The John Paul II Pontifical Institute in Turmoil, by Richard A. Spinello

By Richard A. Spinello, Crisis Magazine, Oct. 13, 2021

At the canonization ceremony of St. Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis graciously referred to the former pontiff as the “Pope of the Family.” The crowds cheered at this fitting title since there was no doubt about his legacy as a tenacious champion for marriage and family. Part of that legacy was the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome (later renamed the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences).

Pope John Paul II commissioned Cardinal Carlo Caffarra to establish this Institute in 1982. Its purpose was to defend the Church’s teaching on marriage and family and advance John Paul II’s own orthodox but innovative insights on sexual morality. Those views were initially expressed in his magnificent pre-papal work Love and Responsibility, and later in Theology of the Body, along with many other papal letters and encyclicals.cellor, the Institute’s original vision has been slowly undermined and furtively sabotaged. In 2019, several longtime faculty members, such as Livio Melina, Jaroslaw Kupczak, and Stanislaw Grygiel, were fired without warrant or due process. …