Devout life of public service

PRAYERS were being said throughout the world yesterday for Pope John Paul II, who is in hospital receiving treatment for flu.

The heartfelt wishes reflect the popularity of the spiritual leader of millions of Catholics around the world.

His ability to mesmerise a crowd of hundreds of thousands is legendary and his visits to Britain and Ireland are still vivid in the memories of those who attended the huge gatherings.

One and a quarter million people congregated in Dublin's Phoenix Park to see him celebrate Mass in 1979 when he became the first Pope to set foot on Irish soil.

Three years later, during the Falklands War with Argentina, he toured England, Scotland and Wales.

Born on May 18, 1920, near Krakow, Poland, in 1978 Karol Jozef Wojtyla became the first non-Italian Pope for 450 years.

As a sports-mad youngster he had been an avid football goalkeeper and keen skier, as well as a noted lover of the arts who wrote poems under a pseudonym and toured the country performing Shakespeare and Polish drama.

Wojtyla was ordained as a priest in 1946 after he secretly studied theology during the Nazi occupation.

He was appointed as a bishop in 1958, aged 38, and six years later was made Archbishop of Krakow. He became a cardinal two years later.

He showed an early determination to establish himself as a figurehead for the Catholic community, returning to his Communist-run homeland in 1979.

Visits to more than 100 countries followed, and his keenness for public contact nearly cost him his life in an assassination attempt in St Peter's Square in 1981.

On March 14, 2004, he became the third-longest serving pontiff in history, having served 25 years and five months in office.

His latest bout of ill-health led to today's cancellation of his traditional Wednesday audience the first he has missed since September 2003.