In his letter to the Polish bishops for the centennial of the birth of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI makes the case for ‘the Great’ as a recognition of the late Holy Father’s impact on history.
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Before he was a priest — a man of the Word made flesh — Karol Wojtyła was a playwright and poet.
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Karol Wojtyła took up the alternatives to the monarchial age, fought against totalitarianism and offered a vision for liberal democracy rooted in the truth about the human person.
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Shortly after Pope John Paul II's death in 2005, Henry Kissinger told NBC News that no one had a greater impact on the 20th century.
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The teaching of Veritatis Splendor simply will not go away, but maddeningly, stubbornly, enduringly remains. The same cannot be said about the teachers.
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Forty years ago in Poland St. John Paul II strengthened the courage of his people. He told them that they no longer had to go along with what the party demanded. They could be free, and did not need the permission of the state to live as a free people.
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There could be no justice in Europe without a free Poland on the map, and there could be no just accounting of Poland’s identity and mission without including its faith in God.
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The young person ought not be afraid of the demanding invitation Jesus offers: follow me! The invitation is radical and demanding, but it is preceded by the “loving look” of Jesus, John Paul insists, and is therefore possible.
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Twenty years is as nothing in the Eternal City. But in the life of one writer it is something. And so a word of thanks to my editors and readers over two decades.
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The heart of Cardinal Wojtyła trembled in 1978, but his heart was strong, every day carrying within it Peter’s conversation with the Risen Jesus, until that day when that heart was finally stilled by a body that had grown weak.
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Many of the observances of the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church noted that it was the most important magisterial act of the Church since the Second Vatican Council.
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In a significant essay for First Things, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia calls for renewed attention to Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), the 1993 encyclical of St. John Paul II on the moral life.
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St. John Paul’s longtime papal spokesman offered a most extraordinary — and successful — service, one that has lessons for today.
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The recent death of Cardinal Husar of Kiev, and the forthcoming beatification of the first Lithuanian martyr of the Soviet era, remind us of one of the most noble periods in Church history: the great lions of the East, the bishops who were heroic witnesses and pastors under totalitarian persecution.
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In 1982, the Marian shrine that St. John Paul II wanted to visit was the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, the Queen of Poland. Instead, he went to Fatima.
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