The first hint of intimacy between them came in a letter sent from Rome, where Cardinal Wojtyla was attending a meeting of Catholic bishops in the autumn of 1974. He took several of Tymieniecka’s letters with him to answer them “without using the mail.” They are described by him as being “so meaningful and deeply personal, even if they are written in philosophical ‘code.'”

It is quite clear that at one point, around 1976, she declared her feelings for him, because a letter he wrote to her afterwards suggested he was trying hard to make sense of their relationship in Christian terms. He wrote that she was “a gift from God,” and that “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.”

We are used to seeing John Paul in formal papal clothing amid the grandeur of the Vatican, and yet here he is on the ski slopes, wearing shorts on a lake-side camping trip, and, in old age, entertaining privately in his rather sparse-looking living quarters.

Anna-Teresa's husband, Hendrik Houthakker, was a distinguished Harvard economist. After the collapse of communism, he advised John Paul on post-communist economies, and the Pope granted him a papal knighthood in recognition of his services.

At least it's a woman.

what are we supposed to do with this information?