Free Republic

The Twilight of the John Paul II Institute? An interview with Prof. Stanisław Grygiel Hanna Nowak (Teologia Polityczna): In recent days there have been great changes in the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, which you created together with Karol Wojtyła 40 years ago. How do you pull yourself together in the face of your dismissal? Was it possible to predict such a situation? Prof. Stanisław Grygiel (philosopher, ethicist, anthropologist): There have been no changes in the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The Institute was simply dissolved by Pope Francis exactly...

Father Karol Wojtyła, who later became Pope John Paul II, is pictured in the early 1950s surrounded by young people. Father Wojtyła would regularly go on mountain excursions with a group of young married couples and students that called itself Środowisko, meaning environment or milieu. (Archival Collection of Adam Bujak)Karol Wojtyła, the man who became St. John Paul II, regularly escaped from two of the worst totalitarian regimes in history: German Nazism, and later, Soviet Communism. By “escaped,” I do not mean that he ran away. Rather, as a priest and bishop, he escaped only by going deeper.As the...