This square in Kalisz is named after Karol Wojtyla, better known to many as "Pope JAN PAWEL II." He was born in Wadowice, Poland in 1920 and, after the death of Pope Jan Pawel I in the "Year of Three Popes" in 1978 - to almost everyone's surprise - he 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 of German-occupied Poland and later under communist rule. During the so-called "Cold War" at the time, his support for the freedom movement, especially in the countries of Eastern Europe, and his part in the fall of the so-called "Iron Curtain" that separated the Western European states from the Eastern Bloc was correspondingly great and passionate.
Karol Wojtyla (Pope Jan Pawel II) died in the Vatican in 2005 after a long illness.