Born Karol Józef Wojtyła, St. John Paul II served the Archdiocese of Kraków as a priest, auxiliary bishop, and Ordinary before becoming pope.
"St. John Paul II enriched the universal Church with a great abundance of gifts, which for the most part he had inherited from the treasury of faith and holiness of your land and of your Church," Pope Francis told the Cracovians.
"He carried in his heart and, so to say, in his flesh, the witness of the saints of Kraków: from Saint Stanislaus and Saint Jadwiga, Queen of Poland, to Saint Albert and Saint Faustina. From them he learned boundless devotion to God and the great sensitivity for every man; devotion and sensitivity that were manifested in his priestly, episcopal and papal ministry."
The saint "received from God the great gift of knowing how to read the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel, and he made this fruitful to the benefit of the path of his people, of your people, who in their various sufferings have never lost faith in God or fidelity to their own culture, rooted in the Christian spirit," Francis said.
It was in being faithful to these roots that St. John Paul II led the Church in guarding inalienable rights, he stated.
The pope said that St. John Paul II's legacy is "a challenge to be faithful to Christ and to respond with joyful devotion to the call to holiness that the Lord addresses to each and every one of us, in our specific personal, family and social situation."