Many would be surprised to learn some of the great things about Pope John Paul II written by Rabbi Marc Gellman (Temple Beth Torah in Melville, NY). Here’s an excerpt that has reshaped my opinion of the late Karol Wojtyla:
Once, just after World War II, a mother came to a priest and told him that she had a Jewish baby given to her by parents who were later murdered at Auschwitz. She wanted to know if it was religiously proper to have the child baptized and raise him as a Catholic. The priest ordered the woman to look for the closest Jewish relative of that baby boy and return the child to his family and to Judaism. Karol Wojtyla was that priest. A theologian probably would have baptized the baby. A run-of-the-mill Polish priest of the 1930s definitely would have baptized the baby. But because he was a perfect priest he never thought twice about bringing a lost sheep home to its wounded flock. And because he loved Jews and had many Jewish friends and even played goalie on a Jewish soccer team, he was able to deliver the message of Vatican II and its encyclical Nostra Aetate, which was brought to life by the perfect priest Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII. John Paul II took the poison of anti-Semitism out of the church because he had first taken it out of himself. He did not permit the teaching of contempt for my people as a pope because he did not allow it as a perfect priest.