Question: I’ve seen several reports that Pope John Paul II, as a salesman and chemist for I. G. ...

Question (composite of several): I’ve seen several reports that Pope John Paul II, as a salesman and chemist for I. G. Farben Chemical Company during World War II, both developed and “sold cyanide to the Nazis for use in Auschwitz; [and] after the war...fearing for his life, joined the Catholic Church and was ordained a priest in 1946...,” etc., etc. Is this true?

Answer: I don’t believe so. John Paul II was born Karol Wojtyla May 18, 1920 in Wadowice in southern Poland into a devout Catholic family that attended daily Mass. He was baptized in the Wadowice parish church on May 29, 1920 (some reports say June 20), received his first communion there, served as an altar boy and in his early adult years continued to attend daily Mass. Thus the idea that he “joined the Catholic Church” after the war hardly rings true, much less that he could have been ordained a priest only one year later in 1946!

As for his activities during the war, Wojtyla moved to Krakow in 1938 to study Polish literature at the Jadiellonian University. The school was shut down in 1939 by the Nazis after their occupation of Poland. To prevent deportation to forced labor, one had to possess an Arbeitskarte (work card), which he obtained by finding work at the limestone quarry of the Solvay chemical works. In 1941-42 he was transferred to the water purification department (carrying lime in buckets to dump into water). During these early war years he was involved with an underground group of intellectuals, students and actors trying to keep Polish culture alive under Nazi persecution and was an actor in the Rhapsodic Theater group in Krakow, performing patriotic plays in secret.

In 1942 Wojtyla, after declaring his intention to become a priest, began clandestine theological studies. In 1944 he moved in with several other students to live and study in secret under the protection of Archbishop Adam Sapieha-Kodenski in his palace. Wojtyla was ordained a priest November 1, 1946, by the Archbishop. The documentation for the above seems solid and cannot be reconciled with the alleged I. G. Farben chemist/salesman scenario.