5 ways St. John Paul II changed the Catholic Church forever

In 1984, Pope John Paul II met in Rome with 300,000 young people from all over the world in a meeting that laid the foundations for today’s World Youth Day. / Credit: Gregorini Demetrio, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Vatican City, Oct 22, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA). You probably know that St. John Paul II was the second-longest-serving pope in modern history with 27 years of pontificate, and he was the first non-Italian pontiff since the Dutch Pope…