WASHINGTON — Even before his election as Pope in 1978, Karol Wojtyla had lived a full and varied life. The Holy Father celebrates his 82 birthday May 18.

As a teen, he split stone at a quarry, wrote poetry and helped smuggle Jews to safety during the German occupation of Poland. As a young priest he was a favorite with students at Lublin University, who flocked to his classes and joined him on camping, hiking and canoeing trips. As the second youngest cardinal ever named by the Vatican, he ran an informal office and celebrated holidays with Krakow actors.

It should have been no surprise that he would redefine the traditional role and demeanor of the papacy by traveling extensively, continuing to enjoy strenuous outdoor activities and taking on a wide range of global political and moral issues.

The future Pope John Paul II was born May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, a small town near Krakow in southern Poland.

His mother, Emilia, was Lithuanian and spoke German at home, giving Karol an early start on his proficiency in languages. She died when Karol was 9, leaving him in the care of his father, whose weak health made the pair dependent upon his military pension.

Karol's only sibling, a physician 15 years older named Edmund, died during a scarlet fever epidemic three years after their mother died.

Lolek

In his local high school, Wojtyla was active in sports and a drama club and he was remembered as a good student who excelled at languages, religion and philosophy.

“Even as a boy he was exceptional,” said Rafat Tatka, a neighbor from Wadowice, who knew the young boy as Lolek, a nickname that translates as Chuck.

After graduation, he and his father moved to Krakow, where Wojtyla enrolled at the University of Krakow, studying philosophy, joining speech and drama clubs and writing poetry.

The Nazi takeover of Poland in September 1939 meant an official end to all religious training and cultural activities. But Wojtyla continued his studies in an underground university and helped set up a clandestine theater group that performed in stores and homes.

During the Nazi occupation, Wojtyla worked with the underground networks that helped hide Krakow's Jews and smuggle them into safe countries, providing a foundation for his efforts as Pope at strengthening Catholic-Jewish relations.

Meanwhile, helping to support his ailing father, Wojtyla found work in a quarry and a chemical factory — experiences that later provided material for his poetry and papal writings on labor. When his father died in the winter of 1941, Karol was 20. Friends said the young student knelt for 12 hours in prayer at his bedside. Soon after, he withdrew from the theatrical group and turned his attention to studying for the priesthood.

Wojtyla continued his college studies throughout the war, eventually entering a theological seminary operated by Krakow's Cardinal Adam Sapieha in his home in defiance of Nazi orders forbidding religious education. He was ordained on Nov. 1, 1946, just as the communist regime replaced the Germans at the end of the war.

Father Karol

Father Wojtyla's first assignment was to study at Rome's Angelicum University, where he earned a doctorate in ethics. Upon his return to Poland in 1948, the young priest was assigned to the rural village of Niegowic for a year before returning to Krakow. There, he served at St. Florian Parish, devoting much of his attention to young people — teaching, playing soccer and drawing university students to his house for discussions.

After earning a second doctorate in moral theology, Father Wojtyla began teaching at Lublin University in 1953, commuting by train from his Krakow parish. He was a prolific writer, publishing more than 100 articles and several books on ethics and other subjects. And at 36, he became a full professor at the Institute of Ethics at Lublin, a position he held even after being made a bishop in 1958.

Father Wojtyla's interest in outdoor activities remained strong. Groups of students regularly joined him for hiking, skiing, bicycling, camping and kayaking, accompanied by prayer, outdoor Masses and theological discussions. His energy earned him the title “the eternal teen-ager” from his younger companions.

In fact, Father Wojtyla was on a kayaking trip in 1958 when he was called to Warsaw for the announcement that he was to be made a bishop. At 38, he became the youngest bishop in Poland's history.

As a bishop, archbishop and later as a cardinal, he continued to live a simple life, shunning the trappings that came with his advancing position. For instance, he only left his Krakow apartment for the more luxurious bishop's residence after friends moved his belongings one day when he was out of town.

In 1964, shortly before the end of the Second Vatican Council, he was named archbishop of Krakow and became the first resident head of the see since the death of Cardinal Sapieha in 1951.

Cardinal Wojtyla

Just three years later, at the age of 47, he became the second youngest man ever inducted into the College of Cardinals. But he continued to have an open approach to the people of the archdiocese, seeing visitors without appointments and holding seminars at the cardinal's residence for actors, workers, students, priests and nuns.

Pursuing his avid interest in the outdoors, Cardinal Wojtyla once was challenged by a border guard while skiing near the Czechoslovakian border. The militia officer initially insisted the skier must have stolen a cardinal's papers because he couldn't imagine a high-ranking church official would be skiing, especially in such shabby clothes.

Another story tells of Cardinal Wojtyla's visit to a rest home for priests. An elderly priest mistook the young man for a sports- loving visitor and sent him on errands, which the cardinal carried out without comment.

He traveled to the United States at the invitation of friends, touring Polish neighborhoods in several U.S. cities. True to form, on a stop to see a friend in Montana Cardinal Wojtyla canceled several meetings to take off canoeing. Yet after a speech to seminarians at Harvard, the student newspaper, The Crimson, aptly predicted the visiting cardinal might be the next Pope.

Pope John Paul II

Even when Pope Paul IV and Pope John Paul I died within months of each other in 1978, Cardinal Wojtyla still was little known outside Poland and the College of Cardinals. The announcement of his election on Oct. 16, 1978, was met with surprise that continued as Pope John Paul II developed his own style in office.

Although age and accidents have slowed his step, he still travels regularly, participates in whatever outdoor activities that time and his doctor allow, and reaches out to children and youths everywhere he goes.