Universal Father: A Life Of Pope John Paul II - Hardcover

O'Connor, Garry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596910968 ISBN 13: 9781596910966

Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA, 2005

Synopsis

Pope John Paul II will go down in history not only as the third longest serving pope, but possibly the most politically influential of all 305 popes and antipopes since St. Peter.

Born in Poland in 1920, Karol Wojtyla’s early life was filled with intense love and intense loss: he was eight when his mother died, twelve when his older brother died of scarlet fever, and twenty when his severe but loving father died during the Nazi occupation. An avid soccer player and skier, a gifted poet, playwright and actor, by 1944, after a near fatal accident, Wojtyla was studying for the priesthood in secret.  Garry O’Connor, an accomplished biographer of the likes of Sir Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson and William Shakespeare has spent the last five years writing and researching this book. Unlike the competition, this book details not only Wojtyla’s life before he became pope, his friendships with men and with women, his nationalism, his early years as a priest in rural Poland and his travels to Rome, but it also explores the pope’s own poems, plays, and philosophical works to find clues to what makes him tick.

About this title

Review:

In Universal Father, leading theatrical biographer O’Connor has produced a book that is deeply respectful and engrossing. -- Roger Lewis, Daily Express

There will no doubt be a flood of biographies but this one will remain the most popular amoung Roman Catholics. -- A N Wilson in The Mail on Sunday

Universal Father is a distinctive, insightful and enjoyable book. -- Peter Standford in the Independent

From the Publisher:

The first biography to tell the full and extraordinary story of one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, setting the private individual in the public context

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1596910968
• ISBN 13: 9781596910966
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 436