Teachings of Pope John Paul II Teachings of Pope John Paul II The teachings of Pope John Paul II are contained in a number of documents. It has been said that these teachings will have a long-lasting influence on the Church. Pope John Paul II's philosophical and theological teachings and writings were characterised by explorations in phenomenology and personalism. He was influenced by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, his predecessors as Archbishop of Kraków Eugeniusz Baziak and Adam Stefan Sapieha, and his predecessors as Pope - John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul I. His closest theological adviser was Cardinal
Pope John Paul II and Judaism in April 1986 was the first known visit to a synagogue by a modern pope. He visited the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israel in March 2000, and touched the holiest outward remaining shrine of the Jewish people, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He placed in the Western Wall a prayer that read: John Paul II supported dual-covenant theology. On November 17, 1980, Pope John Paul II delivered a speech to the Jews of Berlin in which he discussed his views of Catholic-Jewish relations. In it, John Paul II asserted that God's Old Covenant with the Jewish people was never