John Paul II becomes pope

October 16, 1978

After only thirty-three days of his predecessor's brief and mysterious reign, the College of Cardinals elected the fifty-eight-year-old archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, the first non-Italian pope in four hundred and fifty-five years. From Poland under communism, he would bring a sharp political edge to the papacy and help shake Eastern European regimes to their foundations.