UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reproter
Jonathan Luxmoore | Mar. 12, 2016
When the British Broadcasting Corp. ran a TV documentary on St. John Paul II’s intimate friendship with a married philosopher, it revealed an intense subplot to his complex and remarkable life.
The mid-February report, “The Secret Letters of Pope John Paul II,” made by Catholic presenter Edward Stourton, touched off debates on the wisdom and propriety of the pope’s conduct. But it also threw light on the realities of clerical celibacy — and on the kind of relationships Catholic clergy can and should have with women.
The then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla met Polish-born Professor Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka at his see of Krakow, Poland, in summer 1973, after she’d written to congratulate him on his philosophical tract Osoba i Czyn (“Person and Act”). They agreed to collaborate on an English-language edition, which was published in 1979 as The Acting Person after he became pope.
Tymieniecka had studied Polish literature, like Wojtyla, at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University after the wartime Nazi occupation. She went on to obtain degrees from the Paris Sorbonne University and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
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