The Russian-language Internet claims that Pope John Paul II gave this parenting advice to parents all over the world. We checked the accuracy of such statements.
The Pope allegedly said: “I would recommend that all parents raise their children on Soviet cartoons. They are the most humane and Christian in the world, useful to the soul, because they instill in the child compassion, patronage of the weak and kindness.” This statement can be found on entertaining websites, it popular in "VKontakte" And Facebook, he is quoted by such famous figures of Soviet animation as Grigory Gladkov And Leonid Shvartsman.
Karol Józef Wojtyła himself, the future Pope John Paul II, did not grow up watching Soviet cartoons. He was born in 1920 in Poland, which had already gained independence by that time. Most likely, if Karol watched cartoons as a child, they were works Walt Disney, which were popular in Europe in the early 1930s (although it’s impossible to know for sure). Perhaps Wojtyla saw the full-length film Vladislav Starevich "Reinecke the fox"- it was published in 1930. As for Soviet cartoons, they were hardly shown in pre-war Poland, and by the beginning of World War II, the future pope had already finished school.
Cardinal Wojtyla was elected head of the Catholic Church in 1978 and served in this post until his death in 2005. Official documents related to his papal activities (texts of letters, apostolic epistles, bulls, speeches, encyclicals, etc.) are stored in the Vatican archives, and most of them have been digitized and available online. However, “Verified” found no mention of either Soviet animation or animation as an art form in general. The word animation (“revitalization, spiritualization” - English) is mentioned there only in the context of religion - in phrases like “Christian spiritualization of the world of culture" It can be assumed that the pontiff spoke about cartoons in some interview, but a Google search in Polish, Italian and English also did not produce suitable results. And if articles about the Pope and Soviet cartoons could be found in these languages, then they were posted exclusively in Russian resources.
In some publications about the Soyuzmultfilm studio approved, that the pontiff gave his flock a recommendation to watch Soviet cartoons after the success of the film “Snow Queen"at the Venice Festival in 1957. Leonid Shvartsman also spoke, that this advice came “shortly after the [Great Patriotic] War, at the height of the Cold War.” However, in this case, this statement cannot be related to John Paul II - at that time the Pope was Pius XII, and Karol Wojtyla lived in Poland and taught ethics in Catholic universities. He was appointed cardinal only ten years later, and became pope 21 years later. However, not in the archives Pius XII, we also did not find such a statement in any publications about him.
Thus, although it cannot be stated with absolute certainty that John Paul II never said anything about Soviet cartoons, publications that he recommended raising children with their help are found only in Russian sources. There is no such information in materials about the pontiff in English, Italian and Polish. There are no similar quotes in the archive of documents on the Vatican website.
Cover photo: collage “Checked”
Read on topic:
- Did the head of the OCU state that the death of Pope Francis was due to his support for Russian aggression?
- Is it true that the Pope declared refusal to vaccinate a mortal sin?
- Is it true that watching cartoons has a negative impact on the psyche of preschool children?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
