The mother of St John Paul II was a truly remarkable woman. Emilia Kaczorowska was born in 1884 and died in 1929 and she was of a distant Lithuanian heritage. Her husband Karol Wojtyla Sr. was born in 1879 and died in 1941 and he was an ethnic Pole. They had three children, Edmund Antoni, Olga Maria and Karol Jozef. Olga died as a baby and so young Karol does not remember her at all, as he was born after she died. Emilia, who was a schoolteacher, died from a heart attack and kidney failure in 1929, whn young Karol Wojtyła was eight years old. But Karol and Edmund were very close, even though there were 13 years between them. Nicknamed Mundek, Edmund worked as a physician and died of scarlet fever. Emilia was a seamstress but worked mainly as a teacher. After her daughter Olga died, doctors told her to abort her third pregnancy because there was a danger both for her and her baby. But she refused, and Karol Jr was born, a future Pope. After he was born, Emilia told the midwife to open all the windows so that her baby could hear the music coming from the nearby church, especially she wanted him to hear a hymn to the Blessed Mother. Karol became a Pope in 1978 and died in 2005, eventually canonized as a saint of the Catholic church, whose feast day is tomorrow.
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