Fr. Jarosław Kupczak, O.P., will present a lecture on “The Continuing Importance of John Paul II’s Thought” on Thursday, Feb. 22, at 4:00 p.m., in Keane Auditorium, McGivney Hall.

Considering only the numbers, the pontificate of John Paul II stands as an unprecedented and monumental event in history of the Catholic Church: the second-longest pontificate in history, with unparalleled numbers of documents published, countries and continents visited, and saints recognized, and multitudes of people who personally met the pope. Even more significantly, John Paul II’s pontificate provides the hermeneutic for the most important event in the Catholic Church of the past hundred years: the Second Vatican Council, which provided the Catholic response to the crisis of late modernity. Fr. Kupczak will reflect on the most important achievements of John Paul II as an authentic interpreter of Vatican II: the evangelical and apostolic understanding of the office of the Roman Pontiff, the evangelization of culture, the defense of moral and religious truths under assault of post-truth ideologies, the invitation to dialogue in the divided and violence ridden world, and the Christocentric anthropology as the point of reference for cultural decline of the post-modern culture.

Fr. Kupczak, who is Professor of Theological Anthropology and Director of the Center for Research on the Thought of John Paul II at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, is currently teaching at the John Paul II Institute as the inaugural recipient of the David L. Schindler Fellowship for Distinguished Scholars.

The lecture will be followed by a reception.