The late Pope John Paul II was a leader to over a billion people
and countless communities worldwide. But to the Polish community,
he was more than a religious figure ““ he was also one of
their greatest native sons.
Born and raised in Poland, John Paul’s term in the Vatican
was a source of pride for Polish people around the world and in Los
Angeles. He was the first non-Italian pope to be appointed in 455
years, and his death has struck the Polish community as
particularly poignant, community members say.
“A lot of Polish people feel very connected to him
personally,” said Monika Zdunkiewicz, co-president of the
UCLA Polish-American Student Association.
Beata Sowa, a pilgrim who was at the Vatican when the pope
passed away, told the Associated Press, “I’m Polish.
For us, he was a father.”
George Gaudyn, a resident of La Habra who remembers John Paul
when he was growing up in Poland, said, “Everyone you talk
to, they feel like they lost a member of their family.”
Gaudyn remembers when the late pope stayed in his hometown of
Krakow, Poland, a place he described as a college town with several
hundred thousand residents, where John Paul used to be a
bishop.
Gaudyn described how college students would wait outside of the
pope’s apartment sometimes until 2 or 3 a.m., waiting for the
pope to come to his window and speak to them.
“They would almost be having a dialogue,” he
remembered.
Born as Karol Wojtyla in Wadowice, Poland, the late pope spent
much of the first 58 years of his life in his native country. He
attended Jagiellonian University in Krakow before German troops
invaded the country in 1939 and shut the university down.
During World War II he joined an underground movement that
published and performed plays with nationalistic overtones in the
face of the Nazi occupation.
After earning a doctorate degree from a religious university in
Rome in 1948, Wojtyla returned to Poland as a parish priest. He
taught moral theology in Krakow for a time, and became a professor
of ethics at Catholic University in Lublin in 1954.
In 1959, Wojtyla was ordained auxiliary bishop of Krakow, and
was appointed to archbishop of the city five years later. Gaudyn
was confirmed by Wojtyla when he was 16 years old and growing up in
Krakow, though Gaudyn said he was too young at the time to remember
many details of the man who would become the pope.
In 1967, Wojtyla became a cardinal, where he developed a name
for himself as a leader who resisted communism and advocated the
integration of traditional church values into the modern world.
In 1978, after the abrupt death of pope John Paul I, Wojtyla was
elected to the papacy and became pope John Paul II.
Gaudyn remembered that because of communist control of the
media, it took several hours for the news of his election to spread
through Poland via radio reports and word-of-mouth. “When
people found out, it was a very spontaneous reaction, almost like
today, when people found out he was dead,” Gaudyn said.
Zdunkiewicz said when the Polish people heard that John Paul was
appointed to the papacy, “It was definitely pride, but
I’d say more people felt this huge respect, a huge connection
with the pope. I don’t even know how to describe
it.”
Now that the pope has passed away, Zdunkiewicz said many Polish
people in particular feel a strong sense of duty to carry on his
legacy.
“Especially since most Polish people are Catholics, he
wants us to continue the mission that he set about doing,”
she said.
“In a way, I guess we have an important role as well. He
was our representative and we are the Polish community, and we
should continue with his example.”