The future Pope John Paul II’s intellectual development was shaped by his experience in communist Poland, a context very different from Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States, where the main strands of Catholic social thought had emerged. As archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyła developed a philosophy centered on the concepts of praxis and participation, which laid the groundwork for his later social teaching as pope. This chapter looks at this early philosophical work, as well as his first two social encyclicals, Laborem Exercens and Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. In particular, it looks at the issues of human work, structures of sin, and liberation. John Paul II’s early teachings represent the beginning of a new framework for Catholic social teaching, the communio framework, which emphasizes the distinctiveness of Christian revelation in the midst of the contradictions of modernity.