Centenary of John Paul II

In times of progressive atomisation and anomie of social life, he was focusing on solidarity as a fundamental rule of collective life. For him, it was a social translation of love, inspired by the words of Saint Paul: “Carry one another’s burdens”.

Karol Wojtyła, St. John Paul II, was born in the year of the Battle of Warsaw when Poland saved Europe from Soviet communism invasion. He experienced the Nazi occupation during the World War II, and the communist rule afterwards. His confrontation with the two totalitarian systems: the German and Russian regimes, as well as experience of working along with the working class, deeply influenced his perception of the world.  When he became Pope “from a distant country”, distance in this…

n truth, it was him who, by his sheer presence, did away with what historian François Furet calls “the universal charm of October”

John Paul II not only changed the course of history, but he also helped us to better understand it – writes Mateusz MORAWIECKI .The​ ​year 2020 is filled with anniversaries, often interconnected, which have a special and significant meaning in the history of Poland. This year, we mark not only the centenary of the birth of Saint John Paul II, but also the centenary of the Battle of Warsaw, which saved Poland and Europe from the advancing Soviet forces. It was…

In Ireland John Paul II is most remembered for his heartfelt plea in Drogheda – greeted by wild applause – “in language of passionate pleading” to those engaged in violence : “On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence and return to the ways of peace.”

He rehabilitated Galileo and admitted the Church made a mistake at the trial. He saw it as an essential correction of the Church’s position on science, scientific freedom, and the separation of areas where faith and science are independent of one another.

He was a national authority in the very meaning that Hannah Arendt once gave this concept: he gave advice that could not be ignored in Poland without fear.

John Paul II insisted on the linkage between genuine human freedom and truth, especially moral truth. Living in the truth was essential to living freedom nobly – writes Prof. George WEIGEL Shortly after John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, Henry Kissinger described him as the emblematic figure of the late twentieth century. That judgment certainly had to do with John Paul’s pivotal role in the collapse of European communism. As the years after his death lengthen, however, it…

John Paul II argued that – in the new “computer culture” – the Church could inform the world faster about its credo as well as explain its position on any problem or event.

St. John Paul II made history in February 1981 becoming the first pontiff to visit Japan, a non-Christian country with a deep and faithful hidden Christian history behind.

In some sense John Paul II was the last European pope: he was the successor to the last Italian popes (Paul VI and the very brief papacy of John Paul I), before the global turn of Catholicism that is developing under our very eyes.

John Paul II was also the first Pope to have acknowledged the role of the democratic state of law and free-market economy.

The Pope’s message largely contributed to the creation of “Solidarity”, perhaps the largest in history social movement considering the size of the country’s population

This legacy of St John Paul II resonates strongly as we navigate our way through the Covid-19 crisis.

The papacy of Saint John Paul II came at a watershed moment in the history of the Vatican Observatory.