Pope John Paul II Cardinals would be the ones who would give him most support at his eventual election to the papacy In August 1978, following the death of Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Wojtyła voted in the papal conclave, which elected Pope John Paul I. John Paul I died after only 33 days as pope, triggering another conclave. The second conclave of 1978 started on 14 October, ten days after the funeral. It was split between two strong candidates for the papacy: Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the conservative Archbishop of Genoa, and the liberal Archbishop of Florence, Giovanni Cardinal Benelli, a close friend of John
Pope John Paul II War II, the first pope to do so. In 1998, he issued "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah", which outlined his thinking on the Holocaust. He became the first pope known to have made an official papal visit to a synagogue, when he visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on 13 April 1986. On 30 December 1993, John Paul II established formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel, acknowledging its centrality in Jewish life and faith. On 7 April 1994, he hosted the "Papal Concert to Commemorate the Holocaust". It was the first-ever Vatican