A symposium to disseminate knowledge of the pastoral activity and teachings of John Paul II was held in recent days by the Bishops’ Conference of Belarus in the Marian cathedral of Minsk. The meeting on “John Paul II, man of faith and of culture” was held as part of a programme of commemorative events that the Catholic Church in Belarus is dedicating to the great Pope. Guest of honour at the symposium was the Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, for many years a close aide of Pope John Paul II. After pointing out “the importance that the destinies of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe had for John Paul II”, Cardinal Grocholewski recalled his “commitment to the promotion and development of Catholic education”. In this regard the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation briefly described John Paul II’s two Apostolic Constitutions: Sapientia Christiana (15 April 1979), dedicated to the question of academic studies and the institutions that the Church creates to this end, and Ex Corde Ecclesiae (15 August 1990), dedicated to the Catholic Universities, “whose activities – he observed – were in this way regulated for the first time in the history of the Church”. “The new history of the Catholic Church in Belarus, which we may call the history of a rebirth, is closely connected with the pontificate of the great Slav Pope”, said Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek, archbishop emeritus of Minsk-Mohilev, a man already called by John Paul II “a witness of faith in our time”. According to Sister Zofji Zdybitskaj, of the Order of St. Ursula, teacher of philosophy and close to John Paul II for almost half a century, “the contribution of the Great Pope to philosophic anthropology is one of the most important services rendered by the Pope: a service that was intellectual in nature”. The symposium ended with a solemn eucharistic celebration in Polish, officiated by Cardinal Grocholewski.
