Friday, July 12, 2013

My Teacher Who Became the Pope's Theologian

When I studied in Rome, one of my professor's was Fr. Wojchek Giertych, OP.  As the Roman education system permits, Fr. Giertych's class would often have lots of people from all over the city who would come just to hear him lecture - they weren't even enrolled in the class!  Some of my friends at nearby seminaries would come over ON THEIR BREAK to hear Fr. Giertych!

In the middle of one of our classes (Fr. Giertych taught us moral theology) the dean of the university came in and said he had a special announcement: "I'm very excited to announce that Pope Benedict has announced today that Fr. Giertych will become his personal theologian!"

My jaw hit the floor!  The papal theologian is a priest or theologian who is around to read over speeches and documents and is there for the Pope to discuss important topics with.

Fr. Giertych also let us know he would keep teaching our class through the semester.  I chuckled thinking about how the Pope's theologian would be reading my papers, and then going to the Vatican and reading Pope Benedict's papers!

Fr. Giertych has also done a great job of participating in the new evangelization and has been in lots of interviews and videos.  He hails from Poland, but his English is excellent.

Fr. Giertych recently sat down with John-Henry Weston of Lifesite News and talked about the hope that he sees in America.  It is worth a listen!



You can read Lifesite's entire article on the interview by clicking here

2 comments:

  1. Father Giertych spoke at Christendom College last semester - he was amazing! You're so blessed to have had him for a teacher.

    ~Rebecca W.

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  2. I appreciate the way in which Fr. Giertych connected the seemingly virtuous act of giving by governments to those who have none to a violent collision.

    Helping people is obviously good, but simply giving away money is problematic. The money eventually runs out, and you will find governments enacting policy to "fix" the problem. Governments will enact policies that allow the killing off of the weakest of it's people (unborn and elderly)that they can't continue to support. Seems like a "violent collision" was more of an observation than a prediction.

    -Greg Armbruster

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