title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 18 October 1990, when promulgating the "Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches", John Paul II stated


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1998, John Paul II issued the motu proprio "Ad tuendam fidem", which amended two canons (750 and 1371) of the 1983 Code of Canon Law and two canons (598 and 1436) of the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 25 January 1983, with the Apostolic Constitution "Sacrae disciplinae leges" John Paul II promulgated the current Code of Canon Law for all members of the Catholic Church who belonged to the Latin Church. It entered into force the first Sunday of the following Advent, which was 27 November 1983. John Paul II described the new Code as "the last document of Vatican II". Edward N. Peters has referred to the 1983 Code as the "Johanno-Pauline Code" ("Johannes Paulus" is Latin for "John Paul"), paralleling the "Pio-Benedictine" 1917 code that it replaced.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II promulgated the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO) on 18 October 1990, by the document "Sacri Canones". The CCEO came into force of law on 1 October 1991. It is the codification of the common portions of the Canon Law for the 23 of the 24 "sui iuris" churches in the Catholic Church that are the Eastern Catholic Churches. It is divided into 30 titles and has a total of 1540 canons.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II promulgated the apostolic constitution "Pastor bonus" on 28 June 1988. It instituted a number of reforms in the process of running the Roman Curia. "Pastor bonus" laid out in considerable detail the organisation of the Roman Curia, specifying precisely the names and composition of each dicastery, and enumerating the competencies of each dicastery. It replaced the previous special law, "Regimini Ecclesiæ universæ", which was promulgated by Paul VI in 1967.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 11 October 1992, in his apostolic constitution "Fidei depositum" ("The Deposit of Faith"), John Paul ordered the publication of the "Catechism of the Catholic Church".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: He declared the publication to be "a sure norm for teaching the faith … a sure and authentic reference text for teaching Catholic doctrine and particularly for preparing local catechisms". It was "meant to encourage and assist in the writing of new local catechisms [both applicable and faithful]" rather than replacing them.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II has been credited with inspiring political change that not only led to the collapse of Communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Eastern Europe, but also in many countries ruled by dictators. In the words of Joaquín Navarro-Valls, John Paul II's press secretary:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The single fact of John Paul II's election in 1978 changed everything. In Poland, everything began. Not in East Germany or Czechoslovakia. Then the whole thing spread. Why in 1980 did they lead the way in Gdansk? Why did they decide, now or never? Only because there was a Polish pope. He was in Chile and Pinochet was out. He was in Haiti and Duvalier was out. He was in the Philippines and Marcos was out. On many of those occasions, people would come here to the Vatican thanking the Holy Father for changing things.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Before John Paul II's pilgrimage to Latin America, during a meeting with reporters, he criticised Augusto Pinochet's regime as "dictatorial". In the words of "The New York Times", he used "unusually strong language" to criticise Pinochet and asserted to journalists that the church in Chile must not only pray, but actively fight for the restoration of democracy in Chile.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: During his visit to Chile in 1987, John Paul II asked Chile's 31 Catholic bishops to campaign for free elections in the country. According to George Weigel and Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, he encouraged Pinochet to accept a democratic opening of the regime, and may even have called for his resignation. According to Monsignor Sławomir Oder, the postulator of John Paul II's beatification cause, John Paul's words to Pinochet had a profound impact on the Chilean dictator. The pope confided to a friend: "I received a letter from Pinochet in which he told me that as a Catholic he had listened to my words, he had accepted them, and he had decided to begin the process to change the leadership of his country."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: During his visit to Chile, John Paul II supported the Vicariate of Solidarity, the church-led pro-democracy, anti-Pinochet organisation. John Paul II visited the Vicariate of Solidarity's offices, spoke with its workers, and "called upon them to continue their work, emphasizing that the Gospel consistently urges respect for human rights". While in Chile, John Paul II made gestures of public support of Chile's anti-Pinochet democratic opposition. For instance, he hugged and kissed Carmen Gloria Quintana, a young student who had been nearly burned to death by Chilean police and told her that "We must pray for peace and justice in Chile." Later, he met with several opposition groups, including those that had been declared illegal by Pinochet's government. The opposition praised John Paul II for denouncing Pinochet as a "dictator", for many members of Chile's opposition were persecuted for much milder statements. Bishop Carlos Camus, one of the harshest critics of Pinochet's dictatorship within the Chilean Church, praised John Paul II's stance during the papal visit: "I am quite moved, because our pastor supports us totally. Never again will anyone be able to say that we are interfering in politics when we defend human dignity." He added: "No country the Pope has visited has remained the same after his departure. The Pope's visit is a mission, an extraordinary social catechism, and his stay here will be a watershed in Chilean history."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Some have erroneously accused John Paul II of affirming Pinochet's regime by appearing with the Chilean ruler in public. However, Cardinal Roberto Tucci, the organiser of John Paul II's visits, revealed that Pinochet tricked the pontiff by telling him he would take him to his living room, while in reality he took him to his balcony. Tucci says that the pontiff was "furious".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II visited Haiti on 9 March 1983, when the country was ruled by Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. He bluntly criticised the poverty of the country, directly addressing Baby Doc and his wife, Michèle Bennett in front of a large crowd of Haitians:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Yours is a beautiful country, rich in human resources, but Christians cannot be unaware of the injustice, the excessive inequality, the degradation of the quality of life, the misery, the hunger, the fear suffered by the majority of the people.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II spoke in French and occasionally in Creole, and in the homily outlined the basic human rights that most Haitians lacked: "the opportunity to eat enough, to be cared for when ill, to find housing, to study, to overcome illiteracy, to find worthwhile and properly paid work; all that provides a truly human life for men and women, for young and old." Following John Paul II's pilgrimage, the Haitian opposition to Duvalier frequently reproduced and quoted the pope's message. Shortly before leaving Haiti, John Paul II called for social change in Haiti by saying: "Lift up your heads, be conscious of your dignity of men created in God's image..."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II's visit inspired massive protests against the Duvalier dictatorship. In response to the visit, 860 Catholic priests and church workers signed a statement committing the church to work on behalf of the poor. In 1986, Duvalier was deposed in an uprising.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The collapse of the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay was linked, among other things, to John Paul II's visit to the South American country in May 1988. Since Stroessner's taking power through a coup d'état in 1954, Paraguay's bishops increasingly criticised the regime for human rights abuses, rigged elections, and the country's feudal economy. During his private meeting with Stroessner, John Paul II told the dictator:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Politics has a fundamental ethical dimension because it is first and foremost a service to man. The Church can and must remind men—and in particular those who govern—of their ethical duties for the good of the whole of society. The Church cannot be isolated inside its temples just as men's consciences cannot be isolated from God.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Later, during a Mass, John Paul II criticised the regime for impoverishing the peasants and the unemployed, saying that the government must give people greater access to the land. Although Stroessner tried to prevent him from doing so, John Paul II met opposition leaders in the one-party state.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: By the late 1970s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been predicted by some observers. John Paul II has been credited with being instrumental in bringing down Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, by being the spiritual inspiration behind its downfall and catalyst for "a peaceful revolution" in Poland. Lech Wałęsa, the founder of Solidarity and the first post-Communist President of Poland, credited John Paul II with giving Poles the courage to demand change. According to Wałęsa, "Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of Communism. In Warsaw, in 1979, he simply said: 'Do not be afraid', and later prayed: 'Let your Spirit descend and change the image of the land … this land'." It has also been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank covertly funded Solidarity.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1984, the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration saw opened diplomatic relations with the Vatican for the first time since 1870. In sharp contrast to the long history of strong domestic opposition, this time there was very little opposition from Congress, the courts, and Protestant groups. Relations between Reagan and John Paul II were close, especially because of their shared anti-communism and keen interest in forcing the Soviets out of Poland. Reagan's correspondence with the pope reveals "a continuous scurrying to shore up Vatican support for U.S. policies. Perhaps most surprisingly, the papers show that, as late as 1984, the pope did not believe the Communist Polish government could be changed."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: No one can prove conclusively that he was a primary cause of the end of communism. However, the major figures on all sides—not just Lech Wałęsa, the Polish Solidarity leader, but also Solidarity's arch-opponent, General Wojciech Jaruzelski; not just the former American president George Bush Senior but also the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev—now agree that he was. I would argue the historical case in three steps: without the Polish Pope, no Solidarity revolution in Poland in 1980; without Solidarity, no dramatic change in Soviet policy towards eastern Europe under Gorbachev; without that change, no velvet revolutions in 1989.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In December 1989, John Paul II met with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Vatican and each expressed his respect and admiration for the other. Gorbachev once said: "The collapse of the Iron Curtain would have been impossible without John Paul II." On John Paul II's death, Mikhail Gorbachev said: "Pope John Paul II's devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 4 June 2004, US President George W. Bush presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour, to John Paul II during a ceremony at the Apostolic Palace. The president read the citation that accompanied the medal, which recognised "this son of Poland" whose "principled stand for peace and freedom has inspired millions and helped to topple communism and tyranny".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: After receiving the award, John Paul II said, "May the desire for freedom, peace, a more humane world symbolised by this medal inspire men and women of goodwill in every time and place."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1983, Poland's Communist government unsuccessfully tried to humiliate John Paul II by falsely saying he had fathered an illegitimate child. Section D of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), the security service, had an action named "Triangolo" to carry out criminal operations against the Catholic Church; the operation encompassed all Polish hostile actions against the pope. Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, one of the murderers of beatified Jerzy Popiełuszko, was the leader of section D. They drugged Irena Kinaszewska, the secretary of the Kraków-based weekly Catholic magazine "Tygodnik Powszechny" where Karol Wojtyła had worked, and unsuccessfully attempted to make her admit to having had sexual relations with him.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The SB then attempted to compromise Kraków priest Andrzej Bardecki, an editor of "Tygodnik Powszechny" and one of the closest friends of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła before he became pope, by planting false memoirs in his dwelling, but Piotrowski was exposed and the forgeries were found and destroyed before the SB could "discover" them.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II travelled extensively and met with believers from many divergent faiths. At the World Day of Prayer for Peace, held in Assisi on 27 October 1986, more than 120 representatives of different religions and denominations spent a day of fasting and prayer.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Although the contact between the Holy See and many Christians of the East had never totally ceased, communion had been interrupted since ancient times. Again, the history of conflict in Central Europe was a complex part of John Paul II's personal cultural heritage which made him all the more determined to react so as to attempt to overcome abiding difficulties, given that relatively speaking the Holy See and the non-Catholic Eastern Churches are close in many points of faith.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In May 1999, John Paul II visited Romania on the invitation from Patriarch Teoctist Arăpaşu of the Romanian Orthodox Church. This was the first time a pope had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054. On his arrival, the Patriarch and the President of Romania, Emil Constantinescu, greeted the pope. The Patriarch stated, "The second millennium of Christian history began with a painful wounding of the unity of the Church; the end of this millennium has seen a real commitment to restoring Christian unity."On 23–27 June 2001, John Paul II visited Ukraine, another heavily Orthodox nation, at the invitation of the President of Ukraine and bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Pope spoke to leaders of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, pleading for "open, tolerant and honest dialogue". About 200 thousand people attended the liturgies celebrated by the Pope in Kyiv, and the liturgy in Lviv gathered nearly one and a half million faithful. John Paul II said that an end to the Great Schism was one of his fondest wishes. Healing divisions between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches regarding Latin and Byzantine traditions was clearly of great personal interest. For many years, John Paul II sought to facilitate dialogue and unity stating as early as 1988 in "Euntes in mundum", "Europe has two lungs, it will never breathe easily until it uses both of them."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: During his 2001 travels, John Paul II became the first pope to visit Greece in 1291 years. In Athens, the pope met with Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the Church of Greece. After a private 30-minute meeting, the two spoke publicly. Christodoulos read a list of "13 offences" of the Catholic Church against the Eastern Orthodox Church since the Great Schism, including the pillaging of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204, and bemoaned the lack of apology from the Catholic Church, saying "Until now, there has not been heard a single request for pardon" for the "maniacal crusaders of the 13th century".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The pope responded by saying "For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us forgiveness", to which Christodoulos immediately applauded. John Paul II said that the sacking of Constantinople was a source of "profound regret" for Catholics. Later John Paul II and Christodoulos met on a spot where Paul of Tarsus had once preached to Athenian Christians. They issued a 'common declaration', saying "We shall do everything in our power, so that the Christian roots of Europe and its Christian soul may be preserved... We condemn all recourse to violence, proselytism and fanaticism, in the name of religion." The two leaders then said the Lord's Prayer together, breaking an Orthodox taboo against praying with Catholics.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The pope had said throughout his pontificate that one of his greatest dreams was to visit Russia, but this never occurred. He attempted to solve the problems that had arisen over centuries between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, and in 2004 gave them a 1730 copy of the lost icon of Our Lady of Kazan.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was determined to maintain good relations with the Armenian Apostolic Church, whose separation from the Holy See dated to Christian antiquity. In 1996, he brought the Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church closer by agreeing with Armenian Archbishop Karekin II on Christ's nature. During an audience in 2000, John Paul II and Karekin II, by then the Catholicos of All Armenians, issued a joint statement condemning the Armenian genocide. Meanwhile, the pope gave Karekin the relics of St. Gregory the Illuminator, the first head of the Armenian Church that had been kept in Naples, Italy, for 500 years. In September 2001, John Paul II went on a three-day pilgrimage to Armenia to take part in an ecumenical celebration with Karekin II in the newly consecrated St. Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral in Yerevan. The two Church leaders signed a declaration remembering the victims of the Armenian genocide.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Like his successors after him, John Paul II took a large number of initiatives to promote friendly relations, practical humanitarian cooperation and theological dialogue with a range of Protestant bodies. Of these the first in importance had to be with Lutheranism, given that the contention with Martin Luther and his followers was the most significant historical split in Western Christianity.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: From 15 to 19 November 1980, John Paul II visited West Germany on his first trip to a country with a large Lutheran Protestant population. In Mainz, he met with leaders of the Evangelical Church in Germany, and with representatives of other Christian denominations.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 11 December 1983, John Paul II participated in an ecumenical service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rome, the first papal visit ever to a Lutheran church. The visit took place 500 years after the birth of the German Martin Luther, who was first an Augustinian friar and subsequently a leading Protestant Reformer.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In his apostolic pilgrimage to Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden of June 1989, John Paul II became the first pope to visit countries with Lutheran majorities. In addition to celebrating Mass with Catholic believers, he participated in ecumenical services at places that had been Catholic shrines before the Reformation: Nidaros Cathedral in Norway; near St. Olav's Church at Thingvellir in Iceland; Turku Cathedral in Finland; Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark; and Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 31 October 1999, (the 482nd anniversary of Reformation Day, Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses), representatives of the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, as a gesture of unity. The signing was a fruit of a theological dialogue that had been going on between the Lutheran World Federation and the Holy See since 1965.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II had good relations with the Church of England, as also with other parts of the Anglican Communion. He was the first reigning pope to travel to the United Kingdom, in 1982, where he met Queen Elizabeth II, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He preached in Canterbury Cathedral and received Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said that he was disappointed by the Church of England's decision to ordain women and saw it as a step away from unity between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1980, John Paul II issued a Pastoral Provision allowing married former Episcopal priests to become Catholic priests, and for the acceptance of former Episcopal Church parishes into the Catholic Church. He allowed the creation of the a form of the Roman Rite, known informally by some as the Anglican Use, which incorporates selected elements of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer that are compatible with Catholic doctrine. He permitted Archbishop Patrick Flores of San Antonio, Texas, to establish Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church, together as the inaugural parish for the use of this hybrid liturgy.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Relations between Catholicism and Judaism improved dramatically during the pontificate of John Paul II. He spoke frequently about the Catholic Church's relationship with the Jewish faith. It is likely that his attitude was shaped in part by his own experience of the terrible fate of the Jews in Poland and the rest of Central Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1979, John Paul II visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where many of his compatriots (mostly Jews) had perished during the German occupation there in World War II, the first pope to do so. In 1998, he issued "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah", which outlined his thinking on the Holocaust. He became the first pope known to have made an official papal visit to a synagogue, when he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on 13 April 1986.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 30 December 1993, John Paul II established formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel, acknowledging its centrality in Jewish life and faith.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 7 April 1994, he hosted the "Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocaust". It was the first-ever Vatican event dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews murdered in World War II. This concert, which was conceived and conducted by US conductor Gilbert Levine, was attended by the Chief Rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff, the President of Italy Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, and survivors of the Holocaust from around the world. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, actor Richard Dreyfuss and cellist Lynn Harrell performed on this occasion under Levine's direction. On the morning of the concert, the pope received the attending members of survivor community in a special audience in the Apostolic Palace.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In March 2000, John Paul II visited Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial in Israel, and later made history by touching one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, placing a letter inside it (in which he prayed for forgiveness for the actions against Jews). In part of his address he said: "I assure the Jewish people the Catholic Church … is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place," and he added that there were "no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust."Israeli cabinet minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, who hosted the pope's visit, said he was "very moved" by the pope's gesture.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In October 2003, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a statement congratulating John Paul II on entering the 25th year of his papacy. In January 2005, John Paul II became the first pope known to receive a priestly blessing from a rabbi, when Rabbis Benjamin Blech, Barry Dov Schwartz, and Jack Bemporad visited the Pontiff at Clementine Hall in the Apostolic Palace.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Immediately after John Paul II's death, the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that he had revolutionised Catholic-Jewish relations, saying, "more change for the better took place in his 27-year Papacy than in the nearly 2,000 years before." In another statement issued by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, Director Dr Colin Rubenstein said, "The Pope will be remembered for his inspiring spiritual leadership in the cause of freedom and humanity. He achieved far more in terms of transforming relations with both the Jewish people and the State of Israel than any other figure in the history of the Catholic Church."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In an interview with the Polish Press Agency, Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, said that never in history did anyone do as much for Christian-Jewish dialogue as John Paul II, adding that many Jews had a greater respect for the late pope than for some rabbis. Schudrich praised John Paul II for condemning anti-Semitism as a sin, which no previous pope had done.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On John Paul II's beatification the Chief Rabbi of Rome Riccardo Di Segni said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" that "John Paul II was revolutionary because he tore down a thousand-year wall of Catholic distrust of the Jewish world." Meanwhile, Elio Toaff, the former Chief Rabbi of Rome, said that:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Remembrance of the Pope Karol Wojtyła will remain strong in the collective Jewish memory because of his appeals to fraternity and the spirit of tolerance, which excludes all violence. In the stormy history of relations between Roman popes and Jews in the ghetto in which they were closed for over three centuries in humiliating circumstances, John Paul II is a bright figure in his uniqueness. In relations between our two great religions in the new century that was stained with bloody wars and the plague of racism, the heritage of John Paul II remains one of the few spiritual islands guaranteeing survival and human progress.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In his book-length interview "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" with the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori published in 1995, John Paul II draws parallels between animism and Christianity. He says:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: … it would be helpful to recall … the animist religions which stress ancestor worship. It seems that those who practice them are particularly close to Christianity, and among them, the Church's missionaries also find it easier to speak a common language. Is there, perhaps, in this veneration of ancestors a kind of preparation for the Christian faith in the Communion of Saints, in which all believers—whether living or dead—form a single community, a single body? […] There is nothing strange, then, that the African and Asian animists would become believers in Christ more easily than followers of the great religions of the Far East.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1985, the pope visited the African country of Togo, where 60 per cent of the population espouses animist beliefs. To honour the pope, animist religious leaders met him at a Catholic Marian shrine in the forest, much to the pontiff's delight. John Paul II proceeded to call for the need for religious tolerance, praised nature, and emphasised common elements between animism and Christianity, saying:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Nature, exuberant and splendid in this area of forests and lakes, impregnates spirits and hearts with its mystery and orients them spontaneously toward the mystery of He who is the author of life. It is this religious sentiment that animates you and one can say that animates all of your compatriots.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: During the investiture of President Thomas Boni Yayi of Benin as a titled Yoruba chieftain on 20 December 2008, the reigning Ooni of Ile-Ife, Nigeria, Olubuse II, referred to John Paul II as a previous recipient of the same royal honour.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, visited John Paul II eight times. The two men held many similar views and understood similar plights, both coming from nations affected by Communism and both serving as heads of major religious bodies. As Archbishop of Kraków, long before the 14th Dalai Lama was a world-famous figure, Wojtyła held special Masses to pray for the Tibetan people's non-violent struggle for freedom from Maoist China. During his 1995 visit to Sri Lanka, a country where a majority of the population adheres to Theravada Buddhism, John Paul II expressed his admiration for Buddhism:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In particular I express my highest regard for the followers of Buddhism, the majority religion in Sri Lanka, with its … four great values of … loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity; with its ten transcendental virtues and the joys of the Sangha expressed so beautifully in the Theragathas. I ardently hope that my visit will serve to strengthen the goodwill between us, and that it will reassure everyone of the Catholic Church's desire for interreligious dialogue and cooperation in building a more just and fraternal world. To everyone I extend the hand of friendship, recalling the splendid words of the Dhammapada: "Better than a thousand useless words is one single word that gives peace..."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: He officially supported the project of the Great Mosque in Rome and participated in the inauguration in 1995.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 6 May 2001, he became the first Catholic pope to enter and pray in a mosque, namely the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria. Respectfully removing his shoes, he entered the former Byzantine-era Christian church dedicated to John the Baptist, who is also revered as a prophet of Islam. He gave a speech including the statement:"For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and to offer each other forgiveness." He also kissed the Qur'an while in Syria, an act that made him popular among Muslims but disturbed many Catholics.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 2004, John Paul II hosted the "Papal Concert of Reconciliation", which brought together leaders of Islam with leaders of the Jewish community and of the Catholic Church at the Vatican for a concert by the Kraków Philharmonic Choir from Poland, the London Philharmonic Choir from the United Kingdom, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from the United States, and the Ankara State Polyphonic Choir of Turkey. The event was conceived and conducted by Sir Gilbert Levine, KCSG and was broadcast throughout the world.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II oversaw the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which makes a special provision for Muslims; therein, it is written, "together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1995, John Paul II held a meeting with 21 Jains, organised by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. He praised Mohandas Gandhi for his "unshakeable faith in God", assured the Jains that the Catholic Church will continue to engage in dialogue with their religion and spoke of the common need to aid the poor. The Jain leaders were impressed with the pope's "transparency and simplicity", and the meeting received much attention in the Gujarat state in western India, home to many Jains.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: As he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience on 13 May 1981, John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, an expert Turkish gunman who was a member of the militant fascist group Grey Wolves. The assassin used a Browning 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, shooting the pope in the abdomen and perforating his colon and small intestine multiple times. John Paul II was rushed into the Vatican complex and then to the Gemelli Hospital. On the way to the hospital, he lost consciousness. Even though the two bullets missed his superior mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta, he lost nearly three-quarters of his blood. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his wounds. Surgeons performed a colostomy, temporarily rerouting the upper part of the large intestine to let the damaged lower part heal. When he briefly regained consciousness before being operated on, he instructed the doctors not to remove his Brown Scapular during the operation. One of the few people allowed in to see him at the Gemelli Clinic was one of his closest friends philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, who arrived on Saturday 16 May and kept him company while he recovered from emergency surgery. The pope later stated that the Blessed Virgin Mary helped keep him alive throughout his ordeal.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Could I forget that the event in St. Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fátima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Ağca was caught and restrained by a nun and other bystanders until police arrived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days after Christmas in 1983, John Paul II visited Ağca in prison. John Paul II and Ağca spoke privately for about twenty minutes. John Paul II said, "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Numerous other theories were advanced to explain the assassination attempt, some of them controversial. One such theory, advanced by Michael Ledeen and heavily pushed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency at the time of the assassination but never substantiated by evidence, was that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt on John Paul II's life in retaliation for the pope's support of Solidarity, the Catholic, pro-democratic Polish workers' movement. This theory was supported by the 2006 Mitrokhin Commission, set up by Silvio Berlusconi and headed by "Forza Italia" senator Paolo Guzzanti, which alleged that Communist Bulgarian security departments were utilised to prevent the Soviet Union's role from being uncovered, and concluded that Soviet military intelligence "(Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije)", not the KGB, were responsible. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Boris Labusov called the accusation "absurd". The pope declared during a May 2002 visit to Bulgaria that the country's Soviet-bloc-era leadership had nothing to do with the assassination attempt. However, his secretary, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, alleged in his book "A Life with Karol", that the pope was convinced privately that the former Soviet Union was behind the attack. It was later discovered that many of John Paul II's aides had foreign-government attachments; Bulgaria and Russia disputed the Italian commission's conclusions, pointing out that the pope had publicly denied the Bulgarian connection.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: A second assassination attempt was made on 12 May 1982, just a day before the anniversary of the first attempt on his life, in Fátima, Portugal, when a man tried to stab John Paul II with a bayonet. He was stopped by security guards. Stanisław Dziwisz later said that John Paul II had been injured during the attempt but managed to hide a non-life-threatening wound. The assailant, a traditionalist Catholic Spanish priest named Juan María Fernández y Krohn, had been ordained as a priest by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of the Society of St. Pius X and was opposed to the changes made by the Second Vatican Council, saying that the pope was an agent of Communist Moscow and of the Marxist Eastern Bloc. Fernández y Krohn subsequently left the priesthood and served three years of a six-year sentence. The ex-priest was treated for mental illness and then expelled from Portugal to become a solicitor in Belgium.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The Al-Qaeda-funded Bojinka plot planned to kill John Paul II during a visit to the Philippines during World Youth Day 1995 celebrations. On 15 January 1995 a suicide bomber was planning to dress as a priest and detonate a bomb when the pope passed in his motorcade on his way to the San Carlos Seminary in Makati. The assassination was supposed to divert attention from the next phase of the operation. However, a chemical fire inadvertently started by the cell alerted police to their whereabouts, and all were arrested a week before the pope's visit, and confessed to the plot.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 2009 John Koehler, a journalist and former army intelligence officer, published "Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union's Cold War Against the Catholic Church". Mining mostly East German and Polish secret police archives, Koehler claimed the assassination attempts were "KGB-backed" and provided details. During John Paul II's papacy there were many clerics within the Vatican who, on nomination, declined to be ordained, and then mysteriously left the church, leading to wide speculation that they were, in reality, KGB agents.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II apologised to many groups that had suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church through the years. Before becoming pope he had been a prominent editor and supporter of initiatives such as the Letter of Reconciliation of the Polish Bishops to the German Bishops from 1965. As pope, he officially made public apologies for over 100 wrongdoings, including:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The Great Jubilee of the year 2000 included a day of Prayer for Forgiveness of the Sins of the Church on 12 March 2000.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 20 November 2001, from a laptop in the Vatican, John Paul II sent his first e-mail apologising for the Catholic sex abuse cases, the church-backed "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children in Australia, and to China for the behaviour of Catholic missionaries in colonial times.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: When he became pope in 1978 at the age of 58, John Paul II was an avid sportsman. He was extremely healthy and active, jogging in the Vatican gardens, weight training, swimming, and hiking in the mountains. He was fond of football. The media contrasted the new pope's athleticism and trim figure to the poor health of John Paul I and Paul VI, the portliness of John XXIII and the constant claims of ailments of Pius XII. The only modern pope with a fitness regimen had been Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), who was an avid mountaineer. An "Irish Independent" article in the 1980s labelled John Paul II the "keep-fit pope".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: However, after over twenty-six years as pope, two assassination attempts, one of which injured him severely, and a number of cancer scares, John Paul's physical health declined. In 2001 he was diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's disease. International observers had suspected this for some time, but it was only publicly acknowledged by the Vatican in 2003. Despite difficulty speaking more than a few sentences at a time, trouble hearing, and severe osteoarthrosis, he continued to tour the world although rarely walking in public.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was hospitalised with breathing problems caused by a bout of influenza on 1 February 2005. He left the hospital on 10 February, but was subsequently hospitalised again with breathing problems two weeks later and underwent a tracheotomy.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 31 March 2005, following a urinary tract infection, he developed septic shock, a form of infection with a high fever and low blood pressure, but was not hospitalised. Instead, he was monitored by a team of consultants at his private residence. This was taken as an indication by the pope, and those close to him, that he was nearing death; it would have been in accordance with his wishes to die in the Vatican. Later that day, Vatican sources announced that John Paul II had been given the Anointing of the Sick by his friend and secretary Stanisław Dziwisz. The day before his death, one of his closest personal friends, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka visited him at his bedside. During the final days of the pope's life, the lights were kept burning through the night where he lay in the Papal apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. Tens of thousands of people assembled and held vigil in St. Peter's Square and the surrounding streets for two days. Upon hearing of this, the dying pope was said to have stated: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On Saturday, 2 April 2005, at approximately 15:30 CEST, John Paul II spoke his final words in Polish, ""Pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca"" ("Allow me to depart to the house of the Father"), to his aides, and fell into a coma about four hours later. The Mass of the vigil of the Second Sunday of Easter commemorating the canonisation of Maria Faustina on 30 April 2000, had just been celebrated at his bedside, presided over by Stanisław Dziwisz and two Polish associates. Present at the bedside was a cardinal Lubomyr Husar from Ukraine, who served as a priest with John Paul in Poland, along with Polish nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, who ran the papal household. John Paul II died in his private apartment at 21:37 CEST (19:37 UTC) of heart failure from profound hypotension and complete circulatory collapse from septic shock, 46 days before his 85th birthday. His death was verified when an electrocardiogram that ran for 20 minutes showed a flatline.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: He had no close family by the time of his death; his feelings are reflected in his words written in 2000 at the end of his Last Will and Testament. Stanisław Dziwisz later said he had not burned the pontiff's personal notes despite the request being part of the will.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The death of the pontiff set in motion rituals and traditions dating back to medieval times. The Rite of Visitation took place from 4 April 2005 to 7 April 2005 at St. Peter's Basilica. John Paul II's testament, published on 7 April 2005, revealed that the pontiff contemplated being buried in his native Poland but left the final decision to The College of Cardinals, which in passing, preferred burial beneath St. Peter's Basilica, honouring the pontiff's request to be placed "in bare earth".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The Requiem Mass held on 8 April 2005 was said to have set world records both for attendance and number of heads of state present at a funeral. "(See: List of Dignitaries.)" It was the single largest gathering of heads of state up to that time, surpassing the funerals of Winston Churchill (1965) and Josip Broz Tito (1980). Four kings, five queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religions attended. An estimated four million mourners gathered in and around Vatican City. Between 250,000 and 300,000 watched the event from within the Vatican's walls. In a historical rarity, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox leaders, as well as representatives and heads from Judaism, Islam, Druze and Buddhism, offered their own memorials and prayers as a way of sympathising with the grief of Catholics.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, conducted the ceremony. John Paul II was interred in the grottoes under the basilica, the Tomb of the Popes. He was lowered into a tomb created in the same alcove previously occupied by the remains of John XXIII. The alcove had been empty since John XXIII's remains had been moved into the main body of the basilica after his beatification.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Upon the death of John Paul II, a number of clergy at the Vatican and laymen began referring to the late pontiff as "John Paul the Great" — in theory only the fourth pope to be so acclaimed. Cardinal Angelo Sodano specifically referred to John Paul as "the Great" in his published written homily for the pope's funeral Mass of Repose. The South African Catholic newspaper "The Southern Cross" has referred to him in print as "John Paul II the Great". Some Catholic educational institutions in the US have additionally changed their names to incorporate "the Great", including John Paul the Great Catholic University and schools called some variant of John Paul the Great High School.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Scholars of canon law say that there is no official process for declaring a pope "Great"; the title simply establishes itself through popular and continued usage, as was the case with celebrated secular leaders (for example, Alexander III of Macedon became popularly known as Alexander the Great). The three popes who today commonly are known as "Great" are Leo I, who reigned from 440–461 and persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw from Rome; Gregory I, 590–604, after whom the Gregorian Chant is named; and Pope Nicholas I, 858–867, who consolidated the Catholic Church in the Western world in the Middle Ages.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, has not used the term directly in public speeches, but has made oblique references to "the great Pope John Paul II" in his first address from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, at the 20th World Youth Day in Germany 2005 when he said in Polish: "As the great Pope John Paul II would say: Keep the flame of faith alive in your lives and your people"; and in May 2006 during a visit to Poland where he repeatedly made references to "the great John Paul" and "my great predecessor".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Inspired by calls of ""Santo Subito!"" ("[Make him a] Saint Immediately!") from the crowds gathered during the funeral Mass that he celebrated, Benedict XVI began the beatification process for his predecessor, bypassing the normal restriction that five years must pass after a person's death before beginning the beatification process. In an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, Camillo Ruini, Vicar General of the Diocese of Rome, who was responsible for promoting the cause for canonisation of any person who died within that diocese, cited "exceptional circumstances", which suggested that the waiting period could be waived. This decision was announced on 13 May 2005, the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima and the 24th anniversary of the assassination attempt on John Paul II at St. Peter's Square.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In early 2006, it was reported that the Vatican was investigating a possible miracle associated with John Paul II. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun and member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Maternity Wards, confined to her bed by


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Parkinson's disease, was reported to have experienced a "complete and lasting cure after members of her community prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul II". , Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, then 46, was working again at a maternity hospital run by her religious institute.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: "I was sick and now I am cured," she told reporter Gerry Shaw. "I am cured, but it is up to the church to say whether it was a miracle or not."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 28 May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass before an estimated 900,000 people in John Paul II's native Poland. During his homily, he encouraged prayers for the early canonisation of John Paul II and stated that he hoped canonisation would happen "in the near future".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In January 2007, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz announced that the interview phase of the beatification process, in Italy and Poland, was nearing completion. In February 2007, second class relics of John Paul II—pieces of white papal cassocks he used to wear—were freely distributed with prayer cards for the cause, a typical pious practice after a saintly Catholic's death. On 8 March 2007, the Vicariate of Rome announced that the diocesan phase of John Paul's cause for beatification was at an end. Following a ceremony on 2 April 2007—the second anniversary of the Pontiff's death—the cause proceeded to the scrutiny of the committee of lay, clerical, and episcopal members of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, to conduct a separate investigation. On the fourth anniversary of John Paul II's death, 2 April 2009, Cardinal Dziwisz, told reporters of a presumed miracle that had recently occurred at the former pope's tomb in St. Peter's Basilica. A nine-year-old Polish boy from Gdańsk, who was suffering from kidney cancer and was completely unable to walk, had been visiting the tomb with his parents. On leaving St. Peter's Basilica, the boy told them, "I want to walk," and began walking normally. On 16 November 2009, a panel of reviewers at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints voted unanimously that John Paul II had lived a life of heroic virtue. On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI signed the first of two decrees needed for beatification and proclaimed John Paul II "Venerable", asserting that he had lived a heroic, virtuous life. The second vote and the second signed decree certifying the authenticity of the first miracle, the curing of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun, from Parkinson's disease. Once the second decree is signed, the "position" (the report on the cause, with documentation about his life and writings and with information on the cause) is complete. He can then be beatified. Some speculated that he would be beatified sometime during (or soon after) the month of the 32nd anniversary of his 1978 election, in October 2010. As Monsignor Oder said, this course would have been possible if the second decree were signed in time by Benedict XVI, stating that a posthumous miracle directly attributable to his intercession had occurred, completing the positio.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The Vatican announced on 14 January 2011 that Pope Benedict XVI had confirmed the miracle involving Sister Marie Simon-Pierre and that John Paul II was to be beatified on 1 May, the Feast of Divine Mercy. 1 May is commemorated in former communist countries, such as Poland, and some Western European countries as May Day, and John Paul II was well known for his contributions to communism's relatively peaceful demise. In March 2011 the Polish mint issued a gold 1,000 Polish złoty coin (equivalent to US$350), with the Pope's image to commemorate his beatification.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 29 April 2011, John Paul II's coffin was disinterred from the grotto beneath St. Peter's Basilica ahead of his beatification, as tens of thousands of people arrived in Rome for one of the biggest events since his funeral. John Paul II's remains, which were not exposed, were placed in front of the Basilica's main altar, where believers could pay their respect before and after the beatification mass in St. Peter's Square on 1 May 2011. On 3 May 2011 his remains were interred in the marble altar in Pier Paolo Cristofari Chapel of St. Sebastian, where Pope Innocent XI was buried. This more prominent location, next to the Chapel of the Pietà, the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, and statues of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII was intended to allow more pilgrims to view his memorial. John Paul II's body is located near the bodies of Pope Pius X and Pope John XXIII, whose bodies were reinterred in the Basilica after their own beatifications and together are three of the five popes beatified in the last century. The two popes who were not exhumed and reinterred after becoming a blessed in the last century were Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul I, who both remain entombed in the papal grottos.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In July 2012, a Colombian man, Marco Fidel Rojas, the former mayor of Huila, Colombia, testified that he was "miraculously cured" of Parkinson's disease after a trip to Rome where he met John Paul II and prayed with him. Dr. Antonio Schlesinger Piedrahita, a renowned neurologist in Colombia, certified Fidel's healing. The documentation was then sent to the Vatican office for sainthood causes.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In September 2020, Poland unveiled a sculpture of him in Warsaw, designed by and installed outside the National Museum, holding up a meteorite. In the same month, a relic containing his blood was stolen from the Spoleto Cathedral in Italy.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: To be eligible for canonisation (being declared a saint) by the Catholic Church, two miracles must be attributed to a candidate.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The first miracle attributed to John Paul was the above mentioned healing of a man's Parkinson's disease, which was recognised during the beatification process. According to an article on the Catholic News Service (CNS) dated 23 April 2013, a Vatican commission of doctors concluded that a healing had no natural (medical) explanation, which is the first requirement for a claimed miracle to be officially documented.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The second miracle was deemed to have taken place shortly after the late pope's beatification on 1 May 2011; it was reported to be the healing of Costa Rican woman Floribeth Mora of an otherwise terminal brain aneurysm. A Vatican panel of expert theologians examined the evidence, determined that it was directly attributable to the intercession of John Paul II, and recognised it as miraculous. The next stage was for Cardinals who compose the membership of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to give their opinion to Pope Francis to decide whether to sign and promulgate the decree and set a date for canonisation.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 4 July 2013, Pope Francis confirmed his approval of John Paul II's canonisation, formally recognising the second miracle attributed to his intercession. He was canonised together with John XXIII. The date of the canonisation was on 27 April 2014, Divine Mercy Sunday.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The canonisation Mass for Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII, was celebrated by Pope Francis (with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), on 27 April 2014 in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican (John Paul II had died on vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005). About 150 cardinals and 700 bishops concelebrated the Mass, and at least 500,000 people attended the Mass, with an estimated 300,000 others watching from video screens placed around Rome.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 10 October 2019, the Archdiocese of Krakow and the Polish Bishops' Conference approved "nihil obstat" the opening of the beatification cause of the parents of its patron saint John Paul II, Karol Wojtyła Sr. and Emilia Kaczorowska. It gained approval from the Holy See to open the diocesan phase of the cause on 7 May 2020.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was widely criticised for a variety of his views. He was a target of criticism from progressives for his opposition to the ordination of women and use of contraception, and from Traditional Catholics for his support for the Second Vatican Council and its reform of the liturgy. John Paul II's response to child sexual abuse within the church has also come under heavy censure.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was criticised by representatives of the victims of clergy sexual abuse for failing to respond quickly enough to the Catholic sex abuse crisis. In his response, he stated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." The Catholic Church instituted reforms to prevent future abuse by requiring background checks for church employees and, because a significant majority of victims were boys, disallowing ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". They now require dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty. In 2008, the church asserted that the scandal was a very serious problem and estimated that it was "probably caused by 'no more than 1 per cent' " (or 5,000) of the over 500,000 Catholic priests worldwide.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In April 2002, John Paul II, despite being frail from Parkinson's disease, summoned all the American cardinals to the Vatican to discuss possible solutions to the issue of sexual abuse in the American Church. He asked them to "diligently investigate accusations". John Paul II suggested that American bishops be more open and transparent in dealing with such scandals and emphasised the role of seminary training to prevent sexual deviance among future priests. In what "The New York Times" called "unusually direct language", John Paul condemned the arrogance of priests that led to the scandals:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Priests and candidates for the priesthood often live at a level both materially and educationally superior to that of their families and the members of their own age group. It is therefore very easy for them to succumb to the temptation of thinking of themselves as better than others. When this happens, the ideal of priestly service and self-giving dedication can fade, leaving the priest dissatisfied and disheartened.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The pope read a statement intended for the American cardinals, calling the sex abuse "an appalling sin" and said the priesthood had no room for such men.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 2002, Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, the Catholic Archbishop of Poznań, was accused of molesting seminarians. John Paul II accepted his resignation, and placed sanctions on him, prohibiting Paetz from exercising his ministry as bishop. It was reported that these restrictions were lifted, though Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi strenuously denied this saying "his rehabilitation was without foundation".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 2003, John Paul II reiterated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." In April 2003, a three-day conference was held, titled "Abuse of Children and Young People by Catholic Priests and Religious", where eight non-Catholic psychiatric experts were invited to speak to near all Vatican dicasteries' representatives. The panel of experts overwhelmingly opposed implementation of policies of "zero-tolerance" such as was proposed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. One expert called such policies a "case of overkill" since they do not permit flexibility to allow for differences among individual cases.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 2004, John Paul II recalled Bernard Francis Law to be Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome. Law had previously resigned as archbishop of Boston in 2002 in response to the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases after church documents were revealed that suggested he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese. Law resigned from this position in November 2011.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was a firm supporter of the Legion of Christ, and in 1998 discontinued investigations into sexual misconduct by its leader Marcial Maciel, who in 2005 resigned his leadership and was later requested by the Vatican to withdraw from his ministry. However, Maciel's trial began in 2004 during the pontificate of John Paul II, but the Pope died before it ended and the conclusions were known. In an interview with L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis said: "I am grateful to Pope Benedict, who dared to say this publicly (when more facts began to come to light after Degollado’s death in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 launched another investigation and on 1 May 2010 announced a declaration about the crimes of the founder of the Legionaries), and to Pope John Paul II, who dared to give the green light to the Legionaries’ case."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: On 10 November 2020, the Vatican published a report which found that John Paul II learned of allegations of sexual impropriety against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who at the time was serving as Archbishop of Newark, through a 1999 letter from Cardinal John O'Connor warning him that appointing McCarrick to be Archbishop of Washington D.C., a position which had recently been opened, would be a mistake. John Paul II ordered an investigation, which stalled when three of the four bishops tasked with investigating claims allegedly brought back "inaccurate or incomplete information." John Paul II planned on not giving McCarrick the appointment anyway, but relented and gave him the appointment after McCarrick wrote a letter of denial. He created McCarrick a cardinal in 2001. McCarrick would eventually be laicized after allegations surfaced that he abused minors. George Weigel, a biographer of John Paul II, defended the pope's actions as follows: "Theodore McCarrick fooled a lot of people ... and he deceived John Paul II in a way that is laid out in almost biblical fashion in [the Vatican's] report."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In a 2019 interview with Mexican television, Pope Francis defended John Paul II's legacy on protecting minors against clerical sexual abuse. He said that John Paul II was "often misled," as in the case of Hans Hermann Groër. Francis said that with respect to the case of Marcial Maciel:


title: Pope John Paul II

text: "Ratzinger was courageous, and so was John Paul II. [...] With respect to John Paul II, we have to understand certain attitudes because he came from a closed world, from behind the Iron Curtain, where communism was still in force. There was a defensive mentality. We have to understand this well, and no one can doubt the saintliness of this great man and his good will. He was great, he was great."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was criticised for his support of the Opus Dei prelature and the 2002 canonisation of its founder, Josemaría Escrivá, whom he called "the saint of ordinary life". Other movements and religious organisations of the church went decidedly under his wing Legion of Christ, the Neocatechumenal Way, Schoenstatt, the charismatic movement, etc. And he was accused repeatedly of taking a soft hand with them, especially in the case of Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1984 John Paul II appointed Joaquín Navarro-Valls, a member of Opus Dei, as Director of the Vatican Press Office. An Opus Dei spokesman said that "the influence of Opus Dei in the Vatican has been exaggerated". Of the nearly 200 cardinals in the Catholic Church, only two are known to be members of Opus Dei.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II was alleged to have links with Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank that collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank's failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi, and his membership in the illegal Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2). The Vatican Bank was Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder, and the death of John Paul I in 1978 is rumoured to be linked to the Ambrosiano scandal.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Calvi, often referred to as "God's Banker", was also involved with the Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, and was close to Bishop Paul Marcinkus, the bank's chairman. Ambrosiano also provided funds for political parties in Italy, and for both the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and its Sandinista opposition. It has been widely alleged that the Vatican Bank provided money for Solidarity in Poland.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Calvi used his complex network of overseas banks and companies to move money out of Italy, to inflate share prices, and to arrange massive unsecured loans. In 1978, the Bank of Italy produced a report on Ambrosiano that predicted future disaster. On 5 June 1982, two weeks before the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, Calvi had written a letter of warning to John Paul II, stating that such a forthcoming event would "provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage". On 18 June 1982 Calvi's body was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and contained cash valued at US$14,000, in three different currencies.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In addition to all the criticism from those demanding modernisation, some Traditionalist Catholics denounced him as well. These issues included demanding a return to the Tridentine Mass and repudiation of the reforms instituted after the Second Vatican Council, such as the use of the vernacular language in the formerly Latin Roman Rite Mass, ecumenism, and the principle of religious liberty. In 1988, the controversial traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X (1970), was excommunicated under John Paul II because of the unapproved ordination of four bishops, which Cardinal Ratzinger called a "schismatic act".


title: Pope John Paul II

text: The World Day of Prayer for Peace, with a meeting in Assisi, Italy, in 1986, in which the pope prayed only with the Christians, was criticised for giving the impression that syncretism and indifferentism were openly embraced by the Papal Magisterium. When a second 'Day of Prayer for Peace in the World' was held, in 2002, it was condemned as confusing the laity and compromising to false religions. Likewise criticised was his kissing of the Qur'an in Damascus, Syria, on one of his travels on 6 May 2001. His call for religious freedom was not always supported; bishops like Antônio de Castro Mayer promoted religious tolerance, but at the same time rejected the Vatican II principle of religious liberty as being liberalist and already condemned by Pope Pius IX in his "Syllabus errorum" (1864) and at the First Vatican Council.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul II continued the tradition of advocating for the "Culture of life" and, in solidarity with Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, rejected artificial birth control—even in the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. Critics have said that large families are caused by lack of contraception and exacerbate Third World poverty and problems such as street children in South America. John Paul II argued that the proper way to prevent the spread of AIDS was not condoms, but rather, "correct practice of sexuality, which presupposes chastity and fidelity." The focus of John Paul II's point is that the need for artificial birth control is itself artificial, and that principle of respecting the sacredness of life ought not be rent asunder in order to achieve the good of preventing AIDS.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: There was strong criticism of the pope for the controversy surrounding the alleged use of charitable social programmes as a means of converting people in the Third World to Catholicism. The pope created an uproar in the Indian subcontinent when he suggested that a great harvest of faith would be witnessed on the subcontinent in the third Christian millennium.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul visited General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's military ruler. According to the United Press International, "Pope John Paul II preached the need for peaceful change and greater participation up and down Chile...but stayed away from direct confrontation with Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military regime...disappointing Pinochet's opponents who had hoped the pope would publicly condemn the regime and bless their campaign for a return to democracy."


title: Pope John Paul II

text: John Paul endorsed Cardinal Pio Laghi, who critics say supported the "Dirty War" in Argentina and was on friendly terms with the Argentine generals of the military dictatorship, playing regular tennis matches with the Navy's representative in the junta, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1988, when John Paul II was delivering a speech to the European Parliament, Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, shouted "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" and held up a red banner reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST". Otto von Habsburg (the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary), an MEP for Germany, snatched Paisley's banner, tore it up and, along with other MEPs, helped eject him from the chamber. The pope continued with his address after Paisley had been ejected.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: A number of quotes about the apparitions of Međugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have been attributed to John Paul II. In 1998, when a certain German gathered various statements that were supposedly made by the pope and Cardinal Ratzinger, and then forwarded them to the Vatican in the form of a memorandum, Ratzinger responded in writing on 22 July 1998: "The only thing I can say regarding statements on Međugorje ascribed to the Holy Father and myself is that they are complete invention." ("frei erfunden"). (Link not working) Similar claims were also rebuked by the Vatican's Secretariate of State.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Some Catholic theologians disagreed with the call for the beatification of John Paul II. Eleven dissident theologians, including Jesuit professor José María Castillo and Italian theologian Giovanni Franzoni, said that his stance against contraception and the ordination of women as well as the church scandals during his pontificate presented "facts which according to their consciences and convictions should be an obstacle to beatification". Some traditionalist Catholics opposed his beatification and canonisation for his views on liturgy and participation in prayer with enemies of the church, heretics and non-Christians.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: After the 2020 report about the handling of the sexual misconduct complaints against Theodore McCarrick, some called for John Paul II's sainthood to be revoked.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Having played the game himself as a goalkeeper, John Paul II was a fan of English football team Liverpool, where his compatriot Jerzy Dudek played in the same position.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: In 1973, while still the archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła befriended a Polish-born, later American philosopher, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The thirty-two-year friendship (and occasional academic collaboration) lasted until his death. She served as his host when he visited New England in 1976, and photos show them together on skiing and camping trips. Letters that he wrote to her were part of a collection of documents sold by Tymieniecka's estate in 2008 to the National Library of Poland. According to the BBC the library had initially kept the letters from public view, partly because of John Paul's path to sainthood, but a library official announced in February 2016 the letters would be made public. In February 2016 the BBC documentary program "Panorama" reported that John Paul II had apparently had a 'close relationship' with the Polish-born philosopher. The pair exchanged personal letters over 30 years, and Stourton believes that Tymieniecka had confessed her love for Wojtyła. The Vatican described the documentary as "more smoke than mirrors", and Tymieniecka denied being involved with John Paul II.


title: Pope John Paul II

text: Writers Carl Bernstein, the veteran investigative journalist of the Watergate scandal, and Vatican expert Marco Politi, were the first journalists to talk to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka in the 1990s about her importance in John Paul's life. They interviewed her and dedicated 20 pages to her in their 1996 book "His Holiness".<ref name="Bernstein/Politi">Did Pope John Paul II Have a Secret Lover? by Barbi Latzu Nadeau, 15 February 2016</ref> Bernstein and Politi even asked her if she had ever developed any romantic relationship with John Paul II, "however one-sided it might have been." She responded, "No, I never fell in love with the cardinal. How could I fall in love with a middle-aged clergyman? Besides, I'm a married woman."


title: Science

text: Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.


title: Science

text: Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek manuscripts from the dying Byzantine Empire to Western Europe in the Renaissance.


title: Science

text: The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived "natural philosophy", which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape; along with the changing of "natural philosophy" to "natural science".


title: Science

text: Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules. There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines, because they do not rely on empirical evidence. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine.


title: Science

text: New knowledge in science is advanced by research from scientists who are motivated by curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems. Contemporary scientific research is highly collaborative and is usually done by teams in academic and research institutions, government agencies, and companies. The practical impact of their work has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritizing the ethical and moral development of commercial products, armaments, health care, public infrastructure, and environmental protection.


title: Science

text: The word "science" has been used in Middle English since the 14th century in the sense of "the state of knowing". The word was borrowed from the Anglo-Norman language as the suffix , which was borrowed from the Latin word , meaning "knowledge, awareness, understanding". It is a noun derivative of the Latin meaning "knowing", and undisputedly derived from the Latin , the present participle "", meaning "to know".


title: Science

text: There are many hypotheses for "science"'s ultimate word origin. According to Michiel de Vaan, Dutch linguist and Indo-Europeanist, may have its origin in the Proto-Italic language as or meaning "to know", which may originate from Proto-Indo-European language as ", ", meaning "to incise". The "Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben" proposed is a back-formation of , meaning "to not know, be unfamiliar with", which may derive from Proto-Indo-European ' in Latin , or ', from "" meaning "to cut".


title: Science

text: In the past, science was a synonym for "knowledge" or "study", in keeping with its Latin origin. A person who conducted scientific research was called a "natural philosopher" or "man of science". In 1833, William Whewell coined the term "scientist" and the term first appeared in literature one year later in Mary Somerville's "On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences", published in the "Quarterly Review".


title: Science

text: Science has no single origin. Rather, scientific methods emerged gradually over the course of thousands of years, taking different forms around the world, and few details are known about the very earliest developments. Some of the earliest evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old, and women likely played a central role in prehistoric science, as did religious rituals. Some Western authors have dismissed these efforts as "protoscientific".


title: Science

text: Direct evidence for scientific processes becomes clearer with the advent of writing systems in early civilizations like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, creating the earliest written records in the history of science in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Although the words and concepts of "science" and "nature" were not part of the conceptual landscape at the time, the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians made contributions that would later find a place in Greek and medieval science: mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. From the 3rd millennium BCE, the ancient Egyptians developed a decimal numbering system, solved practical problems using geometry, and developed a calendar. Their healing therapies involved drug treatments and the supernatural, such as prayers, incantations, and rituals.


title: Science

text: The ancient Mesopotamians used knowledge about the properties of various natural chemicals for manufacturing pottery, faience, glass, soap, metals, lime plaster, and waterproofing. They studied animal physiology, anatomy, behavior, and astrology for divinatory purposes. The Mesopotamians had an intense interest in medicine and the earliest medical prescriptions appeared in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur. They seem to study scientific subjects which have practical or religious applications and have little interest of satisfying curiosity.


title: Science

text: In classical antiquity, there is no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, well-educated, usually upper-class, and almost universally male individuals performed various investigations into nature whenever they could afford the time. Before the invention or discovery of the concept of "phusis" or nature by the pre-Socratic philosophers, the same words tend to be used to describe the natural "way" in which a plant grows, and the "way" in which, for example, one tribe worships a particular god. For this reason, it is claimed that these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and the first to clearly distinguish "nature" and "convention".


title: Science

text: The early Greek philosophers of the Milesian school, which was founded by Thales of Miletus and later continued by his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes, were the first to attempt to explain natural phenomena without relying on the supernatural. The Pythagoreans developed a complex number philosophy and contributed significantly to the development of mathematical science. The theory of atoms was developed by the Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus. The Greek doctor Hippocrates established the tradition of systematic medical science and is known as "The Father of Medicine".


title: Science

text: A turning point in the history of early philosophical science was Socrates' example of applying philosophy to the study of human matters, including human nature, the nature of political communities, and human knowledge itself. The Socratic method as documented by Plato's dialogues is a dialectic method of hypothesis elimination: better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general commonly-held truths that shape beliefs and scrutinizes them for consistency. Socrates criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism.


title: Science

text: Aristotle in the 4th century BCE created a systematic program of teleological philosophy. In the 3rd century BCE, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the universe, with the Sun at the center and all the planets orbiting it. Aristarchus's model was widely rejected because it was believed to violate the laws of physics, while Ptolemy's "Almagest", which contains a geocentric description of the Solar System, was accepted through the early Renaissance instead. The inventor and mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse made major contributions to the beginnings of calculus. Pliny the Elder was a Roman writer and polymath, who wrote the seminal encyclopedia "Natural History".


title: Science

text: Due to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the 5th century saw an intellectual decline and knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe. During the period, Latin encyclopedists such as Isidore of Seville preserved the majority of general ancient knowledge. In contrast, because the Byzantine Empire resisted attacks from invaders, they were able to preserve and improve prior learning. John Philoponus, a Byzantine scholar in the 500s, started to question Aristotle's teaching of physics, introducing the theory of impetus. His criticism served as an inspiration to medieval scholars and Galileo Galilei, who extensively cited his works ten centuries later.


title: Science

text: During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, natural phenomena were mainly examined via the Aristotelian approach. The approach includes Aristotle's four causes: material, formal, moving, and final cause. Many Greek classical texts were preserved by the Byzantine empire and Arabic translations were done by groups such as the Nestorians and the Monophysites. Under the Caliphate, these Arabic translations were later improved and developed by Arabic scientists. By the 6th and 7th centuries, the neighboring Sassanid Empire established the medical Academy of Gondeshapur, which is considered by Greek, Syriac, and Persian physicians as the most important medical center of the ancient world.


title: Science

text: The House of Wisdom was established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq, where the Islamic study of Aristotelianism flourished until the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Ibn al-Haytham, better known as Alhazen, began experimenting as a means to gain knowledge and disproved Ptolemy's theory of vision Avicenna's compilation of the Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia, is considered to be one of the most important publications in medicine and was used until the 18th century.


title: Science

text: By the eleventh century, most of Europe had become Christian, and in 1088, the University of Bologna emerged as the first university in Europe. As such, demand for Latin translation of ancient and scientific texts grew, a major contributor to the Renaissance of the 12th century. Renaissance scholasticism in western Europe flourished, with experiments done by observing, describing, and classifying subjects in nature. In the 13rd century, medical teachers and students at Bologna began opening human bodies, leading to the first anatomy textbook based on human dissection by Mondino de Luzzi.


title: Science

text: New developments in optics played a role in the inception of the Renaissance, both by challenging long-held metaphysical ideas on perception, as well as by contributing to the improvement and development of technology such as the camera obscura and the telescope. At the start of the Renaissance, Roger Bacon, Vitello, and John Peckham each built up a scholastic ontology upon a causal chain beginning with sensation, perception, and finally apperception of the individual and universal forms of Aristotle. A model of vision later known as perspectivism was exploited and studied by the artists of the Renaissance. This theory uses only three of Aristotle's four causes: formal, material, and final.


title: Science

text: In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus formulated a heliocentric model of the Solar System, stating that the planets revolve around the Sun, instead of the geocentric model where the planets and the Sun revolve around the Earth. This was based on a theorem that the orbital periods of the planets are longer as their orbs are farther from the center of motion, which he found not to agree with Ptolemy's model.


title: Science

text: Johannes Kepler and others challenged the notion that the only function of the eye is perception, and shifted the main focus in optics from the eye to the propagation of light. Kepler is best known, however, for improving Copernicus' heliocentric model through the discovery of Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Kepler did not reject Aristotelian metaphysics and described his work as a search for the Harmony of the Spheres. Galileo had made significant contributions to astronomy, physics and engineering. However, he became persecuted after Pope Urban VIII sentenced him for writing about the heliocentric model.


title: Science

text: The printing press was widely used to publish scholarly arguments, including some that disagreed widely with contemporary ideas of nature. Francis Bacon and René Descartes published philosophical arguments in favor of a new type of non-Aristotelian science. Bacon emphasized the importance of experiment over contemplation, questioned the Aristotelian concepts of formal and final cause, promoted the idea that science should study the laws of nature and the improvement of all human life. Descartes emphasized individual thought and argued that mathematics rather than geometry should be used to study nature.


title: Science

text: At the start of the Age of Enlightenment, Isaac Newton formed the foundation of classical mechanics by his "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica", greatly influencing future physicists. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz incorporated terms from Aristotelian physics, now used in a new non-teleological way. This implied a shift in the view of objects: objects were now considered as having no innate goals. Leibniz assumed that different types of things all work according to the same general laws of nature, with no special formal or final causes.


title: Science

text: During this time, the declared purpose and value of science became producing wealth and inventions that would improve human lives, in the materialistic sense of having more food, clothing, and other things. In Bacon's words, "the real and legitimate goal of sciences ", and he discouraged scientists from pursuing intangible philosophical or spiritual ideas, which he believed contributed little to human happiness beyond "the fume of subtle, sublime or pleasing [speculation]".


title: Science

text: Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centers of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were the backbones of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population. Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors – Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally – as the guides to every physical and social field of the day.


title: Science

text: The 18th century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine and physics; the development of biological taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline. Ideas on human nature, society, and economics evolved during the Enlightenment. Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed "A Treatise of Human Nature", which was expressed historically in works by authors including James Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar and William Robertson, all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behaved in ancient and primitive cultures with a strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity. Modern sociology largely originated from this movement. In 1776, Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations", which is often considered the first work on modern economics.


title: Science

text: During the nineteenth century, many distinguishing characteristics of contemporary modern science began to take shape. These included the transformation of the life and physical sciences, frequent use of precision instruments, emergence of terms such as "biologist", "physicist", "scientist", increased professionalization of those studying nature, scientists gained cultural authority over many dimensions of society, industrialization of numerous countries, thriving of popular science writings and emergence of science journals. During the late 19th century, psychology emerged as a separate discipline from philosophy when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory for psychological research in 1879.


title: Science

text: During the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, which explained how different plants and animals originated and evolved. Their theory was set out in detail in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species", published in 1859. Separately, Gregor Mendel presented his paper, "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" in 1865, which outlined the principles of biological inheritance, serving as the basis for modern genetics.


title: Science

text: Early in the 19th century, John Dalton suggested the modern atomic theory, based on Democritus's original idea of indivisible particles called "atoms". The laws of conservation of energy, conservation of momentum and conservation of mass suggested a highly stable universe where there could be little loss of resources. However, with the advent of the steam engine and the industrial revolution there was an increased understanding that not all forms of energy have the same energy qualities, the ease of conversion to useful work or to another form of energy. This realization led to the development of the laws of thermodynamics, in which the free energy of the universe is seen as constantly declining: the entropy of a closed universe increases over time.


title: Science

text: The electromagnetic theory was established in the 19th century by the works of Hans Christian Ørsted, André-Marie Ampère, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Heaviside, and Heinrich Hertz. The new theory raised questions that could not easily be answered using Newton's framework. The discovery of X-rays inspired the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie in 1896, Marie Curie then became the first person to win two Nobel prizes. In the next year came the discovery of the first subatomic particle, the electron.


title: Science

text: In the first half of the century, the development of antibiotics and artificial fertilizers improved human living standards globally. Harmful environmental issues such as ozone depletion, ocean acidification, eutrophication and climate change came to the public's attention and caused the onset of environmental studies.


title: Science

text: During this period, scientific experimentation became increasingly larger in scale and funding. The extensive technological innovation stimulated by World War I, World War II, and the Cold War led to competitions between global powers, such as the Space Race and nuclear arms race. Substantial international collaborations were also made, despite armed conflicts.


title: Science

text: In the late 20th century, active recruitment of women and elimination of sex discrimination greatly increased the number of women scientists, but large gender disparities remained in some fields. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964 led to a rejection of the steady-state model of the universe in favor of the Big Bang theory of Georges Lemaître.


title: Science

text: The century saw fundamental changes within science disciplines. Evolution became a unified theory in the early 20th-century when the modern synthesis reconciled Darwinian evolution with classical genetics. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics complement classical mechanics to describe physics in extreme length, time and gravity. Widespread use of integrated circuits in the last quarter of the 20th century combined with communications satellites led to a revolution in information technology and the rise of the global internet and mobile computing, including smartphones. The need for mass systematization of long, intertwined causal chains and large amounts of data led to the rise of the fields of systems theory and computer-assisted scientific modeling.


title: Science

text: The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 by identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome. The first induced pluripotent human stem cells were made in 2006, allowing adult cells to be transformed into stem cells and turn to any cell type found in the body. With the affirmation of the Higgs boson discovery in 2013, the last particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics was found. In 2015, gravitational waves, predicted by general relativity a century before, were first observed. In 2019, the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope presented the first direct image of a black hole's accretion disk.


title: Science

text: Modern science is commonly divided into three major branches: natural science, social science, and formal science. Each of these branches comprises various specialized yet overlapping scientific disciplines that often possess their own nomenclature and expertise. Both natural and social sciences are empirical sciences, as their knowledge is based on empirical observations and is capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions.


title: Science

text: Natural science is the study of the physical world. It can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. These two branches may be further divided into more specialized disciplines. For example, physical science can be subdivided into physics, chemistry, astronomy, and earth science. Modern natural science is the successor to the natural philosophy that began in Ancient Greece. Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science. Systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences.


title: Science

text: Social science is the study of human behavior and functioning of societies. It has many disciplines that include, but are not limited to anthropology, economics, history, human geography, political science, psychology, and sociology. In the social sciences, there are many competing theoretical perspectives, many of which are extended through competing research programs such as the functionalists, conflict theorists, and interactionists in sociology. Due to the limitations of conducting controlled experiments involving large groups of individuals or complex situations, social scientists may adopt other research methods such as the historical method, case studies, and cross-cultural studies. Moreover, if quantitative information is available, social scientists may rely on statistical approaches to better understand social relationships and processes.


title: Science

text: Formal science is an area of study that generates knowledge using formal systems. A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. It includes mathematics, systems theory, and theoretical computer science. The formal sciences share similarities with the other two branches by relying on objective, careful, and systematic study of an area of knowledge. They are, however, different from the empirical sciences as they rely exclusively on deductive reasoning, without the need for empirical evidence, to verify their abstract concepts. The formal sciences are therefore "a priori" disciplines and because of this, there is disagreement on whether they constitute a science. Nevertheless, the formal sciences play an important role in the empirical sciences. Calculus, for example, was initially invented to understand motion in physics. Natural and social sciences that rely heavily on mathematical applications include mathematical physics, chemistry, biology, finance, and economics.


title: Science

text: Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge to attain practical goals and includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Engineering is the use of scientific principles to invent, design and build machines, structures and technologies. Science may contribute to the development of new technologies. Medicine is the practice of caring for patients by maintaining and restoring health through the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of injury or disease. The applied sciences are often contrasted with the basic sciences, which are focused on advancing scientific theories and laws that explain and predict events in the natural world.