ABSTRACT
John Paul II, the first non-Italian to be elected Pope for more than 400 years, was born Karol Wojtyła in Kraków, Poland, in 1920. He studied theology in an underground seminary during the Second World War and was ordained in 1946, when Poland was already under Communist rule. He was appointed Archbishop of Kraków in 1967 and made a Cardinal in 1967. After the premature death of John Paul I in 1978, he was elected as his successor. In Latin America his pontificate has been noted for its consistent opposition to Marxism in any form and particularly to the fusion of Christian and Marxist ideas known as ‘Liberation Theology’, as well as to priests (e.g. the Cardenal brothers in Nicaragua and Jean-Paul Aristide in Haiti) taking an active role in politics.
