Issued the same year Karol Wojtyła died — April 2005 — this belongs to a wave of memorial coinage released almost simultaneously by dozens of nations, many with no meaningful diplomatic or ecclesiastical connection to the Vatican. The DRC's participation is commercially driven; by 2005 the Banque Centrale du Congo had become a reliable producer of collector-market commemoratives, often struck by European contract mints rather than any domestic facility.
KM#100 is catalogued as a one-year type with no reported circulation.
Issued the same year Karol Wojtyła died — April 2005 — this belongs to a wave of memorial coinage released almost simultaneously by dozens of nations, many with no meaningful diplomatic or ecclesiastical connection to the Vatican. The DRC's participation is commercially driven; by 2005 the Banque Centrale du Congo had become a reliable producer of collector-market commemoratives, often struck by European contract mints rather than any domestic facility.
KM#100 is catalogued as a one-year type with no reported circulation.