For the Mariology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI it is fundamental that the Mother of the Lord is not viewed in isolation, but is seen in the totality of the Christian faith. To the Marian texts of the New Testament he added the lines of the great feminine saviour figures of the Old Testament, which have drawn down the power of God by their faith and inspired salvific histories. In Mary these women are revisited, in her “Fiat” the people of Israel experience a concrete personification. Ratzinger traces Maria as a “church in the origin”, in her the church receives a personal centre with corresponding consequences. His Marian dogmatics is based on his own biblical theological approach, and especially gives the teachings of the recent church history its own well-comprehensible depth structure.

Conducting Mariology in context is one of the original elements of contemporary Polish theology. Its methodological and theological justification is through the mystery of the Triune God and not the constantly changing culture. Researching the image of God in Mariological doctrine is one manner of verifying theological hypotheses or conclusions. The image of Mary is dependent on the image of God. Whenever the history of salvation was perceived as the work of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, Mary was presented as a participant (or a recipient) and a witness of the activities of God. The more Divine Providence was valued, the more frequent was the encouragement to worship it as Mother of Jesus did in her Magnificat. Some theses from the analyzed sources are especially inspirational. We need to notice the invitations to reflect on the mediatorship of Jesus (per Jesum ad Mariam) and the Holy Spirit (per Spiritum ad Mariam) as well as reflect on the soteriological model of receptio.

The aim of the article is to show the inculturation of faith and the popular religiosity as the context in which Pope Francis’ Marian spirituality and Mariology have been shaped. Inculturation of faith began in South America with Mary’s apparition in Guadalupe in 1531, however, the theological reflection on the importance of evangelization of culture and popular piety developed in South America only after the Second Vatican Council. The milestones in its development are two Conferences of CELAM: in Puebla in 1979 and in Aparecida in 2007. Moreover, the emergence of Argentinean theology of the people in the 1970s played also an important role in its development. Pope Francis, in his programmatic apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium emphasized Mary’s place in popular piety and her role in preaching the Gospel.

The reconstruction of Francis’ gestures, behaviors, and words in terms of his understanding of the Church is fraught with considerable difficulties. On the one hand, the ecclesiological concept he introduced attracts crowds of followers, but on the other, it provokes many individuals to criticize and to adopt the attitude of rejection. In order to understand his teaching on the Church without any distortions, one needs to refer to the Aparecida Document of Latin American Bishops (2007) and to his papal exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2014). The battered Church of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is located primarily on the outskirts of Christianity and grows out of the Argentinian option that encompasses various types of excluded people. Hence, such a community imprudently exposes itself to the accusations, which are not groundless, of promoting religious syncretism, weakening the uniqueness and oneness of Jesus Christ, and questioning ecclesiastical sacramentality.

Intellectual and spiritual formation of Joseph Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI - requires talk about the process of his development. The article refers to the most overlooked phase of the young Ratzinger, who moves from the position of a progres-sive and sometimes irresponsible theorizing academic theologian to the position of a thinker grounded in the community of faith, becoming the guardian and teacher of Christian doctrine in line with the spirit and tradition of the Church. A lot of light on the change in the attitude of the German professor sheds the preparatory phase to the Second Vatican Council and its debates, as well as the unpleasant experience of the student revolt in 1968, which finds our professor in Tübingen. And in this way the liberal German theologian grows into to an outstanding Catholic theologian of the universal Church.