Vatican City, Oct 13, 2003 / 22:00 pm
In a moving personal testimony during the presentation of his book on the philosophical thought of John Paul II, “Metaphysics of the Human Person,” Polish priest Father Tadeusz Sticzen stated the current Pontiff has been called by God to fulfill his own prophecy.
A student of philosophy of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla and his successor as Professor of Ethics at the Catholic University of Dublin, Fr. Sticzen recounted that during the spiritual exercises the future John Paul II preached to the Roman Curia and to Pope Paul VI in Lent of 1976, the Polish Cardinal focused on the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane, pointing out that the Lord’s request to “watch and pray” was not fully heeded. “The three chosen disciples were unable to fulfill this simple request of Jesus.”
“This was why the Cardinal of Krakow fervently exhorted the Pope (Paul VI) to attempt what appeared to be the impossible: take up the story where it left off, that is, assume the opportunity lost by man 2000 years ago to console God, to translate into reality the yet unanswered invitation to ‘watch’,” said Father Sticzen at the Vatican’s Press Office.
Fr. Sticzen recalled that when he received the phone call on October 16 from Stanislaw Kaminisk, at that time Dean of the School of Philosophy at the University of Lublin, informing him that “Karol Wojtyla is Pope,” “I was scared and I cried, and I am not embarrassed about those tears, as I realized the face of Paul VI had become the face of John Paul II.”