Word: wojtyla
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...deadlock threatened, and as the Cardinals broke for Sunday-night dinner, talk turned to non-Italians?"like spontaneous combustion," says one participant. The germ of the Wojtyla candidacy began overnight with "a word here and a word there," according to another. On Monday morning's fifth ballot, Wojtyla got only a few votes, but they captured attention. Holland's Johannes Willebrands drew a respectable vote, and decided to withdraw in Wojtyla's favor. Wojtyla gained noticeably on the sixth ballot. Over lunch, Wojtyla was so visibly upset by the coalescing forces that his friends feared he might refuse the papacy...
...Cardinals prepared to concelebrate Mass in the Sistine Chapel, one of them bumped into Wyszynski in the breakfast room and said cheerfully, "There is sure to be great jubilation in your country today, don't you think?" "Yes," said Wyszynski somberly, "but there will be none in Wojtyla." Indeed, Wojtyla told the St. Peter's crowd that "I was afraid to accept this nomination," and on at least three occasions in the first 24 hours he wept openly: in the conclave, upon his election; during his first appearance on the balcony; and the following evening when he drove...
...life in Poland was hard. Wojtyla's mother died when he was nine and he was brought up by his father, who subsisted for the most part on an army sergeant's pension. Though many Cardinals?and Popes?have been trained from early youth in the hothouse atmosphere of minor seminaries, Wojtyla went to ordinary high school. He attended Mass each morning and headed a religious society, but equally strong adolescent passions were literature and the theater. He was the producer and lead actor in a school troupe that toured southeastern Poland doing Shakespeare and modern Polish plays...
...those years. However, like many a young man he had an active social life, and at least one steady girlfriend. A devout tailor interested him in the writings of St. John of the Cross, Spain's 16th century Carmelite mystic, and in 1942, the year after his father died, Wojtyla decided to begin studies for the priesthood at an illegal underground seminary...
That was risky enough, but young Wojtyla was also active in the anti-Nazi resistance. Jerzy Zubrzycki, a high school classmate of Wojtyla's who is now a sociology professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, says of those years: "He lived in danger daily of losing his life. He would move about the occupied cities taking Jewish families out of the ghettos, finding them new identities and hiding places. He saved the lives of many families threatened with execution." Meanwhile he helped organize and acted in the underground "Rhapsody Theater," whose anti-Nazi and patriotic dramas boosted Polish...