Elected pope in 1978, he led the Church for 26 years until his death in 2005. The first non-Italian pope in 455 years, he made more foreign trips than all previous popes combined and issued 14 encyclicals.
“John Paul II’s teaching reflected the conviction, which he helped write into the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, that, in Jesus Christ, we meet the deepest truths about God and ourselves,” said Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
“That is the central message that the Church must take to the world, if it is to be the Church of the New Evangelization that John Paul II proclaimed.”
He made the comments in response to questions from the Office for Foreign Communication of the Polish Bishops’ Conference.
Meanwhile, the St. John Paul II Institute of Culture, within the Faculty of Philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome, is launching a new year-long program for postgraduate students.
The institute was founded at the Angelicum, formally known as the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, on the centenary of the saint’s birth in 2020. The future pope studied at the university after the Second World War.
Admissions to the new program begin on John Paul II’s birth anniversary. Teachers will include Rémi Brague, Francis Russell Hittinger, Rowan Williams, and George Weigel.
Speaking to Polish media, Weigel said: “I am eager to be a part of this important initiative, which I hope will help students ‘see’ the world through John Paul II’s ideas and papal teaching, rather than simply looking at him as an exemplary human being.”
“He was that, of course, but he also had an acute analysis of the crisis of civilization today, and that analysis deserves to be carefully studied.”
Credit: Source link
