The Mass took place in the Chapel of St. Sebastian, which contains the tomb of the Polish-born pope.
Due to coronavirus sanitary restrictions, it was a private service, but thanks to Polish media, YouTube and the VaticanNews outlet, it could be followed by the faithful in Poland and across the world.
Pope Francis was later in the day expected to deliver a special message to Poles, to be carried live by Polish public television.
In his foreword to the book St. John Paul II: 100 Years. Words and Images, which was published by the Vatican Publishing House to mark the centenary of Karol Wojtyła’s birth, Pope Francis wrote that St. John Paul II was “a great man of prayer who lived completely immersed in his time and constantly in contact with God, a sure guide for the Church in times of great change.”
Pope Francis described St. John Paul II as “a great witness of faith and mercy.”
Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, was born in Wadowice, southern Poland, on May 18, 1920. The second son of a retired army officer and a mother of Lithuanian origin, he experienced the death of his mother, brother, and father by the age of 21.
During his high school studies in Wadowice, he developed a love of the theatre and poetry. He acted in classical plays by the great Polish poets and Romantic playwrights in amateur groups.
After moving to Kraków to study at the Jagiellonian University, he joined the underground Rhapsodic Theatre.
At the age of 22, he commenced secret studies for the priesthood during the Nazi German occupation of Poland. Upon ordination in 1946, he became a parish priest and rose steadily through the Church hierarchy, eventually rising to the rank of cardinal in 1967.
He was a man of many talents, with several theatre plays and volumes of poetry to his credit. He had a love of skiing, canoeing and mountain excursions.
On October 16, 1978, at the age of 58, Karol Wojtyła was elected the first non-Italian pope in four-and-a-half centuries.
His first visit to his homeland in June 1979, at the time under communist rule, is seen as one of the key factors in the rise of the Solidarity movement and the subsequent collapse of the communist regime.
During his long pontificate, lasting 26 years, five months and 17 days, John Paul II travelled to 129 countries, issued 14 encyclicals and wrote several books which became bestsellers, including Crossing the Threshold of Faith and Roman Triptych: Meditations.
He was the first pope to pray in a synagogue, in Rome; the first to enter a mosque in an Islamic country, in Damascus; and the first to preside over a meeting of the heads of all the major world religions, at a day of prayer for peace in Assisi in 1986.
In 1981 he nearly died in an assassination attempt when a right-wing Turkish extremist, Mehmet Ali Agca, shot him at close range in St. Peter’s Square.
Other key events in his pontificate include the establishment of full diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Israel; the pope’s apology to victims of sexual abuse by priests; and his meetings with world leaders from US presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
John Paul II died on April 2, 2005. He was beatified on May 1, 2011, and declared a saint on April 27, 2014.
(mk/pk)