Stanislaw Grygiel is dead. A friend and collaborator of John Paul II, he was 89 years old

Professor Stanisław Grygiel died at night in Rome. The Archdiocese of Krakow announced his death on Monday (February 20). The collaborator and – as the archdiocese emphasized – a close friend of John Paul II was associated with Krakow and Lesser Poland throughout his life, therefore the funeral Masses will be celebrated in Rome and Krakow.

In the biography provided by the Archdiocese of Krakow, we read that Stanisław Grygiel was a professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He was born in 1934 in Zembrzyce near Sucha Beskidzka. He graduated in philosophy from the Pontifical Faculty of Philosophy of the Society of Jesus in Kraków (1956), and in philology from the Jagiellonian University (1961). He obtained his doctorate in philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin (1965). Bishop Karol Wojtyła was the supervisor of his doctoral dissertation.

In the years 1966-1967 he was a scholarship holder at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Louvain in Belgium, and in the years 1962-1980 he was the editor of the Catholic monthly “Znak” and a lecturer in philosophy at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Krakow. From 1980, together with his wife Ludmiła and children Monika and Jakub, he lived in Rome, where in 1981 he founded the Polish Institute of Christian Culture at the Foundation. John Paul II. He taught philosophical anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Studies. For over 20 years he taught philosophy of man at the Pontifical Institute of John Paul II in Washington. In the 1990s he taught philosophy in Lugano, Switzerland.

He was also a co-founder and longtime director of the quarterly “Il Nuovo Areopago”. He participated in the works of two synods of European bishops. He is the author of numerous books published in Poland, Italy, Spain and the United States. He has also published many essays and articles in several languages ​​in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. He was a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Vienna-Salzburg, the Academy of Philosophy in Argentina and the Polish Philosophical Society.

He was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit (1974), the Order of St. Gregory (Vatican 2008) and the Grand Cross of Merit of the Knights of Malta with Star (Rome 2014). He also received the Totus Tuus award (Warsaw 2021) and the title of doctor honoris causa of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw (2021).

He was actively involved in the development of initiatives related to family and marriage in the archdiocese of Krakow. In recent years, he has contributed to the organization and implementation of two international congresses for marriage and family in Krakow in 2018-2022.