Every corner reminds us of Wojtyla

As a group, we silently viewed the rooms full of the intimate details of a home with its memories. I saw the photo of little Karol, posing on the very day of his First Holy Communion, with the sad expression of a boy who had lost his beloved mother only a month previously. The rooms of this house-museum bear witness to the life of a Pope; from his childhood, on through his youth, through the studies of his native Poland with its history and its people, the period of labour, his theological studies, and on to the Holy See…

Krakow attracts tourists from all over the world for its social, cultural and historical inheritance, and also because of an unforgettable atmosphere that can't really be described. Actually the only solution is to go and feel it.

Anyone visiting the Polish city should, in addition to this magic place, extend their journey a little further to the south-west.

Wadowice is a small and seemingly obscure town, about fifty kilometers from Krakow . You can reach it by bus, or even better by the special “Papal train”, which is a tourist attraction in itself. “Pociag Papieski” is a “train” that offers tourist information about Wadowice and introduces them to the atmosphere of the native city of the late Pope John Paul II.

I went into the house on 7 Koscielnej ulici (Church Street), where Karol Jozef Wojtyla, the youngest child of Emilia and Karol. – future Pope John Paul II, an authority for many, and yet a modest and simple man was born on the 18th of May 1920 . From this place, after graduating from Grammar School, in 1938, he departed for his studies in Krakow . It was from there that his road toward the Vatican was initiated, and, on October 16th 1978 , he became “the Holy Father”.

The sad expression of a young boy

Wadowice is that place which he often thought about and spoke about with a lot of love. Those events of his life were especially precious for his fellow citizens, who proudly preserved all the stories from his life, as if they were the stories of their city. On his third visit to Wadowice, on June 16th 1999 , John Paul II said: “As a son, I kiss the threshold of my family home. I am thankful to God for the life given to me through my parents, for the cosiness of my family nest, for the love of my dear ones”. Those words express all his feelings towards that town, and also towards the homeland that was always close to his heart - his love for his origins, and above all for “God of goodness”, who gave him all that he experienced in his life.

At a glance, Wadowice is a small, completely ordinary town. There are thousands like it in Poland . The main square today is named after its greatest fellow citizen, with its Basilica of Ofiarowania Najswietszej Marii Panny - where little Karol was baptized. But his actual home, for me personally is its greatest attraction.

The building in which the Wojtyla family lived was built before 1845 and is in the very centre of the town. His parents had been renting an apartment on the first floor since 1919 - two rooms with the kitchen. A ‘Sister Nazarene' guarding the entrance into the house-museum told me that between one to two thousand pilgrims visited the house daily. After the death of the Holy Father though, the number of visitors increased to about three thousand daily. As a group, we silently viewed the rooms full of the intimate details of a home with its memories. I saw the photo of little Karol, posing on the very day of his First Holy Communion, with the sad expression of a boy who had lost his beloved mother only a month previously. The rooms of this house-museum bear witness to the life of a Pope. Through childhood, on through youth, his studies of his native Poland - its history and its people, the period of labour, his theological studies, and on to the Holy See…

The full article can be found on pages 58-59 of Vol 2
2007 issue.