Scottish Catholic Observer

Blessed John Paul II was Beatified by his successor Pope Benedict XVI on May 1, 2011, six years after his passing‬.

October 22 date was chosen as John Paul II’s feast day each year in Rome and the dioceses of Poland to coincide the date in which he was installed as Pope in 1978. It is also an optional memorial day throughout the world. The feast day observation began this year with Masses on Saturday, and comments from those closest to the late Pope, who died in 2005.

Born Karol Wojtyla (pronounced Voy-ti-wah), Blessed John Paul II’s visited his native country in 1979 and told the Pole: “Do not be afraid.” The message was a call to action that continues today in the New Evangelisation. He later visited Scotland in 1982, becoming the first modern Pope to do so.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Papal biographer George Weigel described the late Pope as ‘relentlessly curious’ with nothing ‘nostalgic’ about his personality.

“He really believed that Providence was at work in history,” Mr Weigel. “He wanted to know what was going on because that allowed him insights into how the divine will was working itself out in perhaps surprising ways at this moment in time.”

Vatican reporter John Allen praised John Paul II’s ability to communicate by recalling how he was able to put him at ease during his first personal interview. Others who also paid tribute to the late Pope this weekend included a late Polish countess, a late childhood friend whose father was the chief rabbi of Wadowice, the town where Wojtyla was born and an American cardinal who visited Auschwitz with the then Cardinal Wojtyla.

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments recently approved a request by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to add Blessed John Paul II’s feast day to the US liturgical calendar as an optional memorial and other Episcopal conferences have also marked the feast day this year.