Chirlen and youth

Chirlen and youth

Karol Józef was born on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, a town in Poland near Krakow.

He was the youngest of the three children of the marriage composed by Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Kaczorowska. His mother was a fervent Catholic, and he managed to have his son born near a temple, because he wanted the first thing his son heard to be the "songs to God." When Karol was still very young, his mother said to other women: You will see that my little Karol will be a great person. His mother died in 1929, when he was nine years old. His sister Olga had died before he was born. His older brother Edmund, who was a doctor, died in 1932 because of an illness when he cured a man of humble condition. Together with his father, Karol moved to Krakow to begin his studies at the Jagiellonian University. His father, a non-commissioned officer of the Polish army, died in 1941 during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany. His father always led him on the path of faith and Christian love.

After finishing high school, an era in which he excelled as a consummate chess player (becoming a winner in several student championships), he enrolled in the Jagiellonian University of Krakow and also in a theater school. When German forces closed the university in September 1939, the young Karol had to work in a quarry and then in a chemical factory (Solvay), to earn a living and to avoid being deported to Germany. Fichado by the Gestapo, it took refuge in an attic of Cracow. At that time he joined the group of the famous Polish actor Mieczysław Kotlarczyk, creator of the Rhapsodic theater, with which he played roles of patriotic content.

During the German occupation of Poland, he especially cultivated culture, theater and friendships, in the context of the Unia group, formed by young Catholics who wanted to resist, both peacefully (like Wojtyła) and action (directly helping the Jews Or using violence), to the Nazi occupation. Later, his situation was complicated and he had to take refuge in the underground ones of the archbishopric of Cracow.

Important for his spiritual growth was the person of a tailor, Jan Tyranowski, who gave him to read St. John of the Cross. They met in 1940; Tyranowski was gathering a group of young people.

One of the places where he liked to go to pray and rest was Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, where his grandfather and great-grandfather had worked as guides for the pilgrims who went there.