Everyone's favorite Polish pope is here to polish things up!
The idea for a wallpaper based on Pope St. John Paul II was suggested by Robert Rodriguez over at Patreon.com/Tomics. Thanks for reminding me of his feast day!
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JOKE-OGRAPHY:
1. This wallpaper is based on "Die Hard 2: Die Harder". For some reason I thought it'd be funny to treat the number after a pope's name like a movie sequel number. I won't be made to explain myself further.
2. The tagline makes a pun out of the word "Polish", which can either refer to a product used for cleaning and restoring surfaces (as in "shoe polish") or to people hailing from Poland (as in, "When my Polish great-grandfather built this house, he put all the light switches on the far side rooms, so I have to go stumbling through pitch darkness whenever I need to turn on lights.") Pope St. John Paul II was Polish... in the latter sense.
***$5-and-up patrons can download this wallpaper at patreon.com/posts/74214131
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SAINT OF THE DAY (October 5)
On October 5, the church celebrates the Memorial of St. Mary Faustina Kowalska, virgin.
St. Faustina was born Helena Kowalska on 25 August 1905 to a poor but devout Polish family in 1905.
At the age of 20, with very little education, and having been rejected from several other convents because of her poverty and lack of education, Helen entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.
There, she took the name Sr. Faustina and spent time in convents in both Poland and Lithuania.
Throughout her life, Jesus appeared to Sr. Faustina.
He asked her to become an apostle and secretary of his mercy by writing down his messages of Divine Mercy for the world in her diary.
Jesus also asked Sr. Faustina to have an image painted of his Divine Mercy, with red and white rays issuing from his heart, and to spread devotion to the Divine Mercy novena.
Even before her death on 5 October 1938, devotion to Divine Mercy began to spread throughout Poland.
This little nun and Jesus’ message of Divine Mercy impacted Karol Wojtyla greatly, which became obvious to the world when he was elected pope.
“It is truly marvelous how her devotion to the merciful Jesus is spreading in our contemporary world and gaining so many human hearts!
This is doubtlessly a sign of the times — a sign of our twentieth century.
The balance of this century, which is now ending, in addition to the advances which have often surpassed those of preceding eras, presents a deep restlessness and fear of the future.
Where, if not in the Divine Mercy, can the world find refuge and the light of hope? Believers understand that perfectly,” Pope St. John Paul II wrote.
On 30 April 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized St. Faustina in what he was widely reported as saying was “the happiest day of my life.”
“Today, my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sr. Faustina Kowalska to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time.
By divine Providence, the life of this humble daughter of Poland was completely linked with the history of the 20th century, the century we have just left behind.
In fact, it was between the First and Second World Wars that Christ entrusted his message of mercy to her.
Those who remember, who were witnesses and participants in the events of those years and the horrible sufferings they caused for millions of people, know well how necessary was the message of mercy,” the Pope said in his homily that day.
It was also on this day, the Sunday after Easter, that Pope John Paul II instituted the Feast of Divine Mercy, which Jesus had asked for in his messages to Sr. Faustina.
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THE DESCRIPTION OF SAINT JOHN PAUL II
The Patron of Kraków and World Youth Day
Feast Day: October 22
"There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us." -from the Eucharistic Celebration Homily, October 1995
One of the greatest popes in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, and before he became known as John Paul the Great, he was born Karol Józef Wojtyła, on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Kraków Voivodeship, Poland.
When Karol was just eight years old, his happy family life was saddened by the early death of his parents, Karol Wojtyła, a non-commissioned officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army and captain of the Polish Armed Forces, and Emilia Kaczorowska, a schoolteacher who was of distant Lithuanian heritage, as he said: 'At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved.'
His elder sister Olga had died before his birth, but he was close to his brother Edmund, nicknamed Mundek, who was 13 years his senior. Edmund's work as a physician eventually led to his death from scarlet fever, a loss that affected Wojtyła deeply.
Karol was an athletic youth, often played football as a goalkeeper, and also performed with various theatrical groups and worked as a playwright. During this time, his talent for language blossomed, and he learned as many as 15 languages including English and Esperanto. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, from 1940 to 1944, Karol worked in a limestone quarry and then in Solvay chemical factory.
In order to fulfill his vocation in October 1942 at the height of World War II, he entered the clandestine seminary of Kraków, run by Adam Stefan Sapieha, the archbishop of Kraków, and after finishing his studies at the seminary, he was ordained priest on All Saints' Day - November 1, 1946, a year after the war ended. He was first assigned in a small parish near Kraków, and then he served as professor and chaplain at the Catholic University of Lublin (now John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin). At a very young age, because of his exceptional talents, he became archbishop of Kraków and then Cardinal.
Following the death of John Paul I, ten days after the funeral, at the age of 58, Karol elected as pope on October 16, 1978, and chose the name John Paul II in honor of his predecessor. Having consecrated his papacy to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as his motto says: 'Totus Tuus', meaning 'I am all yours'.
He embarked in a tireless apostolate around the world. The Pilgrim Pope, as he was known, he visited 129 countries, and travelled more than all previous 263 Popes combined. Moreover, he is credited to be the spiritual inspiration behind the fall of Communism in 1991.
While visiting Jerusalem in March 2000, John Paul became the first pope in history to visit and pray at the Western Wall. In September 2001, amid post-11 September concerns, he travelled to Kazakhstan, with an audience largely consisting of Muslims, and to Armenia, to participate in the celebration of 1,700 years of Armenian Christianity.
On May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, he was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca, an expert Turkish gunman who was a member of the militant fascist group Grey Wolves, and he miraculously survived the assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square. 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.
The pope made two trips to the Philippines: the first on February 18, 1981 where Lorenzo Ruiz is beatified in Manila, to which is the first beatification ceremony to be held outside the Vatican, and in January 15, 1995, during the X World Youth Day, he offered Mass to an estimated crowd of between five and seven million in Luneta Park in the Philippines, which was considered to be the largest single gathering in Christian history. And because of his special relationships with them, he is also known as the 'Pope of the Youth'.
As an extension of his successful work with youth as a young priest,
John Paul II pioneered the international World Youth Days. He presided over nine of them: Rome, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Compostella, Częstochowa, Denver (in the state of Colorado), Manila, Paris, and Toronto. The total attendance at these signature events of the pontificate was in the tens of millions. The Great Jubilee of 2000 was a call to the church to become more aware and to embrace his missionary task for the work of evangelization.
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.'
After a long and painful sickness, John Paul II went home to the Lord, on a sorrowful Saturday, April 2, 2005 at the age of 84, at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. His final words were: 'Pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca. (Allow me to depart to the house of the Father.)'
He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on May 1, 2011, and three years on April 27, 2014 on Divine Mercy Sunday, together with Pope John XXIII, he was canonized a saint by Pope Francis.
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