On his feast day, we must invoke the aid of John Paul II for ourChurch and our country, writes Joanna Bogle
He was brought up by a single parent, lost a brother while still young, and endured a savage invasion of his country and years of totalitarian rule. At the end of his teens, he had lost all of his immediate family. The universities of his country had all been closed. He had no settled home. Under wartime conditions he became a forced-labourer in a quarry.
This sounds like a recipe for a broken life. But Karol Wojtyła had been trained by his widowed father in the virtues of fortitude and patience, and in habits of faithful prayer, and had inherited a rich tradition of faith. He went on to become a priest, bishop, and one of the greatest Popes in modern times.
