John Paul the Great: A Pope Who Made History

During his near-27-year reign, John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) was known as the "people's Pope," traveling countless miles to greet both the faithful and skeptics, carrying a message of peace and Christianity to his vast audiences. While the Nazis were tyrannizing Europe, the young Wojtyla worked in a rock quarry, where he acquired a lifelong respect for the dignity of labor. In his spare time, Wojtyla hiked and enjoyed other athletic pursuits, wrote poetry, and dabbled in acting on the stage, but he increasingly felt called to the priesthood. Ordained in 1946, Wojtyla and the Catholic church faced fresh challenges after the fall of Hitler, as new Communist rulers were quick to curtail religious and civil liberties. The documentary profile John Paul the Great follows Wojtyla's path from his birth in the Polish town of Wadowice in 1920 to Rome, where in 1978's "year of three Popes," he unexpectedly ascended Saint Peter's throne to become head of the Catholic Church, serving until his death in 2005. The program devotes considerable time to John Paul's chief concerns, including his rejection of war, his insistence of the primacy of human rights and the sanctity of all life, and his exaltation of the role of women in family life. The narration mentions but doesn't dwell on John Paul's conservative side, including his refusal to consider women in the priesthood, firm denunciation of abortion, and slow response to the growing accusations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. When he became Pope, John Paul was a vigorous middle-aged man, but a 1981 assassination attempt may well have accelerated his later infirmities, which he would use as an example of bearing afflictions with Christian acceptance. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (S. Rees)