"He is a very compassionate person who is interested in human problems," Zirka Z. Filipczak, a visiting professor from Williams College, said yesterday concerning her 30-minute audience with Pope John Paul II last week.

Filipczak, whose husband is the pontiff's nephew, was in Rome for the installation Mass two weeks ago. She attended a private audience in the Vatican the following Tuesday.

She said the Pope's first remark was, "None of us expected this, did we?" "The new office hasn't changed him a bit," she added.

Filipczak said they mostly discussed family matters, although she did question him about the problems of Ukranian Catholics. "He expressed a favorable attitude towards all Slavic Catholics and Catholics of the Soviet Union," she said.

John I. Filipczak, her husband, said yesterday, "He is a very intelligent choice for Pope on many levels because he is familiar with the governments of the Eastern bloc and he knows the thought and the political direction there."

"He has many of the qualities of the recent popes; he is concerned with human and social problems, but at the same time he is intellectually involved in all kinds of modern issues not strictly limited to church ideas," he added.

Zirka Filipczak said that as Cardinal of Krakow, Poland, Karol Wojtyla was pragmatic about "the political situation and yet sometimes he was willing to put himself on the line." She speculated that he would behave similarly in his new office.

Filipczak said that both she and her husband do not expect the Pontiff to take any primarily political stands, although she added, "He is conservative on many church issues."

Zirka Filipczak, who is an American citizen of Ukranian descent, is lecturing at Harvard for the first semester this year. She is a member of the Department of Art History at Williams College. Her husband is an antique dealer specializing in oriental rugs.