Karol Wojtyla Ordained Priest in Kraków Chapel 80 Years Ago
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz and museum director Father Lukasz Piórkowski recall the 1946 ordination and the spiritual discipline of the man who became Pope John Paul II.
By Kwame Silva ·
Eighty years ago, Karol Wojtyla became a priest in a private chapel inside the Archbishops' Palace of Kraków. He was 26, ordained alone on Nov. 1, 1946, the feast of All Saints, before his fellow seminarians and before leaving for theological studies in Rome.
Wojtyla received holy orders from Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha. The following day, All Souls' Day, he celebrated his first three Masses in St. Leonard's Crypt beneath Wawel Cathedral, including one for his parents and siblings. He lost his mother at age 8, his older brother at 12 and his father at 20. An older sister died in infancy, before Karol was born.
His route to the priesthood ran through World War II and Nazi German occupation. Passionate about literature and theater, he began studying Polish literature at Jagiellonian University before the war interrupted his education. In 1942, while working at a factory, he entered a clandestine seminary organized by Cardinal Sapieha.
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who spent nearly four decades alongside John Paul II, described him first as a man of prayer. "He was, above all, a man of prayer," Dziwisz told OSV News. Dziwisz recalled that as a young man Wojtyla did not think about the priesthood, though his personal life was deeply spiritual. He also cited the example of Wojtyla's father, a former Polish army officer also named Karol, whom John Paul II called a kind of "domestic seminary."
Dziwisz, ordained by Bishop Wojtyla in June 1963 and his secretary three years later, described practices he witnessed at close range. When the pope was younger he would lie prostrate in prayer, and the chapel door was kept closed so he could pray without interruption. "From a distance, we could hear him speaking to Christ in the tabernacle," Dziwisz said. During Christmas and Lent, he sang as he prayed.
Prayer shaped how the pope handled his duties. Dziwisz recalled a Vatican official bringing a difficult problem to John Paul II. "We haven't prayed enough," the pope replied, according to Dziwisz. "We need to pray. Some guidance will come from above," he said.
Father Lukasz Piórkowski, director of the Family Home of John Paul II Museum in Wadowice, where the future pope was born in 1920, emphasized accompaniment over instruction. "Wojtyla accompanied people; he did not impose," Father Piórkowski told OSV News. He added that the approach of thinking together and accompanying one another remains inspiring for priests today, and that he is convinced Pope Leo XIV is rooted in John Paul II's experience.
