TedLipien.com

Wojtyła’s view of women developed largely as a result of cultural conditioning. He was still very young when his mother died and most of his formative years were spent in the company of his father, his male school teachers and priests. He learned about the role of mothers and women in Polish homes by visiting the families of his friends and neighbors. Women in these homes provided him with food, care and with other assistance, but he observed them only as a welcomed guest and did not experience living with close female family members. This may explain his tendency to idealize women as caregivers. He seemed to have been even more attached to this ideal than most Poles of his generation. And, he certainly shared the general belief among the Poles that mothers have a crucial patriotic role to play in the upbringing of children, teaching them to love God and their country, and in maintaining other family traditions.

While he himself grew up without a mother, he gave mothers most of the credit for encouraging young men to become Catholic priests. In a 1997 speech to a group of Polish-Americans in Detroit-Hamtramck, John Paul II noted that “there are today many priests who could confirm that their saintly mothers were above all responsible for their priestly vocation.”