The father behind the pope: How Karol Wojtyla Sr. helped shape St. John Paul II

WARSAW, Poland (OSV News) — Karol Wojtyla Sr., the father of the future St. John Paul II, raised his son alone after the death of his wife, leaving an enduring example of fatherhood rooted in faith, sacrifice and daily presence which helped shape one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

“The key influence in his life was the example of his father, and far too little is said about that,” George Weigel, biographer of John Paul and author of “Witness to Hope,” underlined.

Speaking in the documentary “I Like to Watch the Sunrise,” produced by Polish Television and the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Weigel said that the future pope’s father “was a man and a Christian of deep faith and deep personal integrity.”

“He was not afraid of suffering,” Weigel said. “There was a certain nobility in him that became an inspiration for his son throughout his life. Certainly, the depth of his faith became a foundation in shaping the man who later became John Paul II.”

Visitors who come to the Family Home of John Paul II museum in Wadowice often arrive looking for the roots of a saint and a pope. What many discover, as Father Lukasz Piórkowski, director of the museum, puts it, is “the extraordinary role played by an ordinary father.”

That influence was forged through years of loss, sacrifice and an unusually close bond between father and son.

When Emilia Wojtyla died in 1929, her youngest son, Karol, was just 9 years old. Wojtyla Sr., an officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, who retired to take care of his wife, devoted himself entirely to raising his two sons, Edmund and Karol, called Lolek by his loved ones. He never remarried. In an era when widowed fathers rarely took full responsibility for raising children on their own, Wojtyla Sr. chose to devote himself entirely to his sons.

“He was always close. Kind, gentle, patient,” Milena Kindziuk, author of biography of the pope’s parents, told OSV News. “One could actually say that he also took the place of a mother for Lolek,” Kindziuk, who is also a doctor of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, pointed out.

She said the future pope’s own words say a lot about the relationship with his father. “I consider my father an extraordinary man, and my first seminary was the home,” John Paul II once said, as Kindziuk related.

John Paul later recalled watching his father pray. “I could observe his life every day,” he wrote. “It was a strict life. He was a military man by profession, and after becoming a widower, it became even more a life of constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up at night and then find my father on his knees.” That image never left him.

The pontiff recalled his father in a conversation with French journalist André Frossard: “My years as a boy and a young man are connected above all with the figure of my father. I watched him closely. I saw how he knew how to demand things of himself.”

John Paul added: “A father who knew how to demand things of himself, in a sense no longer needed to demand them of his son. Looking at him, I learned that one must set demands for oneself and faithfully fulfill one’s duties.”

One moment has remained especially significant in memories of young Karol.

“After their mother’s death, Wojtyla Sr. took both sons, Karol and Edmund, to the Marian shrine of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and pointed them to another mother,” Kindziuk told OSV News. The gesture would leave a profound mark on the future pope, whose devotion to the Blessed Mother became one of the defining features of his spiritual life.

Kindziuk recalled that Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s longtime personal secretary, told her the pope often returned to that memory. “It must have made a powerful impression on him if he returned to it even in his final years,” she said.

According to Kindziuk, Wojtyla Sr. shaped his son not only through prayer but also through everyday life. He taught the future pontiff German, encouraged sports and mountain hiking, introduced him to Polish history and literature, and carefully supervised his education.

“When Lolek’s friends came to visit, ‘Captain Wojtyla’ would take an illustrated history book from the shelf and tell them about the heroic history of Poland,” Kindziuk said. “He would summarize Henryk Sienkiewicz’s ‘Trilogy’ or read Cyprian Kamil Norwid’s poetry aloud,” she said, recalling the iconic Polish authors of the 19th and 20th century.

Father Piórkowski said the future pope’s love of literature was nurtured at home but also shaped by the wider cultural environment of interwar Wadowice.

“That love of literature, especially of the Polish classics, was expressed not only in the fact that he read aloud, even after his sons were old enough to read on their own, but also in the way he inspired his sons to make their own discoveries,” the priest told OSV News.

Father Piórkowski said that the widowed father made a remarkable choice for his time.

“When Karol Wojtyla Sr. was left alone with his sons after the death of his wife, he completely dedicated himself to building a relationship with them,” he told OSV News. “It was not an obvious decision in those years that a man would choose to be not only a father, but also a confidant, mentor and friend.”

Wojtyla Sr. “ran the entire home on his own and asked nobody for help,” Kindziuk added. “Older residents of Wadowice said such care for the home was rarely seen.”

“When people visit the museum, they want to know what kind of man Karol Wojtyla Sr. was and how he responded to life’s hardships,” Father Piórkowski told OSV News. And those hardships were numerous. “What is moving about this family is how ordinary their daily life was,” he said. “They had real financial problems. They experienced sickness, stress, tension and death.”

The death of the future pope’s mother, Emilia, was the first blow to the Wojtyla family. Then Edmund, Lolek’s beloved older brother, died unexpectedly in 1932 after contracting scarlet fever from one of his patients while working as a young doctor. The final blow to young Karol came in February 1941.

Returning home in German Nazi-occupied Krakow, Karol found his father dead. The man who had guided him through previous giant losses was suddenly gone. At just 20 years old, Karol was left without parents, siblings, and without family life.

Yet, instead of becoming bitter, he emerged as a man known for forgiveness, compassion and trust in God. “Happy life begins with a choice,” Father Piórkowski told OSV News. “God gave us the ability to choose. Whatever happens to us, we can choose our response.”

The interest in the life of a man that shaped the future pope has grown in recent years, including within the Catholic Church.

In 2020, the Archdiocese of Kraków formally opened the diocesan phase of his beatification process, recognizing him as a servant of God. While the process is still at an early stage and no judgments about his heroic virtues have been made, the decision reflects a growing recognition of his role in shaping the spiritual formation of the pope that changed the course of history.

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