A celebration of the life, work and thought of Pope John Paul II is the exciting focus of the first semester of 2009/2010 at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas of Aquinas (Angelicum). Pope John Paul II, then Karol Wojtyla, studied at the Angelicum at the end of the 1940’s obtaining his Doctorate in Theology some 60 years ago. In celebrating our most illustrious alumnus, we aim to throw new light on various aspects of his thought and life through courses and seminars across the university, a new edition of his doctoral thesis with previously unpublished introductory material and comment, a major conference presenting both his thesis and the cultural environment of Rome in the 1940’s, as Wojtyla would have experienced it, followed up in the summer with a series of pilgrimages to Rome that focus on the life of this extraordinary man as he lived it here, both as Wojtyla, the student, and as John Paul II, the Pope.
