All across Poland, the life and words of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko still resonate in millions of households more than thirty years after the priest’s murder by the communist secret police. I first visited Father Popiełuszko’s Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw on a chilly Sunday in November 1986, just two years after his death. It was an oasis amid a desert of communist oppression, a place where Poles renewed their strength by recalling the man who had led them not so long before. The walls of the church were adorned with pictures of him—offering Communion, boating with his dog, encouraging steelworkers, comforting children. Though I am not Catholic, the memory of those few hours evokes powerful emotions to this day.
Unlikely Hero
Jerzy Popiełuszko was an unlikely hero. Born in the small village of Okopy in northeastern Poland in September 1947, he was short, frail, sickly, introverted, and of average intellect. At seventeen he traveled to Warsaw intent on studying for a quiet life in the priesthood. He would live only another twenty years, but before he died, his country’s communist regime came to see him as the most dangerous man in Poland. To millions of other Poles, he became a beacon of hope; his only weapons were the truth and his courage.
After one year at seminary, Popiełuszko had to interrupt his studies to begin compulsory military service, a two-year requirement of all young men at the time. Such service was especially difficult for seminary students. The atheistic regime routinely mistreated seminarians and subjected them to humiliating ridicule. The military also segregated them within special units to diminish their influence. Prayer and Bible study were strictly prohibited.
Popiełuszko demonstrated a steely defiance that surprised even those who knew him best. He openly disdained the army’s coercive atheistic indoctrination. Obedient he was—but not to communist authorities.
For refusing to relinquish the cross he wore around his neck, he was ordered to stand all night at attention, barefoot in the snow. From such frequent cruelty, he emerged with his health permanently damaged but his spirits higher than ever. The experience reinforced his life’s mission: to serve God by resisting evil, to comfort and encourage victims of oppression, and ultimately to free his country.
Words of Wisdom from Jerzy Popiełuszko
“It is not enough for a Christian to condemn evil, cowardice, lies, and use of force, hatred, and oppression. He must at all times be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love.”
He returned to the seminary, and in May 1972, at the age of twenty-four, he was ordained.
Call to Action
In the 1970s the Soviet Union seemed to be winning its battle with a demoralized West. Its Eastern European empire, though occasionally restive, was cowed by the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. At the close of the decade, the Soviet army rolled into Afghanistan. American leadership was reeling from the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam fiasco, and stagflation; the Soviets boasted that communism represented the world’s future.
Then, in 1978, the first non-Italian ascended to the papacy. Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła of Wadowice, Poland, became Pope John Paul II. The news electrified Poland.
Before the end of his first year in Rome, the pope returned triumphant to his native land. Communist authorities were at first hesitant to allow the visit. They relented in the belief that they could limit its effects and turn them to the state’s advantage. This was a profound miscalculation by men who arrogantly believed themselves capable of “planning” society.
Poles turned out by the millions to welcome John Paul. They heard him declare, “Be not afraid!” and they knew what his message was. Father Jerzy, who assisted in the planning for the visit, took the message as a call to action. He resolved to step up his public opposition to the regime, declaring one Sunday, “Justice and the right to know the truth require us from this pulpit to repeatedly demand a limit on the tyranny of censorship!”
Poles had put up with communism since the Soviets imposed it on them after World War II. The tyranny of a one-party political monopoly was compounded by the stifling effects of socialist central planning—environmental destruction, stagnant living standards, inflation, long lines for simple foodstuffs and toiletries. It was a dreary, claustrophobic existence. In clever and sometimes subtle language, John Paul II told them they could and should resist.
The pope’s historic visit led directly to the legalization of the Solidarity organization, which Popiełuszko endorsed and assisted—publicly and privately, legally and illegally. The visit proved to be the galvanizing moment when Poles by the millions began to lose their fear of the regime and contemplate the real possibility of freedom from their oppressors.
Poles ventured into open opposition. Workers went on strike with demands that pertained not simply to wages or working conditions but to political, economic, and social freedoms as well. Rumors grew that the Soviets might put an end to it all with an invasion, just as they had done to Czechoslovakia a decade earlier.
Martyr
In 1980 Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński was the revered primate of Poland, the highest-ranking Catholic in the country, with a long history of antagonism toward the communists. When striking steelworkers begged him to send a priest into the huge Huta Warszawa steel mill, he chose thirty-three-year-old Jerzy Popiełuszko.
It was a daring move, the first time a priest even entered a state-owned enterprise of such size, let alone one who so openly denounced the government. From that moment until his death, Father Jerzy was known as the favorite priest of both Solidarity in Poland and John Paul II in Rome. Perhaps he already knew it, but his life was on the line. In The Priest and the Policeman, biographers John Moody and Roger Boyes write:
He was stalked like a game animal in the last years of his life, hunted by agents … who knew that the priest had to be silenced. Murder was not the only solution. It would have been enough to persuade the Church to transfer him to an obscure rural parish, or bring him to Rome. It would have sufficed to put him on trial and sentence him to prison for his political preaching, or to strain his delicate health to the breaking point, so that his death could be passed off, in the words of one agent [of the secret police], as “a beautiful accident.” The police tried all these methods but found it was impossible to silence the priest, who declared modestly, “I am only saying aloud what people are thinking privately.”
All through 1981, Poles kept pushing the dictatorship to grant basic liberties. The world watched the unfolding events with mixed emotions—hopeful for freedom in Poland but fearful of a backlash.
The backlash came on December 13, when Moscow’s puppets in Warsaw imposed martial law. In a massive crackdown, the communist regime jailed thousands of dissidents and banned Solidarity and other pro-freedom groups.
Father Jerzy didn’t retreat. He summoned every ounce of energy his ailing body would allow. He denounced martial law and aided the underground resistance. His sermons were routinely broadcast by Radio Free Europe, making him famous throughout the Eastern Bloc for his uncompromising stance against the communists.
The secret police planted weapons in his apartment, then staged a raid for the television cameras to “prove” that he was a subversive revolutionary. He was arrested several times, but pressure from the clergy helped each time to secure his release. As soon as he got out, he would renew his pleas for freedom.
People traveled from all over the country to hear him speak every Sunday at Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church; they even packed into the nearby streets by the thousands to hear his words broadcast over loudspeakers. He was granted permission to leave Poland to visit a beloved aunt in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then went right back home to resume the struggle.
“It is not enough for a Christian to condemn evil, cowardice, lies, and use of force, hatred, and oppression,” he once declared. “He must at all times be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love. He must never tire of claiming these values as a right both for himself and others.”
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bsp; A visiting Western journalist asked Father Jerzy in 1984 how he could continue to speak so boldly without fear of retaliation. The priest replied: “They will kill me. They will kill me.” But, he went on, he could not remain silent as members of his own congregation were jailed, tortured, and even killed for nothing more than wanting to be free. “We must conquer the bad through the good,” he often implored.
In October 1984 the communist secret police contrived a scheme to take out the young priest in what would look like a car accident, but the plot failed. Less than a week later, while riding with his driver back to Warsaw from priestly duties in Bydgoszcz, Father Jerzy was ambushed. He endured torture so fierce that one of the secret police agents would later remark, “I never knew a man could withstand such a beating.”
Tied to a heavy stone, the mangled and lifeless body of Father Jerzy was tossed unceremoniously into the Vistula River, where it was recovered eleven days later. Poles were heartbroken, but in keeping with the spirit of the martyred priest, they continued the fight for freedom.
A Prophecy Fulfilled
In early 1989 the communist regime announced to the world that Poland had become “ungovernable.” Hardly anyone paid much attention anymore to its edicts and decrees. Even many government employees were thwarting their bosses and joining the underground.
Free elections were held in June, for the first time in all the decades of communist rule. The communists lost every seat, fulfilling Father Jerzy’s prophecy: “An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own accord.”
I returned to a free Poland in November 1989, just as the rest of the Eastern Bloc was unraveling. At Saint Stanislaw Kostka Church, where Father Jerzy’s grave is marked with a massive stone cross, I stood with the parishioners, lit a candle, and cried with them—not so much because he was gone and in a better place but because of that for which he gave his life.
Lessons from Jerzy Popiełuszko
“Be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love”: Father Jerzy Popiełuszko preached a message that people of any faith can admire: it is not enough to condemn evil and lies; you must do your best to defend and advance truth, freedom, and justice. Father Jerzy was a living embodiment of this commitment.
“Live for what is true and good and lasting”: Felix Adler’s words capture Father Jerzy’s approach to life. The brave young priest spoke truth to power, knowing the dire risks that doing so entailed. He paid for his candor with his life, but today he is remembered as one of the best examples of courageous resistance to tyranny.
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Roberto Clemente
“I Learned the Right Way to Live”
In both Puerto Rico and Pittsburgh, more than four decades after his untimely death at the age of thirty-eight, the name of Roberto Clemente brings a smile to almost every face.
A member of the Pittsburgh Pirates for eighteen seasons (1955–1972), Clemente was one of the greatest right fielders in baseball history. He could run, hit, and throw better than almost anybody who ever played the game. Black and Puerto Rican by birth, he transcended race, nationality, and culture to become Major League Baseball’s first Latino superstar.
Growing up in western Pennsylvania in the 1960s, I heard his name practically every day. The mentions were always admiring. Clemente had so much talent and character that Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Maraniss could write a four-hundred-page biography of him, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero.
A Loving Home
The youngest of seven siblings, Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker (in Spanish, the last name is the maternal family name) was born in 1934 in Carolina, Puerto Rico. As a young boy, he worked in the sugar cane fields with his father. “I learned the right way to live from my parents,” he said years later. He always spoke well of his family: “I never heard any hate in my house. I never heard my father say a mean word to my mother, or my mother to my father, either. During the war, when food was hard to get, my parents fed their children first and they ate what was left. They always thought of us.”
The Clementes were poor in material wealth, but the children enjoyed the riches of a loving home.
Roberto showed an early love of baseball, easily the island’s favorite sport. The Brooklyn Dodgers offered the twenty-year-old a contract in 1954, but they left him unprotected the next year and the Pittsburgh Pirates wisely picked him up. The Pirates’ general manager was the legendary Branch Rickey, who, while running the Dodgers several years earlier, had made Jackie Robinson Major League Baseball’s first black player.
Rickey believed in giving every good person a chance. A devout Christian, he believed that prejudice was deep-seated and needed to be confronted. He wrote: “The American public not only in the south, but all over the place has a secret feeling that the Negro is really inferior by nature. The long years of unequal opportunity and menial service caused this sort of unconscious belief. I think the stark fact of it ought to be brought to the public’s attention in every way we know how.”
Maybe Rickey also knew that discrimination rarely pays in the marketplace. The owner or manager who passes up the chance to hire a winner will lose to competitors who do it instead. Both Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente made their teams proud and their owners financially well-off because they were great players.
Words of Wisdom from Roberto Clemente
“If you have an opportunity to accomplish something that will make things better for someone coming behind you, and you don’t do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.”
“The Proudest Man on Earth”
Clemente donned the Pirate uniform at an inauspicious moment in the team’s history. Calvin Coolidge had been president the last time the Pirates won the World Series. That was in 1925. By the 1950s the team was a joke.
As a black Hispanic who knew little English when he came to the United States, Clemente faced daunting personal obstacles as well. Today Latino players account for nearly 30 percent of all major leaguers, but when Clemente debuted he was one of only a couple of dozen Hispanics in the game. He encountered anti-Latino and anti-black prejudice, especially at spring training in Florida. As Maraniss reports, “He spoke out strongly against Jim Crow segregation every chance he got.” Up in Pittsburgh, sportswriters would describe him using terms like “chocolate-colored islander” and “dusky flyer.” Fellow Puerto Rican and Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, who reached the majors in 1958, said, “We had two strikes [against us]: being black, and being Latin.”
Clemente openly sympathized with the nascent civil rights movement, but he never let prejudice compromise his professionalism or his charitable attitude toward other good people, least of all the disadvantaged. “I don’t believe in color,” he said. “I believe in people.” He spent considerable free time volunteering as a baseball coach and mentor to young boys in the barrios back in Puerto Rico. During the winter of 1958–59, he even joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve, spending his six-month active duty in the Carolinas and Washington, D.C.
Another challenge arose during his rookie year, when a car accident caused by a drunk driver left him with lower-back pain that plagued him for the rest of his life. Baseball players were expected to be stoic, never complaining about injuries. But when writers asked Clemente how he felt, the Pirate right fielder would respond honestly, giving rise to the exaggerated claim that he was a hypochondriac. His former manager Danny Murtaugh explained: “He was such a truthful man, it backfired on him sometimes. If you asked him if his shoulder hurt, he’d say, ‘Yes, it does.’ Then he’d go out and get three hits and throw out a guy at the plate. That’s how he got the hypochondriac label.”
Clemente played hard, all the time, whether he was hurt or not. It was a matter of pride. “When I put on my uniform, I feel I am the proudest man on earth,” he said the year before he died. “The players should pay the people to come and see us play.” On another occasion, he told an audience: “Why you think I play this game? I
play to win. Competition is the thing. I want to play on a winning team. I don’t want to play for sixth place. I like to play for all the marbles, where every game means something. I like to play for real, not for fun.”
Thanks to Clemente and other great players like Bill Mazeroski, the Pirates’ fortunes began to look up in the late ’50s. In 1958 they scored their first winning season in a decade. Two years later they were the National League champions.
The Pirates entered the 1960 World Series as underdogs against the American League victors, the New York Yankees, who boasted big names like Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Roger Maris. In the ninth inning of game seven, the baseball world was stunned when Mazeroski slammed a home run and the Pirates won the game, 10–9. World champs for the first time since almost a decade before Clemente was born, the Pirates earned back the esteem that had evaded them for so long.
A Star on and off the Field
Throughout the 1960s, Robert Clemente’s fame grew as his abilities awed fans year after year. He was an All-Star every season he played after 1960 but for one, 1968. He won the Gold Glove every season from 1961 on. He won the National League batting title four times—in 1961, 1964, 1965, and 1967—and received the Most Valuable Player Award in 1966, hitting .317 with 29 home runs and 119 RBIs. In 1967 he belted 23 home runs, batted in 110 runs, and logged a career-high .357 batting average.
The Pirates’ next shot at a World Series came in 1971. After beating the San Francisco Giants for the National League pennant, they faced the Baltimore Orioles, the defending champions. In seven games once again, the Pirates won the series. Clemente, at thirty-seven years of age, hit a stunning .414 for the series and had a home run in the deciding game, claiming the World Series MVP.
Real Heroes Page 21