The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

Society Religion & Philosophy
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We share the grief of Roman Catholic Christians in Pakistan and all over the world
at the demise of Holy pope. :flower1:

Here is a brief lifestory and list of unique achievements :slight_smile:

Pope John Paul II
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His Holiness Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła (May 18, 1920 – April 2, 2005) was Pope from October 16, 1978 until his death. He was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first of Slavic origin in the history of the Church. He spoke out against communism, materialism, unbridled capitalism and political oppression. He stood firmly against abortion as well as contraception and homosexuality. He was recognized as not only a religious leader, but a world leader.

Early life
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Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice in southern Poland, the son of a former officer in the Austrian Habsburg army, whose name also was Karol Wojtyła. His youth was marked by intensive contacts with the then-thriving Jewish community of Kraków, and the experience of Nazi occupation, during which he worked in a quarry and a chemical factory. In his youth he was an athlete, actor, playwright, and a polyglot, possibly speaking as many as eleven languages. While in office, he spoke nine languages fluently: Polish, Slovak, Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English, in addition to having knowledge of Ecclesiastical Latin.

The first Polish Pope

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On October 16, 1978, at age 58, Wojtyła succeeded Pope John Paul I. The first non-Italian Pope since Pope Adrian VI died in 1523, he was referred to by many after his election as simply “the man from a far country.” In terms of his age, his nationality, and his rugged health, the former athlete and notable playwright broke all the papal rules. He was to become arguably the dominant twentieth-century leader of the Roman Catholic Church, eclipsing Pope Paul VI in the extent of his travels, and for some he also eclipsed the intellectual vigour of Pope Pius XII and the charisma of Pope John XXIII.

Like his predecessor, John Paul II deliberately simplified his office in order to make it a less regal institution. He chose not to use the Royal Plural, referring to himself as “I” instead of “We”. John Paul also opted for a simple inauguration ceremony instead of the formal papal coronation, and he never wore the Papal Tiara during his term in office. This was done to emphasize the servant role embodied in the title Servus Servorum Dei (Servant of the Servants of God).

One of John Paul II’s first official visits was to Poland in June 1979. There he conducted mass in Victory Square in Warsaw, an event which had a galvanising effect on the Polish Solidarity trade union.

Teachings

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A great achievement of John Paul II was the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which became an international best-seller because of its clarity of doctrine, an important solution together with his other writings, to the doctrinal confusion which happened during the Post-Vatican Crisis. This refers to the 1970s and 80s when hundreds of priests, nuns and lay faithful left the Catholic Church. John Paul II was able to turn around the decline in the 1990s.

Source : wikipedia The free encyclopedia
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Please share more details about pope, his quotations and his work for Catholics and for humanity in general.

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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

he also sat quiete when the church's coverup on paedophiles started coming up.

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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

Not exactly true.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,777803,00.html

If and when
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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

They paid lip service when the church had already paid out 1 billion law suits. Even by that time, there was not a public statement of apology in fear that the whole church would be sued for the coverup.

Not to say that our muslim brothers r less criminal in paedophilia. They have a long histoiry, that does not end with an apology or even recognition of the problem.

Tu ...
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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

Rather, We share the grief of all the Muslims in the world that died because of the Christians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and all over the world.

Transit Hotel at Heathrow
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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

*He spoke out against communism, materialism, unbridled capitalism and political oppression. He stood firmly against abortion as well as contraception and homosexuality. *

Aren't these Islamic principles as well? He did what he could to put a long term conservative stamp on the church, not caving in to modern society's more liberal philosophies. (Just as is done in Islam today)

He advocated for the poor, the unborn, the Muslims of Bosnia, the Palestinians and the Iraqis. Outside of his stance against the death penalty, his acceptance of Jesus as Christ and not following the cultural and procedural customs of Islam, he was not that different from the most pious and righteous Muslim. Except that he led the world and worked tirelessy to spread his message of peace, tolerance and conservatism around the globe.

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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

(cont.)

Assassination attempts

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On May 13, 1981, John Paul II was shot and nearly killed by Mehmet Ali AÄźca, a Turkish gunman, as he entered St Peter's Square to address an audience. AÄźca was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

Who commissioned the murder attempt remains controversial. In late March 2005 documents originating from the former Soviet states seemed to indicate that the KGB was responsible for setting up the attack (Deutsche Welle, 2005), although this is disputed. Speculation about the possible motives of the alleged Soviet conspiracy abound; perhaps the Soviets were afraid of the effect of the Polish pope on the stability of its Eastern European Soviet satellites, particularly Poland; other speculation has accused factions in the Vatican, especially the so-called "freemason" faction, opposed to Wojtyła and Opus Dei, of which Cardinal Casaroli was a leading figure

Pastoral trips

Pope John Paul II visiting a synagogue in Rome in April 1983During his reign, Pope John Paul II made more foreign trips (over 100) than all previous popes put together. In total he logged more than 1,167,000 km (725,000 miles). He consistently attracted large crowds on his travels, some among of the largest ever assembled in human history. While some of his trips (such as to the United States and the Holy Land) were to places previously visited by Pope Paul VI ("The Pilgrim Pope"), many others were to places that no pope had ever visited before. Some have argued that he has travelled farther and met more people than any human being in history.

In May, 2001, the Pontiff took a pilgrimage that would trace the steps of his namesake, Saint Paul, across the Mediterranean. Traveling from Greece to Syria to the island of Malta, during this journey he was the first Roman Catholic Pope to enter Greece for more than a thousand years, and was the first ever to visit a Mosque, in Damascus. He visited Umayyad Mosque, where John the Baptist is believed to be interred.

Relations with other religions

Relations with the Jewish people

John Paul II wrote and delivered a number of speeches on the subject of the Church's relationship with Jews, and often paid homage to the victims of the Holocaust in many nations. He was the first pope to have visited Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, in 1979. One of the few popes to have grown up in a climate of flourishing Jewish culture, one of the key components of pre-war KrakĂłw, his interest in Jewish life dated from early youth. His visit to the Synagogue of Rome was the first by a pope in the history of the Catholic Church.

In March 2000, Pope John Paul II went to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israel and touched the holiest shrine of the Jewish people, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, promoting Christian-Jewish reconciliation. The Pope has said that Jews are "our older brothers".

Given the significant difference between Catholic Christianity and Judaism, it should not be surprising that a number of points of dispute exist between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community. A number of issues supported by John Paul II caused dissension within elements of the Jewish community, including:

~How to deal with baptized Jewish children during World War II who were never returned to their Jewish roots

~The beatification of Pope Pius XII, whom many Jewish groups believed did not act correctly during the Holocaust.

~The opening of World War II era Vatican archives

~The beatification of Jews who were converted as infants to Catholicism
Vatican positions on Israeli policy

~The Pope John Paul saw all abortion as murder, while for reasons endangering health, Jews view some abortions as permissible.

Nonetheless, the number of issues that divide Jewish groups and the Vatican have dropped significantly during the last forty years.

la la lala
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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

Apologies

*On October 31, 1992, he apologized for the persecution of the Italian philosopher Galileo Galilei in the trial by the Roman Catholic Church in 1633. *

*On August 9, 1993, he apologized for Catholic involvement with the African slave trade. *
*In May, 1995, in the Czech Republic, he begged forgiveness for the Church's role in stake burnings and the religious wars that followed the Protestant Reformation. *

*On July 10, 1995, he released a letter to "every woman" to apologize for the Church's stance against women's rights and for the historical denigration of women. *

*On March 16, 1998, he apologized for the inactivity and silence of Roman Catholics during the Holocaust. *

*On December 18, 1999, he apologized for the execution of Jan Hus in 1415. *

*During a public Mass of Pardons on March 12, 2000, he asked forgiveness for the sins of Catholics throughout the ages for violating "the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and shown contempt for their cultures and religious traditions." *

*On May 4, 2001, he apologized to the Patriarch of Constantinople for the sins of the Crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204. *

*On November 22, 2001, he apologized, via the Internet, for missionary abuses in the past *
*against indigenous peoples of the South Pacific. *

Social and political stances

He was critical of Liberation Theology for over-emphasizing political liberation at the expense of spiritual liberation. In the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) he reasserted the Church's high value on human life and by extension its condemnation of abortion, euthanasia, and virtually all uses of capital punishment, calling them all a part of the "culture of death" that is pervasive in the modern world. His stands on warfare, capital punishment, world debt forgiveness, and poverty issues were considered politically liberal, showing that 'conservative' and 'liberal' political labels are not easily assigned to religious leaders.

The Pope, who began his papacy when the Soviets controlled his homeland, the People's Republic of Poland, as well as the rest of the Eastern Europe, was a harsh critic of communism and offered support to those fighting for change, like the Polish Solidarity movement. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once said the collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II, and this view is shared by many people of the post-Soviet states, who view him, as well as Ronald Reagan, as the heroes responsible for bringing an end to the communist tyranny. In later years, Pope has been also criticized some of the more extreme versions of corporate capitalism

In 2003, John Paul II also became a prominent critic of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He sent his "Peace Minister", PĂ­o Cardinal Laghi, to talk with US President George W. Bush to express opposition to the war. John Paul II said that it was up to the United Nations to solve the international conflict through diplomacy and that a unilateral aggression is a crime against peace and a violation of international law.

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Re: The leader of Faithful Roman Catholics

]Criticism

Despite his popularity, John Paul II had many critics. One charge sometimes leveled at the Pope was that his opposition of communism led him to support right-wing dictators. John Paul occasionally met with—and, some say, supported—dictators such as Augusto Pinochet of Chile. John Paul, however, pressed Pinochet to restore democracy and was maneuvered by Pinochet's entourage into appearing in a photograph with him. He allegedly endorsed Pío Cardinal Laghi, who critics say supported the "Dirty War" in Argentina.

Other criticism centered on his beliefs. In particular, John Paul's beliefs about gender roles and sexuality came under attack. Some feminists criticized his positions on the role of women, and gay-rights activists disagreed with his enunciation of the Church position that homosexual desires are "objectively disordered", and particular opposition to same-sex marriage.

His beliefs about contraception were particularly controversial to many people. John Paul followed traditional Catholic teaching and believed that the essential purpose of sex for a potentially fertile couple is procreation. Accordingly, he argued that using a contraceptive was an immoral act. Many people disagreed with this belief, but even some who agreed suggested that it was impractical to condemn use of condoms when sexually transmitted AIDS is spreading. A separate related but unproven claim is that John Paul's administration spread the belief that condoms do not block the spread of HIV; between these two claims, many critics have blamed him for AIDS epidemics in Africa and elsewhere

John Paul II was also sometimes criticized for the way he administered the Church; in particular, critics charged that he failed to respond quickly enough to the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

The end