UNITED STATES
Washington Post
By Justin Wm. Moyer February 16
Saint Pope John Paul II was the 20th century’s towering super-pontiff. He survived the Nazi occupation of Poland and an assassination attempt. He helped end communism in Europe and, even when plagued by severe health problems, left his mark on the Catholic Church in a papacy that stretched over much of three decades. Metaphorically and physically, he climbed mountains.
This week, however, an unexpected glimpse of the man beneath the white hat came from the BBC. In a new report, the network has shined a light on “secret letters” from John Paul II to a married woman that show an intense, if not necessarily inappropriate, friendship.
The lasting connection between the man once known only as Cardinal Karol Wojtyla and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a Polish philosopher with three children, began in the 1970s. John Paul II died in 2005; Tymieniecka sold letters from him to her — letters not made public until now — to the National Library of Poland in 2008, and died in 2014.
And, whatever the nature of their acquaintance, John Paul II was extremely devoted to a woman he called “a gift from God.”
In 1976, he wrote to Tymieniecka: “God gave you to me and made you my vocation.” And: “You write about being torn apart … I could find no answer to these words.” And: “If I didn’t have this conviction, some moral certainty of grace, and of acting in obedience to it, I would not dare act like this.”
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