Bernard Lecomte presents Karol Wotjyla's journey through the century. A young man in love with theater and philosophy, two fields in which he could have made a career, the future pope was a determined man who, in war and post-war Poland, opposed both the Nazism and Communism. Lecomte also retraces with great precision and detail the theological and political struggles between the young archbishop of Krakow and his hierarchy up to the election, which at the time was a surprise and almost a scandal, in Rome, October 16, 1978.