He was born May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland to Emilia Kaczorowska and to her husband, Karol Wojtyla, a retired army lieutenant. His brother, Edmund, fourteen years older than Lolek, as Karol Jr. was affectionately called, was his idol.

By the time he was 22 all three had died, but not without sharing with him their tender love, their own desire for God and dedication to prayer, their passion for sports and the great outdoors, and their esteem for culture and learning. All of them had impressed on his serious, yet active and affable nature a studiousness and a dutifulness that characterized him throughout his life.

His father passed on to the young Karol his own devotion to the Holy Spirit; according to John Paul’s testimony to André Frossard, this devotion’s "end product…is my encyclical on the Holy Spirit" (Lord and Giver of Life). Some speculate on how his childhood, in which he was deprived early of his mother’s presence, influenced his teachings on women in general (Dignity and Vocation of Woman, Letter to Women) and on Mary in particular (Mother of the Redeemer). None can credibly question the impact of his Jewish friendships and contacts, as well as of the Holocaust, on his shaping of Church relations with Judaism (We Remember).