FAMOUS POLES

Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyła ( )

He was born on 18 May 1920 in Wadowice. As a youth, Wojtyła was an athlete and often played football as a goalkeeper, he was also a supporter of Polish club Cracovia Kraków. In the summer of 1938, Karol Wojtyła and his father left Wadowice and moved to Kraków, where he enrolled at the Jagiellonian University. He studied Polish Philology and was interested in drama. He was a student actor and wrote some plays and poetic works. He also learned various languages and as a very talented student he mastered 12, nine of which he later used as Pope. During the Second World War he attended a secret seminary where he prepared for the ministry in the Church and became a priest in He was then sent to study theology in Rome, where he earned a licentiate and later a doctorate in sacred theology. He returned to Poland in the summer of From 1949 he taught ethics at the Jagiellonian University and at the Catholic University of Lublin. On 4th July 1958 he was nominated for the position of auxiliary bishop of Kraków. Bishop Wojtyła also participated in all of the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops. In December 1963 Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Kraków. On 26 June 1967, Paul VI announced Archbishop Wojtyła's promotion to the Sacred College of Cardinals. In 1978, after John Paul I death, Wojtyła became the 264th Pope according to the chronological List of popes. At only 58 years of age, he was the youngest pope elected since Pope Pius IX in 1846, who was 54. He reigned as Pope from 16th October 1978 until his death, 2nd April His pontificate was almost 27 years and was the second –longest. He was the only Polish pope and was the first non-Italian since John Paul II was one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century. He contributed to bring down communism in Eastern Europe, he also improved relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism, the Eastern Orthodox Church and Anglican Churches. He was also one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. He was fluent in many languages: his native Polish as well as Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, Ancient Greek and Latin. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonized 483 saints. John Paul II had a special relationship with Catholic youth and is known by some as The Pope for Youth. Before he was pontiff, he used to camp and mountain hike with the youth. He still went mountain hiking when he was pope. He established World Youth Day in 1984 with the intention of bringing young Catholics from all parts of the world together to celebrate the faith. On Saturday 2 April 2005, at about 15:30, John Paul II spoke his final words, “pozwólcie mi odejść do domu Ojca”, (“Let me go to the house of the Father”), to his aides in his native Polish. He died in his private apartment, at 21:37.

Henryk Sienkiewicz ( )

Sienkiewicz was born in Wola Okrzejska. In 1858, Henryk began secondary school in Warsaw. Because of the hard financial times nineteen-year-old Sienkiewicz found a job as a tutor in the Weyher family in Płońsk. During that time he probably wrote his first novel, Ofiara (Victim). In 1866 he finished secondary school and he passed the examination to the medical department at Warsaw University, what was his parents’ will. After some time, he resigned and began law studies. Finally he landed at Institute of Philology and History and studied knowledge of literature and Old Polish. In 1869 Sienkiewicz debuted as a journalist and from 1874 he took care of literary department in Niwa. Sienkiewicz traveled a lot and all his journeys inspired him to write lots of great works. In 1876 he went to the United States with Helena Modrzejewska and published his travelogue letters in the press at home. He came back to Europe in First he stayed in London and then went to Paris for a year. On 18th August 1881 he married Maria Szetkiewicz in Venice. They had two children Henryk Józef and Jadwiga Maria. They marriage did not last long because Maria died on 18th August After Maria's death Sienkiewicz went to Constantinople from where he was writing reports. After his return to Warsaw the third volume of the Trilogy, Pan Wołodyjowski (Fire in the Steppe1888) appeared, the first two volumes, Ogniem i mieczem (With Fire and Sword, 1884), Potop (The Deluge, 1886)were written earlier. In 1888 Sienkiewicz went to Spain and at the end of 1890 he went to Africa. On November 11th, 1893, Henryk married Maria Romanowska, but she left him soon. In February 1895 Sienkiewicz wrote the first chapters of Quo Vadis for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in He died on November 15, 1916, in Vevey, where he was buried. In 1924 his ashes were repatriated to Warsaw, Poland, and placed in the crypt of St. John's Cathedral. Henryk Sienkiewicz ( )

Frederic Chopin ( )

He was born in Żelazowa Wola. His father was French and mother Polish. When Fryderyk was six, he could play the piano and even make up new melodies. Seven-year old little Chopin began giving public concerts and composed two Polonaises, in G minor and B-flat major. He was very talented child and all his early life he spent on playing, giving concerts and composing. In November 1830, at the age of twenty, he went abroad. In 1831 he arrived to Paris where he spent most of his life. His life in Paris was good and comfortable, he gave concerts and taught piano lessons and composed. In February 1848, he gave his last Paris concert. In April, because of the Revolution of 1848 he left for London, where he performed at several concerts and at many parties in great houses. Then he went to Scotland, staying at the castle of his pupil Jane Wilhelmina Stirling. At the end of November 1848, Chopin returned to Paris. He died in Paris in 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis. Frederic Chopin composed his works almost exclusively for the piano: with orchestra - 2 concertos (in F-minor and E-minor), 'Variations on Mozart'; solos - 3 sonatas, 2 fantasias, 27 etudes, 25 preludes, 16 polonaises, 57 mazurkas, 19 waltzes, 19 nocturnes, 4 ballades, 4 scherzos, other minor works and also songs for solo performance. His works had an enormous influence on the music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nicolaus Copernicus ( )

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in Toruń. In 1485, after his father death, his uncle Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, a church canon who would later become Prince-Bishop of the Archbishopric of Warmia, took young Nicolaus under his protection and saw to his education and future career. In 1491 Copernicus started studying at the Kraków Academy where astronomy fascinated him. Next Copernicus went to study law and medicine at the universities of Bologna and Padua. at Bologna, he met the famous astronomer, Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara, attended his lectures and became his disciple and assistant. The first observations that Copernicus made in 1497, together with Novara, are recorded in Copernicus' epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. In 1503, Copernicus returned to Polish Prussia, to his uncle who was the Bishop of Warmia. From 1503 until 1510 he had the position of secretary to his maternal uncle and lived in the Bishop's castle at Lidzbark Warmiński. Copernicus started work on his heliocentric view of the heavens there. In , Copernicus resided at Olsztyn Castle as economic administrator of Warmia, and wrote the manuscript Locationes mansorum desertorum (Locations of Deserted Fiefs). In 1526, Copernicus wrote a study on the value of money, Monetae cudendae ratio. In 1514 Copernicus showed to friends his Commentariolus (Little Commentary), a six page hand-written text describing his ideas about the heliocentric hypothesis. In 1533 The lectures were heard with interest by Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals. Copernicus didn’t published this text until the year of his death (1543) in the work 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres). Copernicus died in Frombork on 24 May His epochal book is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution. His heliocentric model, with the sun at the center of the universe, demonstrated that the observed motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe. His work stimulated further scientific investigations, becoming a landmark in the history of modern science that is now often referred to as the Copernican Revolution.