Full Text of SR0145 94th General Assembly
SR0145 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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| SENATE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, Pope John Paul II passed away on April 2, 2005; | 3 |
| and
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| WHEREAS, Pope John Paul II was born Karol Jozef Wojtyla on | 5 |
| May 18, 1920, in Wadowice,
Poland, the second son of Karol | 6 |
| Wojtyla Sr., a retired army officer and tailor, and Emilia | 7 |
| Kaczorowska Wojtyla, a schoolteacher of Lithuanian descent; | 8 |
| and
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| WHEREAS, He was a brilliant student and athlete, excelling | 10 |
| at skiing, swimming, kayaking, and soccer; his earliest | 11 |
| passions were religion, poetry, and the theater; and
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| WHEREAS, After the Germans invaded Poland, he escaped | 13 |
| deportation and imprisonment in late 1940 by taking a job as a | 14 |
| stone cutter in a quarry and then in a chemical plant, while at | 15 |
| the same time studying at an
underground seminary in Krakow; | 16 |
| and
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| WHEREAS, He was eventually ordained in 1946, assuming | 18 |
| priestly duties in 1949 as Chaplain to university students at | 19 |
| Krakow's St. Florian's Church; the Church was located next to | 20 |
| Jagiellonian University where he was working on his second | 21 |
| doctorate degree in theology, having already earned a doctorate | 22 |
| in philosophy; when the University's Theology Department was | 23 |
| abolished in 1954 under pressure from the communist government, | 24 |
| the entire faculty reconstituted itself at the Seminary of | 25 |
| Krakow, where he continued his studies; and
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| WHEREAS, When the Vatican Council II began the | 27 |
| deliberations in 1962 that would revolutionize the Church, | 28 |
| Karol Wojtyla was one of its intellectual leaders and took | 29 |
| special interest in religious freedom; the same year, he was | 30 |
| named the Acting Archbishop of Krakow when the incumbent died; |
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| he was officially installed as Archbishop in March 1964; and
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| WHEREAS, He made a name for himself both as a formidable | 3 |
| theologian - he taught at the Krakow Seminary and the Catholic | 4 |
| University of Lublin - and as a staunch defender of Catholic | 5 |
| interests; and
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| WHEREAS, He was elevated to Cardinal on June 26, 1967, and | 7 |
| was formally installed in a Vatican ceremony two days later; | 8 |
| despite his prominence and the respect in which he was held by | 9 |
| his fellow Catholics, his election as Pope John Paul II on | 10 |
| October 16, 1978, came as a surprise; and
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| WHEREAS, He was the first-ever Slavic Pope and the first | 12 |
| non-Italian to serve in office since the German and Dutch Pope | 13 |
| Adrian VI assumed the papacy in 1522; his Polish heritage was a | 14 |
| great source of pride for the one million people of Polish | 15 |
| ethnic descent living in Illinois; and
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| WHEREAS, Pope John Paul II revolutionized the papacy that | 17 |
| oversees the spiritual lives of over one billion Catholics; a | 18 |
| conservative and champion of long-standing Church traditions, | 19 |
| he was also the most-traveled Pope in history and very much a | 20 |
| man of the world; he first traveled as Holy Father to Chicago | 21 |
| in 1979; and
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| WHEREAS, As Pope, his support of the Solidarity movement | 23 |
| was instrumental and ultimately led to the downfall of the | 24 |
| communist government; John Paul's role in the fall of communism | 25 |
| was a subtle but crucial one; his visit to Poland in 1979, | 26 |
| eight months after his elevation to the papal throne, saw the | 27 |
| first mass gatherings ever witnessed in the communist state; | 28 |
| and
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| WHEREAS, Pope John Paul II brought a strong focus on human | 30 |
| rights to his preaching and his travels gave his teachings a |
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| global political impact unknown to previous Popes; in Poland, | 2 |
| Eastern Europe, Africa, the Philippines, Haiti, and dozens of | 3 |
| other places, the Pope's preaching on human rights and | 4 |
| individual liberties helped inspire those who fought for | 5 |
| political change; as Pope, he not only spread the gospel, but | 6 |
| also transformed the Roman papacy into an authoritative | 7 |
| spokesman for human rights; and
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| WHEREAS, Pope John Paul II was the first to visit a | 9 |
| synagogue and the memorial at Auschwitz to victims of the | 10 |
| Holocaust; in ending the Catholic-Jewish estrangement, he | 11 |
| called Jews "our elder brothers";
the Pope expanded upon that | 12 |
| in a March 2000 speech in which he asked forgiveness for many | 13 |
| of his Church's past sins, including its treatment of Jews, | 14 |
| heretics, women, and native peoples; and
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| WHEREAS, Pope John Paul II was the third longest-serving | 16 |
| pontiff in history, behind St. Peter's 32 years and Pope Pius | 17 |
| IX's 31 years and seven months; his humanity, love of children, | 18 |
| and ceaseless efforts to bring the Catholic message to as wide | 19 |
| an audience as possible marked him as one of the dominant and | 20 |
| most-respected figures of the 20th century and early 21st | 21 |
| century; therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL | 23 |
| ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of | 24 |
| Pope John Paul II, as he was an extraordinary hero for our | 25 |
| times; he was an inspiring leader of the Catholic Church, a | 26 |
| wonderful warrior for freedom and democracy, and people will | 27 |
| never forget the role he played in giving inspiration and hope | 28 |
| to the people of Poland; he truly was a great man of holiness.
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