October 14, 1978. The doors of the Sistine Chapel close again for a conclave after the sudden death of John Paul I, only 33 days after his election.
Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla leaves Krakow and travels back to Rome. A new pope had to be elected. After three days of voting, the Polish cardinal became John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in more than four centuries.
ARCHIVE, 2018
ARTURO MARI
Vatican Photographer
The conclave ends and, from one moment to the next, white smoke. “Habemus papam… Karol Wojtyla” People wondered…. “I shouted: “Well, Karol Wojtyla!” It was him! I almost had a heart attack from joy.
VALENTINA ALAZRAKI
Televisa Correspondent (Mexico)
From the very moment he appeared, we had the feeling that something new was appearing. Not just because he was a handsome man; he was a 58-year-old man. It was immediately apparent that he had enormous charisma.
Until then, the new pope had been unknown outside his native Poland. His life was not easy either. He worked as a stone-cutter in a quarry and later in a factory. His time in the seminary, moreover, was secret.
ARCHIVE, 2003
JOHN PAUL II
This experience, the experience of a worker and at the same time of a “clandestine” seminarian, has accompanied me all my life. In the factory, to do my eight-hour shift, day and night, I took some books with me. My colleagues, that is, the workers, were a little surprised, but not scandalized.
ANTONIO PELAYO
Antena 3 Correspondent (Spain)
He came from a country that had lived through, first, the terrible Nazi invasion and many years of a communist regime, atheist and belligerent with the Church, and that was already a huge novelty. And then he, in fact, broke away from the very distant heroic scheme of the people.
A revolutionary model of the concept of pope to which the Holy See was not accustomed. And if not, take a look at these images… The pontiff was fond of poetry, liked to go to the countryside and play sports. Hence he was nicknamed 'God's athlete'.
VALENTINA ALAZRAKI
Televisa Correspondent (Mexico)
He was a man who had been among actors and actresses, young people, boys and girls, he would go hiking, he would go canoeing, he would go skiing and here, immediately, he began to do somehow the same thing.
So much so that, in his 27 years as pope, he escaped from the Vatican to ski on more than 100 occasions. He used to do it on Tuesdays, on his day off during the week. Incognito and in an anonymous car, he would go some 200 km from Rome.
Small getaways that he combined with his long international visits, for which he earned the nickname of 'the traveling pope'.
ANTONIO PELAYO
Antena 3 Correspondent (Spain)
As he was called, 'the globe trotter of the world', because he visited, during those 104 trips he made, he visited practically the entire African continent, the entire Latin American continent, many countries in Asia and, of course, practically all the countries in Europe.
But beyond being a pilgrim throughout the world, his charisma and closeness also permeated the corridors of the Vatican. Everyone who passed by his side, from his collaborators to the workers, shared the same impression.
ARCHIVE, 2020
LUCIANO FIRMANI
Former Vatican Ombudsman
Every time he entered the elevator and we had to accompany him, he would always ask about the family: How are they? Is everyone well? And little by little, with the service he was doing, I was lucky enough to go to a morning mass in his apartment with my daughters, my wife and my mother.
ARCHIVE, 2018
ARTURO MARI
Vatican Photographer
I can say that he treated me like a son and I saw him as a father. He had time to ask me how I was doing, if everything was going well at home, with my wife? He spoke up to three times with my wife and to this day I still don't know what he said to her. Whenever I ask her, she always tells me: 'It's not your problem'.
The freshness of his style and the normality of his words broke the mold of the concept of the pope of his time; a legacy that, 20 years later, is still valid.
CA
TR: JH
