:
Giovanni Paolo II "Doctor Marianus" del nostro tempo (1978-2005). I. A cinque anni dalla morte: per una memoria grata

Summary: Five years after the death of John Paul II, the Author offers a synthesis of the late Pontiff's Marian teaching, which is deepy rooted in the doctrine of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, in which he himself had taken part. Thus John Paul II emphasised particularly the presence of the Handmaid of the Lord in the mystery of God in Christ and in that of the Church, as related to the men and women of our time. He thus favoured a Marian spiritually solid in its contents and in harmony with the liturgy. Salient points of his teaching in this Summary sense were the Encyclical, "Redemptoris Mater" (1987), the Apostolic Letter, "Mulieris dignitatem" (1988), the Apostolic Letter, "Rosarium Virginis Mariae" (2002) and the Marian chapter in the Encyclical, "Ecclesia de Eucharistia" (2003). Likewise the seventy Marian catecheses he delivered I 1995-1997 from a kind of "Life of Mary", in the light of the Word of God, Tradition and the ecclesiastical Magisterium. But, consistent with the teaching of the Council, the references to Mary are to be found integrated everywhere in his teaching documents, just as they are organically integrated in the four parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that he promulgated. Mary's is an intrinsic presence in the Christ Event, as set forth by John Paul II, with its Trinitarian and Christological perspective. Hence the appropriateness of thinking of him as the Doctor Marianus of our time.