Thousands of Cubans welcomed the Pope as he celebrated Mass in Havana's Revolution Plaza. Cuban president, Raul Castro  attended the Mass, where Benedict XVI urged leaders of the communist government to grant religious freedoms to the Church and its followers.

"Czestochowa occupies a special place in my life; here I feel at home," said Arturo Mari, Blessed John Paul II's photographer, when he met with a group of mostly students from the city.

To the question of how he sees Czestochowa seven years after John Paul II's death, Mari stressed that "if you participate every day in Jasna Gora's appeal, a traditional Marian hymn, and if the Museum of the Coins of John Paul II is here, the only one of its kind in the world, he, John Paul II, is here with you."

Pope Wojtyla's photographer said that "the real power of John Paul II's pontificate was young people. You were his hope, his strength," stressed Mari.

"Love for young people was his style of life. He wanted young people to live with dignity and in harmony with the Truth. Young people sought their way in the life of that man," continued the photographer.

A former secretary’s memoirs focus on the personal, day-to-day life of the papal apartment.

Think of Pope John Paul II’s secretary, and Stanisław Dziwisz springs to mind. Then-Father Dziwisz was Cardinal Wojtyla’s secretary since 1966; he served him until the day he died — and is now his successor as archbishop of Krakow.

But over the course of his quarter-century pontificate, John Paul also had other assistant secretaries. One of them was Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, now archbishop of the ecumenically sensitive see of Lviv, Ukraine. These are his memoirs, in interview format.

If Cardinal Dziwisz takes the more macro picture of the historical importance of Wojtyla’s pontificate, Archbishop Mokrzycki focuses more on the personal, day-to-day life of the papal apartment. He speaks about the human side of living with and working alongside Blessed John Paul II.

THE Bacolod City Council passed a resolution, declaring February 13 to 20, 2012 as Blessed John Paul II week in the city.

Per the resolution, Bacolod was one of the few cities in the Philippines visited by then Pope John Paul II, world leader of Catholics, in February 20, 1981. Pope John Paul’s cause for sainthood in the Catholic Church started with his death on April 2, 2005.