Oct 22nd - John Paul II

By the end of my first month of seminary, two popes had died: Paul VI and John Paul I. By the end of my first year we had a pope who put his mind to building up the Church. By the end of my third year, he had been shot and it looked like we would be on our way to yet another pope.
By my first year of theology, he had recovered and strengthened (albeit the "jealous disease" had begun), and gave me and my classmates a task: (08/SEP/1982) "Remember always that you have come to Rome in order to get to know Christ better. If you are humble, you will discover him in prayer, in the Sacred Scriptures, and in all your studies. Dear seminarians, in Rome you will have many splendid opportunities to open your hearts ever more to Jesus Christ, the Son of God and High Priest of salvation."
I have tried to take that admonition to heart and live it everyday since.

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Christian wisdom, which the Church teaches by divine authority, continuously inspires the faithful of Christ zealously to endeavor to relate human affairs and activities with religious values in a single living synthesis. Under the direction of these values all things are mutually connected for the glory of God and the integral development of the human person, a development that includes both corporal and spiritual well-being.
Indeed, the Church's mission of spreading the Gospel not only demands that the Good News be preached ever more widely and to ever greater numbers of men and women, but that the very power of the Gospel should permeate thought patterns, standards of judgment, and norms of behavior; in a word, it is necessary that the whole of human culture be steeped in the Gospel.
...Furthermore, the Gospel is intended for all peoples of every age and land and is not bound exclusively to any particular culture. It is valid for pervading all cultures so as to illumine them with the light of divine revelation and to purify human conduct, renewing them in Christ.
For this reason, the Church of Christ strives to bring the Good News to every sector of humanity so as to be able to convert the consciences of human beings, both individually and collectively, and to fill with the light of the Gospel their works and undertakings, their entire lives, and, indeed, the whole of the social environment in which they are engaged. In this way the Church carries out her mission of evangelizing also by advancing human culture.

-- Sapientia Christiana, 1