One of the main topics that John Paul II discussed during
his pilgrimage to Poland in 1979 was the topic of the man.
The Polish pope knew perfectly the anthropological errors propagated
in Poland by people of the communist system until
the end of the Second World War. Moreover, prior to his visit
to Poland, on 4 March 1979 he announced his first encyclical:
Redemptor hominis. It should be of no surprise then that
John Paul II, in the words addressed to Poles, often discussed
the following subject: who is a man, where does he come from,
what is their destination, and how can we assess a man? The
pope did not focus, however, or even did not put the main
highlight on criticism of the communist anthropology, but he
tried to draw the attention of his countrymen to the positive
lecture on the Christian studies on human beings. The goal of
this article is to present, in a systematic way, the main anthropological
theses in John Paul II’s speeches during his stay
in Poland in 1979 and to indicate how those words are still
meaningful, 40 years later. The article is of review and it is
mainly based on John Paul II’s teachings given on 2-10 June
1979 in Poland, which have sometimes been supplemented
with other speeches, in particular from the encyclical titled
Redemptor hominis.
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