Pope John Paul II had an emotionally intimate “affair” with a married Polish-American philosopher, according to a treasure trove of just-unearthed personal letters.
The National Library of Poland has pictures and correspondence exchanged over 32 years between John Paul and late New Hampshire academic Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, the BBC reported.
The future pope, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, and Tymieniecka met in 1973 when he was a teacher at Lublin University in Poland.
Tymieniecka’s loved ones sold her letters to the Polish archivists in a seven-digit deal following her death in 2014, the BBC reported. But instead of celebrating the incredible score, Polish archivists kept the fascinating papers under wraps until the BBC finally got a look them recently, the British broadcasters said.
The archive includes pictures of the future pope in shorts, on a lakeside camping trip with Tymieniecka, and in full ski gear on the slopes with her.
Nothing in the letters shows a forbidden love affair that would break John Paul’s vow of celibacy. But the pair appeared to share a deep emotional intimacy, with John Paul once telling her she was a gift to him from God.
He said in that missive: “If I did not have this conviction, some moral certainty of Grace, and of acting in obedience to it, I would not dare act like this.”
Tymieniecka stayed in close touch with John Paul after she moved to the United States and even during his reign as pope.
She visited him the day before he died in 2005.
The relationship between John Paul and Tymieniecka wasn’t a secret — and was first disclosed in Carl Bernstein’s 1997 book, “His Holiness.”
But Bernstein said these papers shed remarkable new light on John Paul.
“We are talking about Saint John Paul. This is an extraordinary relationship,” Bernstein said. “It’s not illicit. Nonetheless, it’s fascinating. It changes our perception of him.”