Everyone knows who John Paul II was. Many will remember him for his strong messages against communism, for being the pope with the most apostolic trips or for his meetings with young people at the World Youth Days.
But those who worked closely with him have explored his more unknown side. This is what one of the men who collaborated with the Polish pontiff for more than ten years admits. Today he is the president of the foundation that bears the pope's name.
MONS. PAWEŁ PTASZNIK
President, John Paul II Vatican Foundation
I think his charitable works have never been talked about because he had this thought of "let the left not know what the right is doing." So he did much, much good to the people of the world, but in silence.
The relationship between faith and reason were key in the thought of John Paul II. In fact, one of the most famous polemics on this subject were the trials against Galileo. The Inquisition made him publicly retract his defense of the Copernican theory.
Experts point to the Polish pope's courage in seeking the truth. In 1992, John Paul II took up the conclusions of a commission he had set up to study the case.
DIEGO CONTRERAS
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
The conclusions were to admit the errors of the Church in this case and to renew the commitment between science and faith, to keep each in its place, to recognize how the theologians who judged Galileo were mistaken, precisely, in admitting as a doctrine of faith a theory that was geocentrism and how Galileo had been right in the interpretation of Sacred Scripture. In short, the pope assumed all this, let us say, the courage not to be afraid of the truth.
These and other topics were among those discussed at the first edition of the Conference on St. John Paul II in Rome. Three pontifical universities participated. The mission was to rediscover the thought of one of the men who marked the contemporary history of the Church.
TR: JD
