows the course of his nation. This deeply felt connection to his native land was one of the distinguishing characteristics of his papacy, informing his goals and, in particular, his emphasis on the relationship between national character and religion.
Wojtyla was born in 1920, the son of a deeply religious Army officer. He grew up in a small town sheltered from much of the turmoil affecting the rest of the country. In the years after World War I, Poles were fighting furiously to re-establish their nation. It was a momentous time: Not since 1795, when it was divided up by more-powerful neighbors and erased from the map of Europe in a series of partitions, had Poland been its own country.
As the nation struggled to define its identity, the Catholic Church emerged once again as the people's main source of strength. The Catholic Church had bound itself to the nation over the course of centuries. "During the years of Poland's occupation, the church had been the guardian of the nation's language, history, traditions, and culture," writes Bogdan Szajkowski in Next to God . . . Poland: Politics and Religion in Contemporary Poland. "Embedded in the national fabric, Polish Catholicism represents not only a system of religious beliefs and sacramental acts but also the embodiment of Polish cultural values and traditions."
Independence did nothing to weaken the central role of the church to daily life. The young Wojtyla, a promising student and aspiring actor, was also an altar boy at the church next to his home and an active member of Catholic youth organizations. His mother died when he was 9, and an older brother died a few years later, leaving him to be raised alone by his father.
When Wojtyla graduated from high school in 1938, the priesthood was far from his mind. He was headed for Krakow to study Polish literature at the Jagiellonian University, one of Europe's oldest. He and his father left Wadowice and moved to the medieval capital, settling into a chilly basement apartment. A year later, their world changed completely.
