D.C. Shrine Celebrates St. John Paul II as a Freedom Fighter

Pope John Paul II is understood for his opposition to Soviet communism. Much less remembered is his quiet resistance to Poland’s wartime Nazi occupiers, when he attended an underground seminary and acted in a secret theater group.

Much more forgotten is his combat in opposition to oppressive constructing regulation. When the postwar Polish communist regime constructed a mannequin metropolis so excellent it did not embody a church, then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla fought for years to get the permissions crucial to construct one.

These are only a few of the papal “deep cuts” you will study on the Saint John Paul II Nationwide Shrine in Washington, D.C., the place the pope’s papers, private results, and plenty of archival footage of his life are on show, with a robust emphasis on John Paul II’s work defending human freedom in a century the place it was always below menace.