The election of Karol Wojtyla, a denizen of Wadowice, to the highest dignity in Catholic Church elicited a wave of interest in the history of that littleknown small town. Understandably, much of that interest was focused on the interwar years. Among the academic studies on that period Gustaw Studnicki’s histories of the Wadowice schools and the Wadowice cemetery easily take pride of place. Recollections of the Pope’s contemporaries have also contributed a great deal to our knowledge of the various aspects of life in Wadowice in 1918-1939, especially the town’s cultural and religious life. But for all their valuable insights those personal accounts do not provide us with a comprehensive view of the religious life of Wadowice in John Paul II’s formative years. This article attempts to fill that gap. To write it the author researched the rich collections of the local parish archives, the archives of the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, contemporary Catholic press as well the memoirs mentioned earlier. Of greatest importance among the archival materials are the pastoral announcements from the parish church, the conventual chronicle, and the extant official records of the religious associations and brotherhoods. In his panoramic sketch of the religious life of Wadowice the author surveys in turn the town’s churches and chapels; the parish clergy and the religious; the shaping of the Christian formation of character from its initial phase in the parental home, through religious instruction (catechism), listening to sermons, reading religious books and magazines; participating in the mysteries of faith in the cycle of the liturgical year; public expression of faith in pilgrimages and religious processions; chaplaincy in hospitals, prisons and the armed services; formative and charitable activities of the Tertiaries, brotherhoods and religious associations; the religious life of the Wadowice Jews; and finally various forms of Christian charity which brought relief to the poor and needy, first in the aftermath of World War I and then during the great economic crisis of the early thirties.