1920–2005 · Pope, 1978–2005 · born Karol Wojtyła, Poland
Karol Józef Wojtyła was Pope John Paul II from 1978 until his death in 2005, the first non-Italian pope in over four centuries and one of the most widely quoted religious figures of the modern era. His actual output — 14 encyclicals, thousands of addresses and homilies, and books such as Crossing the Threshold of Hope — is fully documented in the Vatican archive. That documented record is precisely why an unsourced one-liner like this one stands out as unverified.