The Many Faces of John Paul II

Abstract

In this chapter, I will try to answer the question: why did this man become so important not only for me but also for many Poles of my generation, and why do I have a problem in fully understanding his vision of the Catholic Church in the public sphere, which has such an enormous impact on my life, and on the life of Polish Catholics, and even, as many claim, on the life of the entire Catholic world at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. But I am not going to write one more biography, since already, so many are available. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning some of the books dedicated to the Polish Pope in order to show the different strategies to present the long and complex pontificate and personality of Karol Wojtyła.