* Jozef Tischner; Philosopher Priest, Friend of Pope

Jozef Tischner, 69, a respected Roman Catholic philosopher and friend of Pope John Paul II. A native of Stary Sacz, Poland, Tischner had served as a priest in the Krakow area since 1956. Krakow was the home diocese of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla before he became pope in 1978. Tischner studied philosophy at the renowned Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where Wojtyla and phenomenologist Roman Ingarden were among his teachers. A philosophy professor specializing in man’s existential problems and the theory of values, Tischner had headed the Papal Theological Academy in Krakow since 1980. He also lectured at the Jagiellonian and the Theater School in that city. Known for his progressive religious views, Tischner was a strong supporter of Poland’s Solidarity democracy movement in the 1980s. Since the late 1950s, he had written articles for the respected lay Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, at times the only opposition newspaper when Poland was under Communist control. In 1981, when the Communist regime imposed martial law in a bid to crush Solidarity, Tischner wrote “The Ethics of Solidarity,” a philosophical study of the anti-Communist movement. On Wednesday in Warsaw of cancer of the larynx.