"It is a marvelous series that should be seen and re-seen in the homes of believers and non-believers."
Review by:
Dr. Ted Baehr, Movie Guide

Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, Poland, a small town some thirty miles southwest of the ancient city of Krakow, on May 18, 1920. He was the third child and second son in a close-knit, devoutly Catholic family. He never knew his older sister, who died when she was infant. Karol's mother also died when he was just eight years old. Five years later, tragedy struck again when his older brother Edmund, an up and coming intern at the nearby hospital, contracted scarlet fever from a patient and died. They had been very close and the loss affected him deeply.

With his aging father, who was barely surviving on a small army pension, Karol moved to Krakow, where he enrolled in the university, his sights set on becoming a stage actor, all the while his spiritual life was deepening. But in September, 1940, Hitler's war machine invaded Poland. The university was closed; its faculty deported or imprisoned. All intellectual and spiritual life in Poland was suppressed. In February, 1942, his father died, leaving him totally alone in the world, and drawing him even deeper into his own spiritual journey. Eventually it led him to the priesthood and full time service to the Church, although it was against the law during the Nazi occupation.

After the war, Father Karol Wojtyla quickly rose in the Catholic Church, becoming a bishop (1958) and then archbishop of Krakow (1964), where he came to the attention of the Vatican, becoming cardinal three years later (1967). He served as a delegate to the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and had already established himself on the international stage of the Catholic Church when newly elected Pope John Paul I suddenly died after only 34 days in office. When the cardinals were summoned again, he emerged on October 22, 1978 as the new pontiff, taking the name John Paul II, in honor of his predecessor, the first non-Italian pope in more than 400 years. He was just 58 years old, the youngest pontiff in more than a hundred years.

John Paul's papacy would be marked by his influence on the fall of Communism, first in Poland, then in the Soviet Union itself. He would travel to more countries and see more people face to face than any man in history. He would champion the human right to dignity for all mankind and become the first pope to cross the Tiber River and embrace the Chief Rabbi of Rome. He would build new bridges between Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox churches, and reaffirm traditional Catholic positions on issues such as abortion, the role of women, and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. His appearances at international youth gatherings would challenge millions of young people in their walk of faith. He would appoint more than three quarters of the cardinals who would elect future popes, insuring his ideas would long outlive him. John Paul changed the face of the papacy forever. Ultimately many believe he will go down in history as John Paul The Great.

©2006 American Trademark Pictures