The unrest guided by Solidarity, the labor union founded the previous August to protest against the economic crisis in Poland and to demand greater workers’ rights, had aroused serious concerns among the Soviet leaders. They, in turn, ordered the Polish authorities to put an end to the wave of strikes or risk direct intervention by the Red Army.
The spring and summer of 1981 saw a succession of increasingly frantic meetings of the Polish Communist Party’s top leaders, summoned to decide the next moves. Jaruzelski, who in that state of emergency had assumed the dual role of head of state and party secretary, clearly understood that, whatever strategy he chose to adopt, one of his severest judges would be John Paul II, who, from his very first visit to Poland in June 1979, had sent an unmistakable message that he would never abandon the land of his birth to its fate.
One authoritative Polish politician recalled the strong impression it had made upon him when, during that visit, he heard John Paul II state that perhaps the election of a Slavic pope was a sign that East and West could come to an understanding. When he later met him in the 1990s, this politician remarked, “Holy Father, those words sounded like a prophecy,” and the pope replied, “You remember very well. Primate Wyszyński read those words in advance, and he said: ‘Oh, Lolek, use caution, use caution!’ ” But the pope was convinced that it was time to venture an extra step forward, however great the risks.
In the fall, the Polish authorities understood that a direct confrontation with John Paul II was now unavoidable. On October 13, 1981, therefore, the Polish foreign minister Józef Czyrek arrived at the Apostolic Palace to lay out the seriousness of the situation and the potential paths forward. The pope was still very weak in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, but he listened with great interest to the Polish envoy and made arrangements for the new primate, Józef Glemp, and the labor leader, Lech Walłęsa, to meet General Jaruzelski. That meeting took place on November 4, and the following day Archbishop Glemp came to the papal apartments to report the results of that meeting, which seemed to offer some promise.
In the weeks that followed, however, Soviet pressure for a rapid solution to the crisis, which was threatening to spread to other East Bloc countries, caused a sharp worsening of the situation. On the night of December 13, martial law was proclaimed in Poland. A few days later, the Vatican nuncio, Luigi Poggi, arrived in Warsaw, bringing a fairly sternly worded letter from the Holy Father.
A rapid negotiation with the party directors, Kazimierz Barcikowski and Jerzy Kuberski, resulted in a softening of the tone. In any case, in the official letter John Paul II expressed his great distress at the proclamation of martial law, appealing at the same time that it be revoked as soon as possible and a path to dialogue be rapidly found. The response from the general, sent on January 6, 1982, also took the most conciliatory of tones, while clearly laying out the factors that had driven him to make that decision.
The pontiff always maintained a dialogue on a personal level with Jaruzelski. It was in fact during a private conversation at the Wawel Cathedral in June 1983 that the general first made known to John Paul II his intention of abolishing once and for all martial law and undertaking a series of reforms. The pope’s reply was: “I understand that socialism is a reality, but let’s try to do whatever we can to give it a human face. Civil liberties, social identity, and human rights are all important.” Jaruzelski saw this observation as an encouragement to lead Poland, step-by-step, toward a different form of politics. “He neither scolded nor offered warnings,” the general recalled, “but instead took into consideration the problems of the moment, indicating what he felt was the best course for the country.”
This was Wojtyła’s usual approach to confrontations, as is confirmed by the testimony of, among others, a person who, discussing with him a series of historical occurrences, noted that Providence sometimes makes use of the worst events to do good. The pontiff replied with these words: “Maybe you are right. But keep in mind that it is not enough to be right, the problem is how to convince people to accept this truth.”
In Poland, a gradual transition to democracy thus became possible, a transition that had to some degree begun the instant news arrived of Karol Wojtyła’s election to the pontificate. His carefully constructed speech, with the famous appeal “Be not afraid! Open up; no: swing wide the gates to Christ. Open up to his saving power the confines of the state, open up economic and political systems, the vast empires of culture, civilization, and development,” actually did produce the first cracks in the dike of Communism.
Before that, a young Polish priest recounts, “we were aware of the abnormality of the social situation in which we were living: the elections were a farce, politics was a big lie. Yet it seemed like a world that was destined to endure forever. No one could imagine that one day there would be no more state socialism in Poland and that we would be able to simply say no to the diktats of Moscow. On that sixteenth of October 1978, on the other hand, it seemed that our world could be moving in a different direction, because it was no longer condemned to remain trapped in the mechanism that was driving us to desperation and meaninglessness.”
Communism buried the individual in the masses, but paradoxically it was afraid of the masses. It wanted the masses to remain stupid and unaware of the power they possessed. For that reason, during the period of martial law, police authorization was required even to hold a party at home for a birthday or a name day if there were more than a certain number of guests. Little by little, however, people began looking around and losing their fear, realizing how many other people shared their values. And credit for this can certainly be attributed in part to Pope Wojtyła.
THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM
If the collapse of Communism, from 1989 on, took place without the terrible bloodshed that could easily have accompanied it, this too was in part due to the efforts of John Paul II, his firm and heartfelt public appeals and the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that he encouraged. As one well-connected and experienced political figure testified, “Everyone provided a contribution—the United States’ Ronald Reagan, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, France’s François Mitterrand—but the Holy Father was needed to tie it all together. He never prodded anyone, never made any proposals, never schemed. He provided words, and these were sufficient.” Even the Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged this when he said, “I did not destroy Communism, John Paul II did.”
The pope and Gorbachev spoke in person for the first time on December 1, 1989, in the Vatican, and their meeting was sealed with a long handshake. The Soviet premier had been given some advice by Jaruzelski, among others. When Gorbachev and Jaruzelski met again, the Soviet leader said, “You were right. The pope is a great man. He has great wisdom and great goodness. We must do what we can to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the Vatican.”
In 1992, Gorbachev sent the Vatican a two-page memo in Cyrillic titled On the Pope of Rome, in which he confirmed his belief that the pontiff had played a decisive role in this major historical shift. John Paul II’s comment was: “I read Gorbachev’s opinion on the role of the pope in the events that changed Eastern Europe in the past few years. I am convinced that he sincerely believes these things. When the European Synod of Bishops issued their final document, they wanted to emphasize this specific role of the pope, but I asked them not to. It was the Church that counted in this process, not the pope. If anything can be attributed to the pope, it’s the fruit of his faithfulness: faithfulness to Christ and to mankind.”
For Pope Wojtyła, everything had to be considered from the viewpoint of faith. When Communism was still powerful, he would have long discussions with intellectual friends about the way things would turn out. His conclusion was very simple: if Communism collapsed tomorrow morning, the Church’s first job would be to evangelize; and if Communism collapsed in a thousand years, it would still be to evangelize. “Nothing happens by chance, all is decided from on high,” he often said, quoting a German proverb, to indicate tha
t Divine Providence guides human life down to the minor details, and that the attitude of men should be trustful, placing themselves in the hands of God, not rejecting or inwardly rebelling.
An anecdote in that connection dates from the planning period for the trip to Poland in June 1997. In the November 1995 elections, Walłęsa had been defeated by Kwaśniewski, leader of the Democratic Left Alliance, and John Paul II was wondering, a bit nervously, how he would be welcomed by the Polish people. One evening, while they were discussing this at dinner, a priest said to him, with a certain naïveté, “Holy Father, perhaps we should consider this matter in the light of Providence.” The pope looked at him wryly, winked, and replied with a smile, “I do know a little something about Divine Providence!”
Pope Wojtyła was well aware that Providence intervenes where man allows God the space to enter, where man renders himself willing to reciprocate with his own actions the gifts received. He did not propose himself—nor did he perceive himself—as a protagonist, but merely as a simple tool in the hands of God. When he was told that, thanks to his prayers, someone had obtained what was requested, he commented humbly, “Thanks be to God for their faith.” Likewise, when he was thanked for having contributed to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, he replied, “It was the Providence of God. The one who did it all was the Madonna,” certain of the prophecy of the Virgin of Fátima concerning the conversion of Russia and the ensuing collapse of Communism. To those who asked him whether it was easy to experience history in the first person, he replied, “When God wishes it, it becomes easy. This makes my life much simpler: we know that God wishes it. He arranges matters.”
There can be no doubt that John Paul II had a powerful influence on the history of the twentieth century, but he did so above all by insisting on the central role of the human being, and defending the value of the individual. This insistence on the dignity of each person offered an invaluable element of cohesion that made possible, for instance, the “velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia and the emergence in Poland of the Solidarity movement, which included believers and nonbelievers. And all of them found in the Church the space of liberty.
THE HEIR TO ST. PAUL
In the mid-1990s, a joke circulated in the Vatican: “What is the difference between God and John Paul II? God is in all places, but the pope has already been there.” Wojtyła knew that the decision to devote so much energy to his pastoral travels in Italy and abroad met with a degree of disapproval. He attempted to counter that disapproval as early as June 1980 by stating publicly: “Many say that the pope travels too much, and too often. I think that, in human terms, they are right. But it is Providence that guides us, and sometimes it suggests that we do something per excessum.”
Indeed, during the pontificate of Pope Wojtyła, statistics entered the hushed halls of the Vatican with a vengeance. The apostolic journeys that he made were 146 in Italy and 104 abroad, in a sequence that included no fewer than 259 Italian localities and 131 independent nations. The number of days he spent away from the Vatican, without counting his stays at the summer residence of Castel Gandolfo and the 164 days he spent in the hospital, reached the impressive number of 822, equivalent to 8.5 percent of his entire pontificate.
John Paul II considered himself not only the successor to St. Peter but also the heir to St. Paul “who, as we know very well, never stayed long in one place: he was always traveling.” In this there was an element of continuity with the papacy of Pope Paul VI, who had begun a significant, albeit brief, sequence of apostolic journeys in the context of the opening and decentralization of the Church as recommended by the Second Vatican Council. John Paul II, for his part, said, “I am traveling as a teacher of faith, but also as a disciple, to learn about the life of the local churches.”
Certainly the papal trips demanded an investment of resources that was often staggering—and that often prompted objections and criticism, which profoundly grieved John Paul II. During his pastoral visitation to Australia, for instance, a number of local newspapers attacked him, pointing out that his trip had cost more than an earlier trip by the Queen of England. Whereupon the pope, speaking to a member of the entourage, replied with great firmness, “I believe that the trips of the pope should in fact cost more than those of the Queen of England: the pope brings the message of redemption, and redemption had an incalculable cost, that is all of Christ’s blood.”
Besides, these travels allowed millions of people who could never have afforded to travel to the Vatican to see the pontiff in person and to hear his words. “If the world cannot come to Rome, Rome must go out to the world,” Wojtyła announced in a vivid turn of phrase to the Peruvian bishops.
It often happened as well that a visit by the pope served to focus attention on the humanitarian emergencies of countries in difficulty, or to give a voice to oppressed populations. The pope also tended to contribute to those recipients all the donations that had been collected around the time of the voyage. Above all, however, he was aware that his job was to spread everywhere the hope of the Gospels. In a very poor area outside Lima, Peru, at the end of his sermon, he looked out at the multitude of people crowding the space and, improvising, he uttered in Spanish an idea that surged up from the bottom of his heart, “Hunger for God, yes; hunger for bread, no.” And on another occasion, as he recited the Lord’s Prayer, he affirmed, “I want there to be people who hunger after God, not people who hunger after their daily bread.”
Every trip was planned with dedication and concentration. John Paul II asked his nuncios to assemble the national bishops’ conference to ask what the bishops and their clergy wanted, established direct contacts with the pastors of the places where he would be traveling to obtain all possible useful information, read everything that was available, and absorbed a vast quantity of details by talking to experts.
For several weeks prior to his departure, he celebrated Mass in the language that he would be using in the country to which he would travel, usually with the participation of priests and nuns from the place in question. In that way, he wished to pay tribute to the culture of each people, as well as to sacralize their language through the celebration of the liturgy. He kept dictionaries and specific handbooks on his desk, consulting them from time to time, and relying upon native-speaking Vatican employees to refine his pronunciation.
Before going to Mexico, for instance, for many weeks he spent an hour every morning improving his Spanish. When he was preparing for his voyage to Papua New Guinea, he relied upon two Divine Word missionaries to teach him enough pidgin to pronounce a few phrases of greeting to the indigenous people. Before going to Japan, he studied with a Japanese Franciscan the pronunciation of that language and had him transcribe the speeches phonetically. And when he went to Guam, he listened to hours of recordings of greetings in Chamorro, the local indigenous language.
With his Roman colleagues, he debated at length about the draft plan for the journey. Generally the number of appointments proposed by the local churches was so great that it became necessary to extend the length of the trip by a day or two, and the pope nearly always agreed readily. In any case, he never failed to meet with the priests, the male and female religious, the seminarians and the novices of the male and female congregations, and especially the young people and the sick.
John Paul II certainly took a particular interest in this last category, and not only because he himself had experienced infirmity. During the first trip abroad, the one in 1979 to Mexico, he found himself in a church full of the infirm, the handicapped, and invalids. As one of his travel companions recalled, “The pope stopped at each patient and I had the distinct impression that he stood in veneration before each of them: he leaned toward them, did his best to understand what they were saying, and then caressed their heads.” The master of ceremonies soon realized that, for the Masses to be celebrated by the pope during his pastoral missions around the world, they should never put more than thirty sick people facing the altar. Otherwise, since John Paul II would alwa
ys greet them one by one at the end of the service, there would be a run-on delay and he would miss all the other events.
In one instance where this consideration was not taken into account, a first group of sick people was placed across from the security barriers, and immediately behind them another group of about three hundred was positioned, many of them in wheelchairs. The pontiff summoned the coordinator and ordered an opening to be made so that he could pass through and greet them all: that day, the program was delayed by almost an hour. Another time, when he visited a hospital ward, he stopped to greet every patient. The prefect of the papal household, Monsignor Dino Monduzzi, suggested he pick up the pace, but Wojtyła not only ignored the suggestion but also scolded him: “Monsignor, with those who are suffering you must never be in a hurry.”
IN THE WORLD’S “HOT ZONES”
From the very earliest days, John Paul II made clear to his colleagues what the style of his pontificate would be. He gave a clear example when he answered affirmatively the proposal of the Latin American episcopate that he take part in the Puebla Conference, which was scheduled to take place in Mexico in January 1979. The Roman Curia was opposed to the journey, and laid out the risks to which the pontiff would be exposed, in a nation where religious faith could not be manifested in public. After hearing the various opinions, Wojtyła swept away all objections: “I don’t have a Secretariat of State to tell me what the problems are, but to solve them.” The pastoral visitation took place and it was a spectacular success.
Less straightforward was the 1987 trip to Chile, which had been under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet since 1973. John Paul II placed a condition, a sine qua non, that he should be able to meet one and all, including groups in political opposition to the regime. One episode occurred, however, that cast a shadow over the entire visit. This was when, from the presidential palace in Santiago, the pope and Pinochet appeared side by side to salute the cheering crowd. Eyewitnesses affirm that the appearance was not part of the program and was a “trick” staged by the dictator. What happened was that Pinochet led Wojtyła down a corridor from which the people outside could be seen and, unexpectedly, invited the pope to look out the window and bless the faithful. The pope did not refuse, but in their private conversation he also did not refrain from telling the dictator what he felt was appropriate.
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