Jan Paweł II, Kraków

The John Paul II Monument stands in the courtyard of Kraków’s Bishop’s Palace at Franciszkańska 3. Created by Italian sculptor Jole Sensi Croci and unveiled in 1980, it depicts the pope greeting the faithful. It was Poland’s first monument to John Paul II and a gift from Italian artists.

This is Kraków’s monument to John Paul II, set in the Bishop’s Palace courtyard at Franciszkańska 3. Italian sculptor Jole Sensi Croci made it, portraying the pope in his familiar greeting to the faithful. Unveiled in 1980, it became the first monument to John Paul II in Poland, presented to Kraków by Italian artists.

The man represented here began life as Karol Józef Wojtyła, born in Wadowice on the eighteenth of May 1920. He came to Kraków in 1938 to study at the Jagiellonian University. During the German occupation, he laboured in a limestone quarry and at the Solvay chemical factory, work that spared him deportation to Germany; meanwhile, he pursued theatre and entered the underground seminary.

Wojtyła later became Archbishop of Kraków and a cardinal before his election as pope in October 1978. As John Paul II, he led the Catholic Church until his death in 2005, the first non-Italian pope since the sixteenth century. He travelled to 129 countries, helped challenge communist rule in Poland and elsewhere in Europe, and was declared a saint in 2014. This greeting figure preserves the connection between a global pope and the Kraków where his path took shape.