John Paul II
Karol Wojtyła lost his mother and brother early, worked under the German occupation in a quarry and a chemical plant, acted in an underground theatre and trained there, underground, for the priesthood. In 1978 the conclave elected him pope — the first non-Italian in four and a half centuries and the first Slav ever. Twenty-seven years of pontificate: a hundred and four journeys to more than a hundred and thirty countries, support for Solidarity, the attempt on his life in St Peter’s Square in 1981 and the conversation with his would-be killer in prison, the church’s apologies for the Inquisition and for its silence over the Holocaust, meetings with Jews and Muslims. On matters of faith and morals he gave no ground at all, and heard the reproaches for it to the end. He died in 2005 and was canonised in 2014.
He was born in Wadowice on 18 May 1920 at 17:30 Central European time; the hour is entered in the register of the parish where he was baptised.