Karol Wojtyla, better known to many as "Pope John Paul II" (Jan Pawel II), was born in Wadowice, Poland in 1920 and, after the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 - to almost everyone's complete surprise - was elected as his successor at the head of the Catholic Church. As a young man, he had experience of dictatorships under the Nazi regime in German-occupied Poland and later under communist rule. During the so-called "Cold War" at the time, his support for freedom efforts, especially in Eastern Europe, and his contribution to the fall of the so-called "Iron Curtain" were correspondingly great and passionate.
Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) died in the Vatican in 2005 after a long illness.