Pope John Paul II

As choral and instrumental music, accompanied by the soaring voice of a Polish soprano, filled the flower-decorated interior of Ottawa’s Notre Dame Basilica and wafted to its sky blue, star-studded ceiling, Maria Knapik sat at one of the pews, listening with rapt attention.

In 2023, following a major television documentary claiming that St. John Paul II had covered up clerical sexual abuse when he was leading the Archdiocese of Kraków, Polish experts rejected the claim and urged that archdiocesan records be opened to allow the full context.

The late Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev lacked the bureaucratic cheek to tell Pope John Paul II to go fly a kite.

Today, Catholics and Canadians of many faiths remember a man who shaped our world. Pope John Paul II was one of the truly consequential figures of the twentieth century.

As the 20th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s death approached April 2, top world leaders and thinkers gathered here to discuss the legacy of a pope whose faith continues the drive for freedom in today’s world.

There are times when life changes dramatically. Sometimes it’s organic and expected, for example in the teenage years, midlife, older age. These transitions can be frightening in their seismic shifts, but we cannot stand still or atrophy, and grace awaits us in each stage.