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“I'm happy to endorse this Institute for the study of Saint John Paul II, at a time when his message concerning the dignity of the person, rooted in the redemption of Christ, is more needed than ever. Throughout his work we find a depth of faith and the vigor of reason in a perfect combination for a full and authentic education. The Saint John Paul II Institute at the University of St Thomas in Houston, Texas, promises a great opportunity for such an education.”
Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput
Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
Archbishop of Philadelphia
“The thought of Pope St. John Paul II is a great gift to the Church throughout the world. So is the St. John Paul II Institute at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. The Institute's work will help ensure that John Paul II's penetrating insights into the human condition reach the broad audience they deserve.”
George Weigel
Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Saint John Paul II developed a profound vision of the dignity of the human person in relation to others and ultimately to God. He brought this vision to the world stage where he inspired and guided the Catholic Church. He traveled around the globe to influence political leaders and lead social movements promoting the dignity of the human person and to respect freedom of conscience and religion. His signature phrases, such as “Be not afraid,” and “Love is stronger than death”, changed the hearts and minds of believers and non‐believers.
Learn about the different qualities that made Saint John Paul II special:
"I send you greetings in the name of beauty, which is the profile of God, the cause of Christ, and the cause of Poland.” (John Paul II, 1941.)
A collection of poetry by Pope John Paul II’s work from 1939 – 1978 can be read in The Place Within: The Poetry of Pope John Paul II.
In his poetry, one can discover symbolic images and objects that appear constantly and carry on the central ideas of his worldview. Examples of such central themes, which organize deep human experience into the material of linguistic signs, include:
"When I think of the Eucharist, and look at my life as a priest, as a bishop, and as the successor of Peter, I naturally recall the many times and places in which I was able to celebrate it."
"This gives me a powerful experience of its universal and cosmic character. Yes, cosmic! when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world."
Follow the path of Saint John Paul II!
For the MA or Certificate Programs in John Paul II Studies, students take an online class entitled "JPII in the Context of Polish History and Culture" (JPII-5340-POL), with an option to travel to St. John Paul II’s homeland and gain a deeper understanding of his life before and after becoming pope.
Most years this two-week trip takes place in June. It is guided by Polish natives and John Paul II scholars. Highlights include visits to:
Our students come from over a dozen states and from various countries around the globe including Australia, Italy, Cameroon, the Philippines, and Lesotho.
The study abroad program is also available to audit students!
Poland is home to:
While there are a million things that make Poland such an amazing country, here are four categories that highlight what separates Poland from anywhere else in the world:
Polish saints include:
Two great Polish writers who were influential in the life of St. John Paul II: Adam Mickiewicz, 1798-1855 and Cyprian Norwid, 1821-1883
Two great Polish musicians
Frédéric Chopin, 1810-1849 and Ignacy Jan Paderewski, 1860-1945, President of Free Poland
Poland is known for its amazing landscapes and beautiful cities.
A meeting with Karol Cardinal Wojtyla in 1976 at the Catholic University of America led John Hittinger to devote himself to a life-long study of the thought of Pope John Paul II. He has given more than 100 talks on the thought of Saint John Paul II, focusing on culture, lay apostolate, faith and reason, family, and Church and state issues. In 2009 he founded the Pope John Paul II Forum to explore his legacy and in 2019 he founded the St. John Paul II Institute. He is a professor of philosophy and teaches classes on John Paul II and Thomas Aquinas for the Institute and for the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas. He has taught at Benedictine College, the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, St. Mary’s College in Orchard Lake MI and Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. Dr. Hittinger is the co-editor of Wojtyla Studies (Krakow and Houston) and serves on the editorial board for Philosophy and Canon Law (Katowice); he has published books and articles in the fields of political philosophy, ethics and anthropology with a focus on such philosophers as Aristotle, John Locke, Aquinas, Jacques Maritain, Karol Wojtyła, and Josef Tischner.
Father Ryan Connors is a priest of the Diocese of Providence. He holds a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and currently serves as Professor of Moral Theology at St. John's Seminary in Boston. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Thomist, Nova et Vetera, Angelicum, Logos, Studia Moralia, National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly and, most recently, he is the author of Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2024).
Professor of Theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, Michigan; teaches JPII 5308 Sources of Renewal and Vatican II. Dr. Fastiggi received his A.B. from Dartmouth College, and his M.A. (Theology) and Ph.D. (Historical Theology) from Fordham University.
F. Russell Hittinger is the Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa. He has been a full time faculty at Fordham University and at the Catholic University of America. He is a Visiting Professor at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley), and has served on two pontifical academies: St. Thomas Aquinas and Social Sciences. He designed and implemented the course JPII 5330: The Social/political teaching of John Paul II.
Philosophy Professor at Holy Cross College, Notre Dame, Indiana; will teach JPII 5310 Thomistic Personalism.
Sr. Mary Veronica Sabelli, R.S.M., Ph.D. has taught at St. John’s Seminary (Boston) and St. Vincent Seminary (Latrobe, PA) as Associate Professor of Philosophy. She teaches JPII 5335 Mission, Culture, and Evangelization and JPII 5345 Final Project.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame (BA, Program of Liberal Studies, ’83) and the Catholic University of America (MA, Philosophy, ’86; PhD, Philosophy, ’92), Susan Selner-Wright has been teaching philosophy to undergraduates and Catholic seminarians since 1986. Her most important academic work is a translation of Q. 3 of St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Potentia Dei, published by CUA Press under the title On Creation and she has published articles in journals including Logos, International Philosophical Quarterly, and the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. Since 2001, she has been a member of the faculty of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary. She is the author of the Endow study guides Aquinas for Beginners (Parts 1 and 2) and the co-founder (with Mary Hasson and Theresa Farnan) of the Person and Identity Project personandidentity.com at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which aims to articulate a Catholic response to gender ideology.
Dr. Richard H. Bulzacchelli is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Ministry at the University of Dallas, Partner and Lecturer in Theology at Catholic Studies Academy, and Senior Fellow with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. Dr. Bulzacchelli also teaches for the St. John Paul II Institute at University of St. Thomas – Houston and Saint Meinrad Seminary School of Theology’s Permanent Diaconate Formation Program. Previously, he taught philosophy at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania (2002 – 2004), and theology at Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee (2004 – 2018), where he held the rank of Associate Professor. Dr. Bulzacchelli has authored two books, and numerous articles for both scholarly and general audiences. He holds the M.A. in Philosophy from Marquette, University; the M.A. in Religious Studies from Providence College; the S.T.L. in Systematic Theology from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.; and the S.T.D. with a concentration in Marian Theology from the International Marian Research Institute in Dayton, OH, where he wrote his dissertation on the relationship between Pope John Paul II’s Mariology and his understanding of the human person in act: Mary and the Acting Person: An Anthropology of Participatory Redemption in the Personalism of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II.
Instructor of Polish Language and Culture at the Loyola University Chicago. She teaches Contemporary Poland at JPII Institute. She is a lecturer of Polish Language at the Summer Language Institute at Pittsburgh University. Dr. Oskiera received her M.A. (Polish Philology) and Ph.D. (Polish Linguistics) from the University of Lodz, Poland. She is a principal of the General Casimir Pulaski Polish School in Harwood Heights, IL.
John Radzilowski, Ph.D., is director of Polish Institute of Culture and Research at Orchard Lake (Michigan), and a Professor of History at the University of Alaska. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Polish and American history with a special emphasis on immigration from Poland and east-central Europe to the USA.
Malgorzata Bujak, MA is a graduate of English Philology at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland with a specialty in English-Polish contrastive linguistics. She is an experienced and creative classroom instructor, who has been teaching Polish as a foreign and second language for over a decade. She incorporates a variety of teaching methods with a special focus on communication to make her class dynamic and effective. She enjoys spending time with her family, reading and travelling.
Dr. Jim Mazurkiewicz - Professor, Regents Fellow, and Leadership Program Director, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education & Communication, Texas A&M University.
John Corrigan is a single, Catholic professor and professional who comes from a large Irish and Swedish heritage with a bit of German and Dutch thrown in for good measure. Many of his formative years were spent in Polish parishes and in Polish founded parishes. Early in his undergraduate studies he developed a passion for the thought of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and began to pursue this as an area of concentration in philosophy.
In Chile, Dr. Corrigan earned a second M.A. and a Ph.D. from the Pontifical Universidad Catholica de Chile with two notes of distinction in philosophy. He was the recipient of numerous scholarships and grants during that time including a seven-month resident, research scholarship at the John Paul II Archives at Dom Polski, Rome.
Earlier Dr. Corrigan earned an M.Phil., Summa cum Laude from The International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein, in philosophy and political science.
His undergraduate work was done at Christendom College, Va.
In the private sector Corrigan has served as a Director of Sales and Marketing in Human Machine Interface manufacturing and as a Director of Subscriptions for journals in the not-for-profit sector.
He has worked in the auto brokerage market in Europe assisting in multi-million dollar, multi-vehicle deals and in the U.S. real estate market assisting in the recovery and purchase of lost inheritance properties.
The East Coast Swing Dance revival movement in Philadelphia was a passion of his for a number of years and he shares in a wide variety of interests from outdoor sports and activities to travel and languages.
He has designed and taught a wide variety of courses in philosophy and theology for over twenty years and has published and spoken in the U.S. and Chile on the philosophy of Karol Wojtyła. He is very excited to join the faculty at the University of St. Thomas Houston as the director of the Saint John Paul II Institute.
Dr. Hittinger asked Dr. Corrigan some questions regarding why he was interested in this job:
Q. Why did you want to come to work at the John Paul II Institute?
A. I have been familiar with your work for a number of years, but actually was not aware of the founding of this Institute until the point when I applied. I was amazed to see how this program checked all the boxes of my interests. After teaching in the undergraduate level for 20 years I was ready for a new challenge and I kept saying to myself, "It would be great to do some graduate teaching." To find a Graduate John Paul II program set in the heart of one of the most excellent Thomistic Universities of our time was almost too good to be true.
Q. What are some of the highlights of this Institute that interest you?
A. In one sense you might say the "sky is the limit" as to what we can do and offer here. As an online graduate program, we have the ability to offer something very attractive to qualifying persons all over the world namely, a U.S. accredited degree program. That takes the idea of collaborative efforts with other institutions and countries to a new level of flexibility. At the same time there is a standard and rigor at this university which I think has not been noticed yet by the University Guides and rankings. It is exciting to get in, so to speak, on the ground floor of this explosion of excellence. To name just a few examples:
Dr. Carmina Chapp is a Catholic theologian who has worked in Catholic education and clergy formation for over 25 years. She earned her doctorate at Duquesne University, specializing in sacramental theology and general systematics. She began her career teaching undergraduates and working in campus ministry at DeSales University, then moved on to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Philadelphia where she taught seminarians and served as Academic Dean. She is a member and past president of the Society for Catholic Liturgy. She has been teaching online courses for many, many years.
R. Mary Hayden Lemmons, Ph.D. from the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas; M.A. in philosophy from Niagara University in New York; B.S./B.A in biochemistry/political science from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dr. Lemmons is a summer adjunct at the St. John Paul II Institute in Houston; an associate professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in MN; and president of University Faculty for Life and founder of the Society for Thomistic Personalism. Dr. Lemmons’s research and publications focus on the thought of Wojtyla/John Paul II, natural law especially Aquinas’s personalist natural law, bioethics, political and legal philosophy, Catholic feminism, and the philosophy of love. She has published Ultimate Normative Foundations: The Case for Aquinas’s Personalist Natural Law and has both edited and contributed three chapters to Woman as Prophet in the Home and the World. She also serves a special issue editor for Studia Gilsoniana, an assistant editor of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, and an Advisory Board member for the Family Studies program at the University of St. Thomas, MN.
Witold Kania is a priest from the diocese of Katowice in Upper Silesia, Poland, currently serving the Parish of the Holy Cross in Tychy, Poland. He is the Archdiocesan Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, Archdiocese of Katowice, Poland, and Chaplain to the Missionaries of Charity, Katowice, Poland. For many years, Fr. Witold has visited Houston and served parishioners at St. Vincent de Paul Parish. Fr. Witold is a visiting professor at the University of St Thomas in Houston, Texas, where he has given numerous lectures and has led the UST study abroad in Poland for the past three years. He holds a Ph.D. from the ecclesiastical faculty of philosophy, University of Navarra, Spain. He also earned a Licentiate in Theology from the Academy of Catholic Theology, Warsaw, Poland, and an M.A. in Theology from the Papal Academy of Theology, Kraków, Poland. Rev. Dr. Witold’s special expertise is in bioethics and ecology.
Dr. Piotr Przybylski, Assistant Director of Polish Studies in the St John Paul II Institute is a Polish native with proven expertise in Polish history and heritage. Since November 2020, he has co-led in the development of the Polish Studies program by creating classes, hiring faculty, and recruiting students. He also promotes the Polish Studies Program at the state, national, and international levels among the Polish diaspora and in Poland, applying for grants and looking for potential donors for the St. John Paul II Institute's Polish Studies program.
Dr. Piotr Przybylski, Assistant Director of Polish Studies in the St John Paul II Institute is a Polish native with proven expertise in Polish history and heritage. Since November 2020, he has co-led in the development of the Polish Studies program by creating classes, hiring faculty, and recruiting students. He also promotes the Polish Studies Program at the state, national, and international levels among the Polish diaspora and in Poland, applying for grants and looking for potential donors for the St. John Paul II Institute's Polish Studies program.
Urszula Szuleta is teaching Polish as a Second Language. She was born and raised in Poland, where she also grew up and completed her education. In 2004, she graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna? with a Master of Arts degree, majoring in Education. She continued her studies, and in 2011 earned a postgraduate degree in Polish as a Second Language from Maria Curie-Sk?odowska University in Lublin. She started teaching Polish Language in Chicago in 2006, then from 2015 as an Adjunct Professor of Elementary Polish Language at The University of St. Thomas in Houston.
Dr. Chodakiewicz has authored numerous works in both English and Polish. While at the University of Virginia, he edited the Kosciuszko Chair’s bulletin: Nihil Novi. He writes weekly columns for popular Polish press and contributes to the SELOUS Foundation internet hub. He has also published on foreign policy in various venues, including “The Journal of World Affairs,” “American Spectator,” and “National Review Online.”
His interests include the post-Soviet zone, World War II and its aftermath, Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, Western civilization and its intellectual tradition, extremist movements in history, conspiracy theory and practice, and comparative civilizations.
Emilia joined SJPII Institute in August 2023. She moved to Houston from Brooklyn, NY in 2022, along with her husband and daughters, where she lived for almost 10 years.
She was born and raised in Poland. She graduated from the Faculty of Political Science, majoring in international relations at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Lublin, Poland) where she received a MA degree in 2010.
Emilia actively participated in many student's activities: e.g. she graduated from Young Diplomats Academy, was a member of AIESEC - student's organization and Ambassador of PricewaterhouseCoopers Poland at universities in Lublin in 2006-2008. As an honor, she completed an internship in PricewaterhouseCoopers, Human Capital Student's Attraction Department, Warsaw, Poland in 2008.
In 2009 she completed an internship in the Consulate General of the Republic in Poland in New York, and the same year she spent one semester at Mykolo Romerio University in Vilnius, Lithuania (Faculty of Policy and Strategic Management), participating in Erasmus student exchange. At the same time, Emilia supported the office of Trade and Investment Section of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Vilnius.
Her great achievements were receiving a Minister of Science and Higher Education Scholarship (Poland) for good results and Ferszt-Buynoski Scholarship in Political Science in recognition of excellent academic achievement and future potential (2009).
She mainly held administrative positions in her professional life. Emilia worked for companies such as Page Personnel, Colliers (Warsaw, Poland), Trade and Investment Section of the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York or D2 Properties in Brooklyn, NY.
She puts God and her family first, along with Polish traditions, and tries to pass on these values to her children. In her free time, she enjoys activities with her family, planting flowers, watching document series about geology and cosmos, and reading Scandinavian crime stories.
She chose SJPII Institute because she loves her country of origin, Poland, its culture, and language. Same as St. John Paul II who loved his country and Polish tongue, and always put Poland in the spotlight.
Somer Salomon recently graduated with a PhD in Theology from the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C. In addition, she also has an MLitt in Theology, Imagination, and the Arts from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and an MA in English Literature from Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. A native of Virginia, she enjoys open-water swimming, reading novels, and warm summer evenings. She is very excited to be teaching JPII 5335 Mission, Culture, and Evangelization.
Born in 1973, Dr. Paweł Skibiński is a lecturer at the Department of History, University of Warsaw. He is the author of seven books on the recent history of the Catholic Church, Spain and Poland. The latest of them, “The Church and Totalitarianism” (2022), won the Oskar Halecki Prize for the Best Historical Book of the Year 2022 in Poland. Since 2017 he has been the chairman of the editorial team of the edition of the series of daily notes of the Primate of Poland - Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski - “Pro Memoria 1949-1981”.