Review: National shrine celebrates St. John Paul II as a freedom fighter

Pope John Paul II is understood for his opposition to Soviet communism. Less remembered is his quiet resistance to Poland’s wartime Nazi occupiers, when he attended an underground seminary and acted in a secret theater crew.

Even extra forgotten is his battle towards oppressive development rules. When the postwar Polish communist regime constructed a fashion town so best possible it did not come with a church, then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyla fought for years to get the permissions important to construct one.

Those are simply some of the papal “deep cuts” you can be told on the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, DC, the place the pope’s papers, non-public results, and a whole lot of archival pictures of his lifestyles are on show, with a robust emphasis on John Paul II’s paintings protecting human freedom in a century the place it was once continuously underneath danger.