Pope John Paul II

1920 – 2005

Karol Józef Wojtyła reigned as Pope John Paul II from 1978 until his death in 2005, the second-longest pontificate in modern history. Subsequent investigations including the 2020 Vatican McCarrick Report and the 2023 Polish state commission report have documented that he knowingly protected and promoted serial sexual abusers within the Catholic hierarchy, including U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick despite credible reports reaching the Vatican as early as 1999, and Mexican Legion of Christ founder Marcial Maciel Degollado, whose abuse of seminarians and his own children was repeatedly documented to John Paul II's office and ignored. The same period saw him preside over a global cover-up of clerical abuse cases that institutional inquiries in Ireland, the United States, France, and Germany have subsequently estimated involved hundreds of thousands of victims.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM