I couldn’t resist announcing this on Twitter today so there’s no reason not to blurt it out here. (Are we connected on Twitter? Find me @danielmcinerny.) I’m preparing to launch my latest work, one I haven’t even mentioned here as a work-in-progress. It’s a play about a young actor desperate to forge a career in the theatre but who, through the crucible of his country’s occupation during World War II, discovers that he has been given the gift of a very different calling–to the priesthood. The play is called The Actor. The young actor is a Pole named Karol Wojtyla. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you might better know him as Pope John Paul II.
The Actor is not a full biography of Pope John Paul II, not even of his youth. It concentrates on the period between his first year at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and his decision to enter the underground seminary in 1942.
Watch this space for further details on publication, which I’m aiming to be on Monday, April 21, a week before the celebration of John Paul II’s canonization on April 27.
The photograph above is of Wawel Cathedral in Krakow. Karol Wojtyla was just getting ready to serve Mass here when he and his friend, Father Figelwicz, first heard the approach of the Nazi invasion. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Maciej Szczepańczyk at Wikimedia Commons.
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