With his 26-year pontificate, soon-to-be Blessed John Paul II guided, educated and inspired a whole generation of Catholics.
These Catholics often refer to him as John Paul the Great, and point to his witness when they speak of their vocations — to the priesthood, to religious life, to marriage — and to the universal call to sanctity, wherever God places them.
A survey of this generation brings to mind the variety of gifts about which St. Paul speaks: different kinds of service but the same Spirit and Lord, and “the same God who produces all of them in everyone.” They might be serving in the Vatican or serving in the kitchen and the laundry, but they find in John Paul the Great a model to follow.
ZENIT spoke to a handful of JPII generation Catholics — from a variety of walks of life, but drawn together by their experience of World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto with the largest pilgrim group from the United States: the delegation from Erie, Pennsylvania. They all speak of the gratitude they feel for the Polish Pontiff.
Read more of what the JPII generation of Catholics had to say.