In Part 1, I noted the languages Our Lord spoke and detailed how Pope St. John Paul II communicated in styles other than the usual discourse. In this Part, I detail how John Paul communicated in a manner appropriate to his audiences and in the native tongues of the people.

Communicating in a Manner Appropriate to His Audiences

Father Wojtyla obtained the normal academic degrees required for his 1946 ordination. By the time he was posted in 1949 as a chaplain to the students at Jagiellonian University, he had obtained the first of his two doctorates. Clearly, he was intellectually gifted, but his sermons were too heavy, even for students. Open to this criticism, he changed.[i] You will notice the symbiotic relationship: Unless the lay people had been willing to critique their priest’s style of speech, he may not have changed it.

His biographer, George Weigel, tells us of a second criticism of Father Wojtyla’s talks: “Countess Potocka…wanted to be challenged, confronted and criticized in sermons. Father Wojtyla followed suit.”[ii]

Communicating in Native Tongues of the People

Now we turn to the third of the three points I identified: speaking in the native tongues of the people. Karol Wojtyla loved language. Although Polish and other languages, spoken or written, came easily to him, he did have to work at it.

During his first year in college at Jagiellonian University,[iii] 1938-39, he studied philology, the study of language in written sources. According to Weigel: “In his freshman year he took a demanding academic load:

• courses on Polish etymology [roots of words], phonetics, and inflection and on the interpretation of literary texts;
• surveys of medieval, modern, and contemporary Polish poetry, drama, and novels;
• introductory courses in Russian; and
• a survey of the grammar of Old Church Slavonic, the historic basis of Slavic languages.”[iv]

At the same time, Wojtyla wrote plays and poetry. During the Nazi occupation during World War II, he was active in clandestine theatre.

John Paul II spoke in languages in which he was fluent and also in languages in which he was not fluent. In what languages was His Holiness fluent? I count nine: Polish, Latin, German, Spanish, French, Italian, English, Portuguese, and Russian.

Polish

Polish of course was his mother tongue. Indeed his lengthy Theology of the Body was written in longhand and in Polish.[v]

Pope St. John Paul II showed an early interest in ensuring that the Church could be understood by the laity. For his 1958 consecration as a bishop, when the archbishop refused Bishop-elect Wojtyla’s request for a “liturgical commentator” who could explain the rite of consecration in Polish to the congregation, he personally arranged for a Polish translation of the Latin language rite to be distributed to the congregation.[vi]

German

As a schoolboy, Karol Wojtyla and his (Jewish) friend, Jerzy Kluger, learned German from Wojtyla’s father, a retired officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, in Wojtyla’s home.[vii] About 13 years later, as part of his work in writing his thesis, during 1951-1953, Father Wojtyla decided that, to better understand the German philosopher Max Scheler, it would be best to translate Scheler’s work into Polish first.[viii] Amazing!

Latin

As a 13 year old schoolboy, Wojtyla started studying Latin in school. (A year later, the school’s curriculum for his level included New Testament Greek.[ix]) When Wojtyla attended the seminary, he did so at a time when seminary classes were conducted in Latin. He wrote his 1948 doctoral dissertation on St. John of the Cross in Latin.[x] As a chaplain at Jagiellonian University (beginning in 1949), he formed a study group to read St. Thomas Aquinas in the original Latin.[xi] Furthermore, the official language of Vatican Council II (1962-65), which Bishop Wojtyla attended, was Latin.[xii]

Russian

As noted above, during Wojtyla’s first year of college he started learning Russian. Weigel reports that he read Russian philosophers and theologians extensively, but notes that he read them in French or Polish translations.[xiii] Other biographers and press reports state he was fluent in Russian.[xiv] He was of course a bishop and cardinal for twenty years (1958-1978) in Poland under the Soviet thumb.

Spanish

Although Father Wojtyla wrote his dissertation on St. John of the Cross in Latin, he had studied St. John’s writings in their original Spanish. He did so, amazingly, by utilizing a Spanish-German dictionary.[xv] It was after he became pope, that Pope St. John Paul II became orally fluent in Spanish.[xvi] After his election as pope at age 58, he continued his lifelong discipline of studying foreign languages for an hour each evening.[xvii]

French, English, Italian

During Wojtyla’s first year in college, he took private lessons in French.[xviii] The following year, 1939-40, with school suspended due to the Nazi cancellation of classes, and while working, he continued to study French – on his own.[xix] As mentioned earlier, for two years after ordination, 1946-1948, he studied and lived in Rome. He resided at the Belgian College with 22 student-priests and seminarians who spoke various languages. There he practiced his German, improved his French, and started learning Italian and English.[xx]

More on French

During the Synod of Bishops in 1971, Cardinal Wojtyla gave a press conference in French on Maximilian Kolbe who was to be beatified four days later.[xxi] Weigel reports that he “read seriously in modern French thought.”[xxii] As pope, before he left Poland on his first, and what then may have been his last trip, in June 1979, he delivered formal remarks in French.[xxiii] On his trip to Morocco in 1985, he addressed the 85,000 Muslim youth in French.[xxiv] He celebrated the liturgy in Beirut in 1997 in French.[xxv]

More on English

As a cardinal (named in 1967), he was tutored in English by a nun.[xxvi] In 1969 and again in 1976, he traveled extensively through the United States (our bicentennial year), Canada and Australia (visiting my parish in August, 1976, Washington, D.C.[xxvii]). On at least one occasion in 1976, near Boston, he gave an address in English.[xxviii]

More on Italian

In 1974, Cardinal Wojtyla delivered an address in Italian at the Abbey of Fossa Nuova on the occasion of the 700^th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas.[xxix] Immediately following his 1978 election to the papacy, he famously endeared himself to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square when he addressed it in what he called “our Italian language.”[xxx]

Portuguese

In addition to learning Spanish for oral fluency while he was pope, Pope St. John Paul II also learned Portuguese in time for his 1980 trip to Brazil and he used it throughout the trip.[xxxi]

Weigel also informs us that John Paul II exchanged jokes and stories in English, French, Italian, Polish and Portuguese[xxxii] and fielded impromptu questions in English, Italian, French, Polish and German.[xxxiii]

In Part 3, I will begin with the languages in which Pope St. John Paul II communicated although he was not fluent in them and I will conclude with lessons for priests and laity to be learned from Pope St. John Paul II.

[A link to Part 1 is here.]

[i] George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999, 2001, revised 2005), p. 95 of the 2001 ed. All page references to “Weigel” are to the 2001 edition.)

[ii] Weigel, p.95.

[iii] Here is a picture of him as a college student: A Catholic Mom in Hawaii, “Portraits of Our Beloved Holy Fathers [JPII and Benedict XVI] and Their Words of Spiritual Guidance,” April 8, 2011.

[iv] Weigel, p. 40 (bullets added).

[v] John Paul II (M. Waldstein, trans.), Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (2006), p. 8.

[vi] Weigel, p. 148.

[vii] Weigel, p. 30.

[viii] Weigel, p. 124.

[ix] Weigel, p. 32.

[x] Weigel, p. 85.

[xi] Weigel, p. 95.

[xii] Weigel, p. 160.

[xiii] Weigel, pp. 568-9.

[xiv] C. Bernstein and M. Politi, His Holiness, pp. 116, 476 (1997).

[xv] Weigel, p. 48.

[xvi] “The Many Languages of Pope John Paul II,” Catholic Exchange, April 30, 2005 (citing Sofia Celeste, “Language May Be the Key for the Next Pope,” Boston Globe, April 15, 2005, which in turn quoted biographer Marco Politi).

[xvii] My recollection of a newspaper article after the 1978 papal election.

[xviii] Weigel, p. 41.

[xix] Weigel, p. 55.

[xx] Weigel, p.83.

[xxi] Weigel, p. 221.

[xxii] Weigel, p. 240.

[xxiii] Weigel, p. 320.

[xxiv] Weigel, p. 499.

[xxv] Weigel, p. 817.

[xxvi] Weigel, pp. 250, 961, n.141.

[xxvii] “Our Parish History,” Annunciation Parish, Washington, D.C.

[xxviii] Weigel, pp. 222, 225.

[xxix] Weigel, p. 236.)

[xxx] Weigel, pp. 255-6.

[xxxi] Weigel, p. 379.

[xxxii] Weigel, p. 879.

[xxxiii] Weigel, p. 267.