From the very beginning of his pontificate, John Paul II’s teaching on human love, marriage, and family was remarkable for its broadness of horizon, its originality of approach, and its freshness of emphasis, astounding the public and surprising even the Catholic community, its theologians included. The themes of family and the love between man and woman—which were once viewed from a chiefly moral perspective—took on a fundamentally anthropological connotation, characterized by strong symbolic significance, becoming at the same time the possible key to a theology coextensive with the whole mystery of Christian revelation. It is fitting to look back at the Polish pope’s Magisterium to demonstrate how fruitful it has been for the theology of the family, which today is more urgently needed than ever to support the Church’s pastoral response to the radical challenges posed by the context in which we are called to live.

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