Private records of the Vatican press spokesman”
– Joaquin Navarro Vallse
At 1 time, a left-wing politician supporting the abortion industry, US president Bill Clinton, after gathering John Paul II said to the accompanying officials: “I would not like to have specified a rival in the election.”
Such intriguing stories, witnessed by 1 of the pope's closest collaborators, will be found in the book “My Years with John Paul II”. Its author is the erstwhile Vatican press office chief, Joaquin Navarro Vallse. In fact, these are his individual writings in the form of a journal, written almost from a dish per day, in which Navarro draws the image of the Pope in a more detailed and individual way than usual in authoritative biography.
As a benevolent of course, the observer frequently mentions amazing situations and completely unknown public opinion, but besides those whose description we find in historical books, only seen in a sense from the sphere, the eyes of Navarro Valls. I mean 1 of John Paul II's closest collaborators, who accompanied him in private situations, in everyday life, out of scope of cameras and photojournalists.
The Pope's spokesperson shows in his book the image of a man completely different from all stereotypes, especially the negative ones. This is simply a very realistic image of the Holy Father having nothing to do with the caricatural thought of an old priest who cannot realize the present and adheres to the old, anachronistic principles of Catholic morality. The ombudsmen's records cover 20 years of these 26 erstwhile Pope Pole directed the nave of the Catholic Church of Vatican Holy See. The times of landmark events in the past of the full world, and at the same time the era, erstwhile the Church and its community of believers experienced ups and downs, and social and moral changes forced them to respond and respond to unexpected challenges. The stories told by Navarro – Valls are moments of joy, comic or highly optimistic, but of course they besides describe failures, dramatic and tragic events that concern not only the Church but besides the Holy Father himself.
The author does not do hagiography. He describes hard moments connected not only with illness or aging and failure of physical fitness, but besides with the pope's decisions that had political and image consequences. Ones that frequently caused controversy and attacks on the Church and John Paul II himself. The book is besides peculiarly interesting due to the fact that the Pope's press spokesperson was an highly insightful observer. Not only because, for a journalist, he was an highly intelligent man, but besides due to his education; due to the fact that he was besides a psychiatrist. any commentators believed that his unique ability to cooperate with journalists from all over the planet and the effective but unnoticeable management of their message was the consequence of these peculiar qualifications which the Spanish numerar Opus Dei had and besides the celibate. The man whose charisma made no 1 in the media always ignore him, ignore him, or even effort to manipulate him. It was natural to inspire trust, but besides respect. Pope Wojtyła was able to see this, and he was the 1 who chose to service as Porte Paroles of the head of the Catholic Church.
"His temper is characteristic, which he never loses," says Navarro Valls about Karol Wojtyle, recalling many times erstwhile he had to face highly complicated problems, where he besides had to face a advanced hazard of failure or even suffered a very painful defeat. However, at specified moments John Paul II impressed him with his extraordinary maturity of life and the resulting opposition to stress, usually accompanied by affirmative energy and unwavering religion in the sense of the papal mission and the final triumph of Jesus Christ. An equally crucial feature of the Pope’s personality was the authentic sense of humor for Navarro Valls, which never left him and thanks to which he repeatedly gained acceptance and sympathy of people around the world, where he arrived as a pilgrim preaching the Good News and fresh hopes for believers and unbelievers.
In addition to the Pope's next pilgrimages to almost all continents of the earth, the author devotes a comparatively large amount of space to memories of vacation trips to the Alps, where he always accompanied the pope, who spent his vacation time usually on hiking trips to the mountains. Navarro Valse describes many different events or anecdotes showing how a brave priest and a fine infantryman traveled through alpine mountains and valleys, even erstwhile his wellness and age should have prompted him to quit this strenuous effort. However, the Pope from Poland went to the mountains even erstwhile he could no longer walk on his own, and being at heights caused him serious breathing problems. The author suggestively describes this circumstantial dimension of the pontificate of John Paul II, as he always realized in his mountain expeditions that they besides had a metaphysical meaning for Karol Wojtyla, as he treated them as a individual encounter with God. Since his youth in the Tatras, he has always looked at the mountains as symbolic traces of the hands of God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. It was a kind of prayer and meditation that he never wanted to quit and which he evidently needed, from which he drew spiritual energy. The author besides mentions non-binding conversations during camping and accidental and touching encounters with mountain residents or tourists on the hiking trail.
This book shows the time of the pontificate of John Paul II in various dimensions and contexts, both political and church and pastoral. But these passages are peculiarly important, where Navarro Valls shows readers of the pope, who was an absolutely outstanding intellectual, authentic erudite, philosopher and at the same time theologian. This is simply a peculiarly crucial evidence today. At a time erstwhile the public image of John Paul II becomes increasingly false or even consciously falsified by people who would like to overthrow this monument of the large prophet of our times forever.
The fact about him shown in the book of the Vatican spokesperson is, of course, contrary to the false stereotype of an old priest repeating anachronistic formulas and prayer rituals from another era. The Pope, who allegedly did not realize the new, modern planet and who could not accept the simple fact that the planet was changing, and we were all with it.
Meanwhile, Navarro Valls shows readers that it was precisely the opposite.
The cognition John Paul II had about the planet and social changes was unimaginably broad and incomparably greater than the cognition that journalists, politicians and intellectuals had. This was not only the consequence of the experience he gained while travelling for 26 years constantly, throughout almost the globe and talking to representatives of the planet of cultural policy and science. It was besides a consequence of his intellectual formation, which he received from universities in Poland and Rome and the professional practice of prof. of doctrine at the Catholic University of Lublin. technological conferences which were held in Vatican or Castel Gandolfo at the Pope's initiative were besides important. These were the actual sources of cognition about the planet and the intellectual facilities of Pope Pole.
On the another hand, his consistent attitude of discord towards evil in the modern planet and his refusal to accept all that actually destroys man and his social environment were the consequence of conscious decision and conscious choice of value, not the consequence of ignorance or deficiency of ability to measure the situation. Everything John Paul II wrote in his encyclicals and spoke at meetings with people was due to the deep conviction that the alleged structures of evil in the modern planet do not gotta prevail. That there is no place for fatalism here, which will justify passiveness toward sin and "living as if there was no God."
The author of the records shows that the Pope had the courage and courage needed to fulfill the mission of a guide in times of chaos and decay of conventional institutions of our Christian civilization. As long as he lived, he kept talking and writing about why the truths contained in the Gospel and the Magisterium of the Church are inactive and always will be valid. He pointed out that Catholicism brings good and actual answers to all the dilemmas of man in all age and allows us to find a way to a good and meaningful life that leads to the salvation of the soul in the hands of God the Creator.
An example of his analytical and professional abilities are 2 encyclicals: ‘Fides et Ratio’ and ‘Veritatis splendor’. At the time of the pontificate of John Paul II it may have seemed that Marxism, or pseudo-scientific discourse, behind which has been hidden for centuries and inactive reborn atheistic materialism, or putting temporal substance in place of God, had been defeated in any sense. That the intellectual elite of the West rejected this illusion which carried with it the ideology of communism and socialism. However, the pope saw that this trend of reasoning was being reborn in fresh robes of postmodernism. And he knew this philosophical and ideological materialism very well from the times of the Polish People's Republic, erstwhile he had to face him in the conflict to last Catholicism in the atheistic state. The Pope realized that in the 1980s and 1990s materialism and its associated moral relativism underwent transformation in the West becoming part of the dominant liberal ideology and related ideology of the extremist left, which gained influence in both the media and universities.
Therefore, he wrote the encyclical “Fides et ratio” which shows the natural balance between religion and reason. Where he explains and indicates what the foundations of religion are based, from which philosophical sources the Catholic worldview emerges, and that it does not conflict with the discipline and experience of human reason.
This text is besides addressed to unbelievers, agnostics and people of another faith, due to the fact that it contains rational arguments referring to the cognition and experience of people.
In the case of the encyclical “Veritatis splendor” John Paul II has already seen the danger to the very essence of Catholic faith, as well as questioning the Gospel and dogmas of the Church in the Church itself. He has already seen chaos in theology seen at Catholic universities and worse in seminars and has responded by writing an encyclical indicating the basic errors which begin to dominate the minds of any theologians, priests and bishops. "Fides et ratio" is simply a precise on the philosophical and theological level lecture on the moral principles of the Church, which are unchanging and which must stay so, due to the fact that the teaching of Jesus Christ is fact and so is only and unchanging. The Pope points out and recalls the sources of Catholic religion and explains their unchanging sense to prevent changes and distortions which appear in the Church under changing historical circumstances and arising from weaknesses of people of the Church, from fears and from deficiency of religion and trust in Christ. John Paul II thus joined his very crucial and current chapter in the “Breviarium Fidei” of the Church.
Czesław Miłosz, present in school education programs, a classical of our literature, an outstanding poet and expert in Polish and planet literature as well as a Nobel Prize laureate, had no uncertainty that the intellectual heritage of John Paul II is universal and timeless. In 2002, a poet who was not a peculiarly zealous Catholic wrote that "the encyclicals of John Paul II consist of an extraordinary work much more worthy of reading, studying, analyzing than most alleged contemporary literature."
Recalling years later the period of cooperation with the Holy Father, Navarro Valls said that the immense and continuous media interest of John Paul II was not simply due to the fact that he was a comparatively young and very active Pope. It was more than that. The interest of journalists was first of all the content of his message and the form of this fresh 1 for these times of evangelization. People saw and felt clearly that his words and gestures were full of fact and sincerity. Deprived of calculating and media creation. At the same time, he could like no 1 else choose the right words that reached the hearts and minds of the hearers and readers. In addition, he continued to analyse media messages to see if the content of his message was reliably repeated or manipulated. And according to the situation, he reacted by repeating or correcting the message. Information about him did not rise his interest.
To prove this, he cites the minute erstwhile he brought him the fresh issue of the American weekly TIME, which awarded the pope the title of Man of the Year. Navarro enthusiastically shows a fantastic cover photograph of the number with the face of the cheerful Karol Wojtyła. The Pope puts the magazine on the table table, turning it around in specified a way that only the last page is visible, not the title with this photograph. The Pope's spokesperson understood that it was a natural motion of a man who felt restrained by the situation in which he became the object of interest, not the message of Jesus Christ. Therefore, ignoring the cover portrait, he asked his spokesperson about the content of the article in the weekly magazine and comments of the planet press regarding his pastoral mission. This situation was an crucial lesson of humility for me and how John Paul II understood his mission.
The book Joaquino Navarro Vals shows that the Holy John Paul II was not only a popular and listened-to prophet of our times, but above all a thinker, philosopher and theologian highly rational and well-known in the realities of the modern world. At the same time, a man praying constantly, giving himself to Christian meditation, which allows to keep spiritual balance and find the light of fact and actual religion in a time of chaos.
The Pope from Poland left for the Father's home in 2005. But his encyclicals and books stayed with us. So everyone can see for themselves whether they are inactive up to date and whether they aid to realize all that is happening present with us and around us.
Read and pass.
Krzysztof Baranowski
