On His Knees

Karol Wojtyła, who we now call Blessed John Paul II, became a cardinal in 1967 at the young age of forty-seven. This short except from George Weigel’s biography of Blessed John Paul II, Witness to Hope, describes how devoted Cardinal Wojtyła was when he served as archbishop of Krakow, Poland.

Wojtyła was running a very large organization as archbishop of Krakow, but this was an organization with a difference. This was the Church, and he would govern it like the Church, not like some other kind of institution.

He lived this approach to leadership and problem solving every day. Each morning, after Mass and breakfast, the archbishop disappeared into his chapel, and it was known that he was not to be disturbed. There, alone, a few yards from the spot where Cardinal Sapieha had ordained him a priest, he spent two hours writing at a small desk, facing the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle on the altar. It is said that there are theologians who do theology at their desks and theologians who do theology on their knees; the same might be said about bishops and their governance of dioceses. Karol Wojtyła was a bishop who governed his diocese (and did his philosophy and theology) “on his knees”—or at a desk in the sacramental presence of his Lord (188).

And with joy, he carried this serious holiness all the way to the papacy. Blessed John Paul II, please pray for our cardinals and bishops, that they may be like you and lead with the light of the Lord.