Life-size exhibit, including replica of apartment, allows visitors to ‘step into the life’ of famed Polish pope, chancellor says

ORCHARD LAKE — Orchard Lake Schools is inviting you to step into St. John Paul II’s world.

From Oct. 12 through Nov. 10, the campus is hosting the “I Was Born in Wadowice” exhibit, a re-creation of the three-room apartment where the young Karol Wojtyla — later to become Pope St. John Paul II — and his family lived before he became the “most famous Pole in history.”

The exhibit is in partnership with the Family Home Museum of St. John Paul II of Wadowice, a co-op between the Catholic Church and the Polish government promoting the life of St. John Paul II. The exhibit is making its rounds in the United States, just coming from Chicago and moving to Houston after its stop in Orchard Lake.

“The idea is to bring to life the early years of John Paul II, to bring it closer to the people,” Fr. Miroslaw Krol, chancellor of the Orchard Lake Schools, told Detroit Catholic. “This is a chance for a generation that might be too young to remember John Paul II to get a glimpse of his early life.”

The three-room exhibit in the old gymnasium on the Orchard Lake campus, 3535 Commerce Road, is a recreation of the environment in which Wojtyla grew up, complete with a replica crib, family photos and information about life on Koscielna Street in Wadowice in the 1920s and '30s.

The exhibit also includes relics of the saintly pope, which the Orchard Lake Schools keeps on campus, plus a red cassock from when he was a cardinal and a white cassock from when he was pope, Fr. Krol said. 

“When you go to a room, you can learn about an important street of his childhood, his early years in the priesthood in Krakow as vicar,” Fr. Krol said. “There’s an interactive map where you can learn about his birth, the historical context of the time, pictures of him as a little boy with his mother, brother and father. You really get to know him as a person.”

Fr. Krol said the exhibit has seen steady foot traffic since it came to campus.

“We have all the classes from our high school (St. Mary's Preparatory) coming to learn about him, and they ask questions about John Paul II and his life,” Fr. Krol. “They exhibit also talks about the man who tried to assassinate him, how the man visited St. John Paul’s grave after he was released (from prison). It’s a place not only to learn about the history of this great man, but a place of a spiritual reflection on everything he had done, why he went against the evil of his time, the culture of death.”

The exhibit is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 4 to 8 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the old gym building on campus — Fr. Krol there is signage to direct visitors.

Even for those who know a great deal about the first Polish pope, Fr. Krol said visitors will learn more about the context of St. John Paul II’s life — a turbulent time when his native Poland was under the oppression of Nazi Germany, and later Soviet Russia, and the world was torn apart from World War II and its subsequent horrors.

“I thought I knew all about this person, because he is my hero; it’s my hobby to learn about him,” Fr. Krol said. “But I just finished watching the movie, ‘The Divine Plan,’ about John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan, and their relationship, and I learned something more. It shows you can always learn something new about John Paul II. It’s a unique exhibit.”

Fr. Krol said it is even more special that the exhibit is on the grounds of Orchard Lake, a campus Cardinal Wojtyla visited twice before being elected pope. Visitors can see the kayak he used on Orchard Lake and visit the chapel to see the relic of Our Lady of Czestochowa that St. John Paul II gifted to the Orchard Lake community.

“When you read a book, you entertain the intellect, but we still have senses attached to our bodies,” Fr. Krol said. “But when you step into a physical space, like the exhibit, it feeds your senses. You feel the presence of John Paul II when you come in and see the pictures of his childhood. You see the horrors of the Second World War. You get the whole picture of the man’s life. We have the wooden crib, a replica of one from when he was a baby, and it puts into context the physical world of this great man.”

Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron visited the exhibit when he was at Orchard Lake’s Chapel of Our Lady of Orchard Lake and archdiocesan Shrine of St. John Paul II on Oct. 22, the feast of St. John Paul II. Archbishop Vigneron, along with Chaldean Bishop Francis Kalabat, who visited on Oct. 21, were impressed with the detail and insight into St. John Paul II’s early life, Fr. Krol said.

“For me, personally, the surplice and the cassock he was wearing when celebrating Mass in Rome is what I like the most,” Fr. Krol said. “For visitors who come to the old gym, who go to the shrine, spending a few minutes in medication, it will feel like a successful visit to the campus to learn about St. John Paul and all he done.”