Karol Wojtyla – Pope John Paul II – Diplomatic Passport As Cardinal
Tom Topol Hours 23 November, 2016 7 March, 2018
Karol Wojtyla – Pope John Paul II – Diplomatic Passport As Cardinal. Over the years I got many interesting emails, questions and offers from readers but this email was truly something extraordinary. This "somebody" was always very anonymous and he did not wanted even send some pictures. I told him I can not give you my expert opinion when I not even see some pictures. After he send me some pictures I told him then it´s a complete different story if you saying you have a passport of Pope John Paul II or if you have a passport before he was Pope as Cardinal. No doubt this diplomatic travel document is of significance but still it´s a difference if Pope or Cardinal.
Then I find out the guy I was mailing to was not the owner of the document but he was acting in his name. I did a quick web research if recently such a passport was "missing" somewhere but I didn´t find anything.
Then silence for a few days. What happened? Why did this guy disappeared? Then finally a feedback as he spoke to the owner of the document, obviously a Pole who doesn´t speak English.
He told me the owner of Karol Wojtyla´s Diplomatic passport want to have ONE MILLION EURO! Boom! What a number! I told him – IMPOSSIBLE! I named him several auction houses where he could get also a statement on this document but I am very sure they all will say too – IMPOSSIBLE!
Talking to two auction experts they estimated such a document in the high 5-digit range maybe just exceeding the 6-digit barrier but a 7-digit figure – NO!
Since then silence again…
Well, at least I can present you one picture (I got three) of this outstanding travel document.
Polish Diplomatic Passport of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) as Cardinal issued 1967 in Warsaw and valid till 1969, passport no. 0014582
KAROL JÓZEF WOJTYŁA, elected Pope on 16 October 1978, was born in Wadowice, Poland, on 18 May 1920.
He was the third of three children born to Karol Wojtyła and Emilia Kaczorowska, who died in 1929. His elder brother Edmund, a physician, died in 1932, and his father, Karol, a non-commissioned officer in the army, died in 1941.
He was nine years old when he received his First Communion and eighteen when he received the Sacrament of Confirmation. After completing high school in Wadowice, he enrolled in the Jagellonian University of Krakow in 1938.
When the occupying Nazi forces closed the University in 1939, Karol worked (1940-1944) in a quarry and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn a living and to avoid deportation to Germany.
Feeling called to the priesthood, he began his studies in 1942 in the clandestine major seminary of Krakow, directed by the Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha. During that time, he was one of the organizers of the "Rhapsodic Theatre", which was also clandestine.
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