(OSV News) ─ The John Paul II Vatican Foundation will celebrate its 45th anniversary in Rome Oct. 19-22, bringing together members of its international community and culminating in a private audience with Pope Leo XIV. Organizers say the focus is not only on honoring St. John Paul II's legacy, but on showing how it continues to shape lives through concrete works, especially educational opportunities for young people.
The foundation was established by St. John Paul in 1981, exactly three years into his historical election, to support works connected with concern for the human person, particularly young people, students and pilgrims, but also works of art and the world of culture.
Its scholarship program at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland ─ known as KUL ─ where Father and later Cardinal Karol Wojtyla led the Department of Ethics at the Faculty of Philosophy for almost a quarter of a century ─ provides students with accommodation, meals, formation and academic education throughout their studies.
More than 1,100 students and more than 40 doctoral graduates have completed the program, according to the foundation, which allocates more than 500,000 euros ($581,000) annually to it.
Making people flourish
Gloria Nwagana first learned about St. John Paul in her parish, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital.
Years later, after becoming an academic scholarship recipient of the John Paul II Vatican Foundation, she found that his words were no longer simply history. They became part of her own story.
Nwagana applied to KUL and the foundation's scholarship program during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although she was accepted, travel restrictions kept her in Uzbekistan, and she completed her first year of studies online, and then headed to Poland.
Once in the pontiff's homeland, the foundation became more than a way to finance her education. "It gave me the possibility of being part of a community and of a great work initiated by John Paul II," she told OSV News. "Each of us, for different reasons, could not always spend holidays with our loved ones, so at that time we created our own foundation family."
It's a 'family,' students say
That sense of a family became particularly important when Nwagana's father died shortly before a planned trip to Rome that was supported by the foundation. She wanted to cancel the trip, but her mother insisted that she go to the Eternal City.
"I am very grateful to her for that today," Nwagana told OSV News. "What was especially important to me was the support I received from the foundation during that difficult time -- above all, prayer and the feeling that I was not alone," she said.
Today, after completing her master's degree, Nwagana lives in Poznan, Poland, and works as an educator. She said the foundation taught her independence and openness to other people -- qualities she now uses in working with young people.
Her upbringing in the spirit of John Paul's teaching also strengthened her sense of responsibility -- to "demand demand of yourselves, even if others do not demand it of you," she said, paraphrasing St. John Paul's words in Czestochowa's Jasna Góra Marian shrine in 1983.
'Natural heir' of the pontificate
Msgr. Pawel Ptasznik, chairman of the foundation and a longtime Vatican collaborator of John Paul, told OSV News that the foundation's main task is to pass on the legacy of the pontiff and the values of his pontificate to future generations.
The mission is to pass on the late pope's values through action rather than nostalgia, he said -- "not in the dimension of stories, anecdotes or memories, but in the dimension of concrete works," Msgr. Ptasznik told OSV News. That means supporting the areas that were part of John Paul II's original vision for the foundation. At the heart of that vision is a conviction expressed by John Paul II in his first encyclical, "Redemptor Hominis": "Man ... is the primary and fundamental way for the Church."
"We are not interested in the foundation becoming attached only to John Paul," added Father Podlewski, the foundation's spokesman.
"Time moves forward, and as a Church we love every successive pope," he said, adding that the foundation seeks to support what he described as the elements of John Paul's work that remain "universal and still relevant." That includes scholarships for young people, formation programs, cultural and artistic initiatives, and projects that use new ways of reaching people and sharing the faith.
Calling the foundation's day-to-day operations "the outstretched arms of John Paul II," Father Podlewski told OSV News: "We are the natural heir and continuator of his pontificate -- but only in that dimension which remains relevant and universal."
That approach also shapes the Premio San Giovanni Paolo II Vatican Award, which the foundation has presented since 2024 to a person or institution putting values promoted by St. John Paul into practice.
"We want to unearth a true gem from the global crowd -- a person or institution, often little known, that somewhere, in its own specific place, makes the world more beautiful, safer and better because he or she was inspired by St. John Paul II," Father Podlewski said of its recipients.
Celebrating the 45th anniversary, the foundation launched a new website in four languages.
Forming the young in the land of John Paul
Father Valerian Karitas is a current foundation scholar from Indonesia. Before arriving in Poland, Father Karitas said he knew John Paul's teaching. In Poland, however, he has come to understand the pontiff's personality and soul, he said, through the land that formed the giant of faith.
Father Karitas said he encountered Poland's "memory of suffering" in museums, convents and sanctuaries.
"I just realized the 'devastating yet promising' (history of the) nation of St. John Paul II was behind his extraordinary teachings," he said, adding that in the pontiff's homeland he understood that faith will persevere the biggest hardships.
"Even if the building is destroyed, the stones are always there, ready for rebuilding," he said.
What also affected him deeply was something more ordinary: the family. He experienced the Polish traditions by sharing the Christmas Eve wafer and visiting families during the Christmas carolling season -- things the Wojtyla family cherished, and which the pope brought to the Vatican with him.
Father Karitas' greatest challenge, however, has been to learn the language of the Polish pope.
"I need to combine all my learning at once -- academic study, English and Polish," he told OSV News. "Sometimes, I don't really understand what I read during Mass, but I must try."
The experience of living far from home but under the wings of the foundation changed his understanding of his priesthood, Father Karitas told OSV News.
"They changed my vocation and life as a priest," the priest said, particularly by deepening his devotion to Virgin Mary and his sensitivity to problems affecting the human person and the family.
He now hopes to take something of what he has learned back to Indonesia.
For Father Podlewski, such work illustrates the difference between promoting a person and continuing a mission: "We do not promote only John Paul himself, but the works that he began."
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Katarzyna Szalajko writes for OSV News from Warsaw, Poland.
