Passionately prayerful and unimpressed by pomp and celebrity, John Paul II was the most-traveled and perhaps the most popular of the popes to date: a people's pope. Pigozzi reveals the intimate details of his daily life, his sometimes surprising philosophies, his revolutionary desire for accessibility to ordinary people, and his relentless drive to unify the church. This book unveils, in a friendly and richly informative way, a close-up of the man whose eyes radiated infinite goodness and whose life touched so many.

Review: Caroline Pigozzi’s “Pope John Paul II – An Intimate Life (The Pope I Knew So Well)” is the moving biography of Karol Wojtyla, the priest known to the world as Pope John Paul II. This is a beautiful chronicle of the life of the man elected to the highest position in the Catholic church. This work also provides insight into the Catholic faith as it is written from that standpoint. I am not usually a biography reader, but this one is well worth picking up. I was truly touched by this book and feel privileged to have a deeper insight into this incredible human being. --Stacey

About The Author: Caroline Pigozzi studied in Italy and New York, eventually becoming an international reporter for Paris Match magazine. She has followed King Juan Carlos of Spain and Elizabeth II, among others, in addition to her visits and travels with Pope John Paul II. Pigozzi received the Vermeil Medal of the Académie Française for this book. She is the mother of two daughters and lives in France.

Small Sample Of The First Chapter: "A Former Dominican Pupil Sets Her Sights on the Vatican."

ONE EVENING, JOHN PAUL II WAS DUE TO LEAVE the Hôtel de Ville dock in Paris aboard a bateau-mouche riverboat on his way to the Nunciature. I was then living in an attic apartment opposite the Hôtel de Ville on the Quai aux Fleurs. It was June 1980, and the Pope was in Paris on a pastoral trip. A few hours before the Holy Father’s appearance, a squad of marksmen armed with binoculars and telescopic-sight rifles invaded my apartment. A ballistics specialist accompanied members of the anti-terrorist squad, who were hooded and clad in midnight-blue coveralls. It was feared that the jubilant city of Paris could be the scene of an assassination attempt on the Eastern European Pope. I was 28 years old, and the event revived my curiosity and passion for the history of the Roman Church, a subject that I was already fascinated with when I was a pupil at the Dominican convent in the Via Cassia. I was now getting closer to Saint Peter’s Square . . .

I had once met a Supreme Pontiff during an audience granted to junior and senior pupils. Hieratic and majestic, Paul VI corresponded perfectly to the holy image that a young girl from an austere boarding school would have of the Patriarch of the West. I will never forget that extraordinary morning. The Vatican seemed to me so mysterious, especially when, a few weeks later, Mother Superior Marie Johannès sent me with a group of other pupils to represent our establishment at Saint-Louis-des-Français, the French national church in Rome, at a mass celebrated by Cardinal Tisserant. She inspected our dark-colored uniforms and checked that we had remembered our black mantillas before telling us in an authoritative tone that she counted on us to do credit to our institution, since the Frenchman who was celebrating mass was the senior member of the Sacred College—in other words, the second most important person at the Vatican after the Pope. In addition to his prestigious post, this eminent native of the Lorraine region had an imposing air, a serious gaze and a gray beard trimmed in the style of a Renaissance cardinal, in short, a panache that struck me from the very first. When I saw him arrive in his scarlet cape, his pectoral cross attached to a heavy gold chain, his right hand bearing an Episcopal ring set with a gleaming purple amethyst that covered a third of his finger, I was, then and forever after, intrigued and dazzled by the princes of the Church and everything to do with them.

Since then, and having become a journalist, I have been haunted endlessly by the desire to penetrate the mysteries and life of the Vatican and the Pope, just as others dream of gaining access to the Kremlin or the White House. But on that day back in 1980 in Paris, I vowed I would force open the doors of Saint Peter’s. I was driven by passion and by the challenge it represented: by passion, since the Pope who had set the Lutetia on fire was Slavic, and I myself, through my mother, had Slavic blood in my veins, and by the challenge it represented, because it seemed far from easy for a female journalist to approach Karol Wojtyla, the charismatic shepherd to more than 1 billion 71 million Catholics, or 17.2% of the planet’s population.

The idea of writing a report on the Holy Father—and, later on, a book—took firm root in my mind and stayed there. I thus spent many years, each time I found myself in Rome, going to Saint Peter’s Square to breathe in the air of the Vatican while trying to catch sight of the Pope during the Sunday Angelus. At midday, I was blessed along with the crowd of pilgrims and tourists, all applauding and chanting “Viva il papa!” before leaving once again, filled with emotion and enthusiasm. His powerful voice invariably resonated in me. I was deeply moved, beyond the realm of words, and I told myself that it would bring me luck and that the happy day would come when I would finally bring my plan to fruition—although, in reality, this challenge seemed to be insurmountable, demanding as it did a fund of patience, diplomacy and persistence. I did finally succeed, and, excluding the birth of my two daughters, Marina and Cosima, nothing else has given me as much happiness as coming into such close contact with John Paul II. Thanks to this Pope, I enjoyed many years’ worth of exceptional moments and marvelous discussions with him and his close entourage, first within the Vatican and then in the intimacy of his private apartments, where he received me on several occasions. I also accompanied him as a reporter during his pastoral visits throughout the world. It is thanks to him that I discovered the real meaning of the famous words that had, in my eyes, long been an abstract concept from my childhood catechism: “Go forth and teach all nations.” I was also able, sadly, to observe the slow transformation of his triumphant apostolate into a long, hard, sorrowful road.