Carry O'Connor

"At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved ... I was not old enough to make my first communion when I lost my mother. My brother Edmund died from scarlet fever in a virulent epidemic at the hospital where he was starting as a doctor. After my father's death, which occurred in February 1941, I gradually became aware of my true path" Pope Jean-Paul II. Pope John Paul II is now universally considered one of the great leaders of the twentieth century for his resolute resistance to Soviet Communism, for his steadfast opposition to war, and for opening up the papacy to ordinary people. He will go down in history not only as the third longest-serving Pope, but possibly the most politically influential of all 305 popes and antipopes since St Peter. Born in Poland in 1920, his early life experiences were of intense love and intense loss: he was eight when his mother died, twelve when his older brother died of scarlet fever in the hospital where he worked as a doctor, and twenty when his severe but loving father died during the Nazi occupation. A keen footballer and skier, a gifted poet, playwright and actor, by 1944, after a near fatal accident, Wojtyla was studying for the priesthood in secret. So began a lifelong quest to understand good and evil in the human heart. What is new and unusual about ibis timely biography is the attention the author gives to the inner man. The result is a living portrait, vivid and accessible, based on scrupulous research, which dramatically tracks the personal tragedies in the Pope's life, including the assassination attempt in 1981, and the great public confrontations on the world stage, including that with Soviet Communism in his native Poland. Throughout the book O'Connor does not take sides over the big issues, but follows Wojtyla's own vision of what it means to be human. Universal Father is a revealing and profoundly moving testament.