St. John Paul II (1920-2005)
Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II in 1978, was born in 1920 in Wadowice, a small town about 30 miles from Krakow. Accompanied by his father (his mother had already died in April of that year), he received his First Communion at the age of 9 in his parish church, on May 29, 1929. In a letter to children, John Paul II remembers this day: "I remember as though it were yesterday when, together with the other boys and girls of my own age, I received the Eucharist for the first time …” He recalls the “purity and joy experienced in that meeting with Jesus, the One who out of love became the Redeemer of man.”
+© Public domain