On Thursday, June 20, at the UPJP II headquarters in Krakow, a public defense took place for the doctoral dissertation of Fr. Piotr Starmach titled: "The Church of John Paul II's Pontificate in Relation to the Phenomenon of Sects and New Religious Movements as a Pastoral Problem," written at the Faculty of Theology UPJPII, under the supervision of Fr. Prof. Andrzej Zwoliński. The doctoral dissertation of Fr. Dr. Piotr Starmach CR is 260 pages long. In the presented dissertation, the author provided a comprehensive view of the multifaceted phenomenon of contemporary activities of new religious movements and also presented their impact on individuals and society. Furthermore, he described in great detail the reaction to the described phenomenon at various levels of the Catholic Church's structures (from the Pope, through episcopates, to diocesan bishops). Fr. Dr. Piotr Starmach CR extensively presented the reasons why the Catholic Church is so critical of this phenomenon and the ways in which it attempts to counteract the expansion of new religious movements. The main goal of the dissertation is to discuss issues concerning the pastoral response of the Church of John Paul II's pontificate to the phenomenon of sects and new religious movements. In the first chapter, the author thoroughly discussed various ways of understanding the terms "sect" and "new religious movement." He presented numerous typologies of religious movements and the main methods of studying them. He focused especially on the approaches to this phenomenon encountered in sociology, cultural anthropology, and theology. The second chapter contains an in-depth and systematic presentation of John Paul II's teachings on sects and new religious movements and their social impact. The author reconstructed the Pope's views based on various texts (encyclicals, exhortations, apostolic letters, messages) as well as papal homilies and occasional speeches. The next chapter revealed the content of numerous Catholic Church documents that, to a greater or lesser extent, relate to the phenomenon of sects and religious movements. The author cited documents developed in various church institutions with both worldwide and local influence. The fourth chapter of the dissertation was dedicated to a critical analysis of the doctrines of selected sects and new religious movements. The author focused on showing the most important doctrinal errors contained in the teachings of sects referring to the Bible. These errors are fundamental in nature - they concern basic issues on which people base their worldview. These issues include: the concept of God, the concept of man, the understanding of salvation, and the role the Church plays in human searches for God and salvation. The dissertation concludes with a chapter presenting the pastoral response of the Church to the phenomenon of sects and the problems associated with their functioning. In summary, the author extensively, and based on a rich and well-studied source material, provided a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon of sects and new religious movements functioning in the contemporary world. He also showed the methods by which sects and new religious movements attract followers, often from among Catholics. With convincing arguments, he justified the thesis that for the Catholic Church, the main danger arising from the activities of sects is the propagation of specific errors contained in their doctrines. These concern fundamental worldview issues. The entire work contains a deepened and organizing description of a significant issue, based on a very extensive and thoroughly studied source material, which has not been the subject of such systematic research until now. BH CR