It was recently this year that the Catholic world had lost its leader, Pope John Paul II

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        It was recently this year that the Catholic world had lost its leader, Pope John Paul II. For many believers John Paul was a great icon and governed their church in the most respectful way. Since his election in 1978, there have been many books, movies and articles on the life of Karol Wojtyla. Many studies depicted him as one of the greatest Popes’ Catholicism ever had. He has not only traveled the world and became famous on all continents, but has tried very hard to keep peace with all religions far and wide. His theologies and philosophies are the ones that lead to believe he was the person he really let the world portray him as.

        John Paul II has had a very rich background that helped him share the messages he had for the Catholic community and other religions as well. He taught theology and religion at the Jagiellonian University and the University of Lublin, in his home country Poland, before his papacy. He has also earned a doctorate in philosophy for his broad studies in the phenomenology of Max Scheler. All this experience has only opened ways to even greater thinking and reflections, and transformed it to many messages and letters to believers, presidents of all countries, politicians and many others.

         One of his greatest philosophical works was ‘Person and Act’, which mistakenly was translated to ‘The Acting Person’. This book has laid the foundation for his philosophical understanding of personalism.         Personalism is the approach to reality which places the human person and his or her essential dignity at the starting point of philosophical reasoning. In the thought of him and his schooling in the city of Lublin, any consideration of the person’s subjective experience must come from its relationship with the objective reality. Out of necessity this also includes other human persons and human community. The Pope’s understanding of personalism found its practical application in his ethics: the indispensable role of freedom, the fulfillment of freedom in the loving gift of self to others and the effect that moral choices have on the person who makes them. These few attributes were the ones that made him the person he was. It all came from the love he has received from his closest family, his brother and parents, of whom all three have died by the time he was 22 years old. Personalism is so central to Karol Wojtyla’s internal psychological and spiritual structure, that it overflows into his theology. An example of that is his divine revelation as the personal messenger of God to all people. This also ties in with the quintessential congregation of two personal realities, one of which is human and one divine. It also covers various aspects of the religious freedom of the human person, social ethics, grace and human sexuality. John Paul II was much disciplined in all these matters and shared the love to oneself and others.

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        His theology and philosophy reached however even further than his religion. Despite his lack of interest in politics, he has met and spoken to leaders of many countries. This was most noticeable after the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989. It was of his request to visit, then, Czechoslovakia, shortly after the fall of communism. A country once ruled by the communist regime and in which, as stated by the Pope himself, with a silent church was his first stop on the way to share his greatness. In his own words he said "It is providential that ...

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