From May 31 to June 10, 1997, the Holy Father will make his fifth and, at the same time, longest papal pilgrimage to Poland. As part of it, he will visit 13 towns and celebrate nine public Masses. The pilgrimage route will include the Diocese of Legnica for the first time. The Holy Father will visit it on June 2, after the conclusion of the Eucharistic Congress in Wrocław. In Legnica, John Paul II will celebrate Mass combined with the coronation of the image of Our Lady of Grace from Krzeszów. It is an extraordinary icon of the Mother of God from Byzantium, which reached Italy during the Crusades and was later brought to Krzeszów together with the Cistercians by Duke Bolesław I. That same day, the Holy Father will travel to Gorzów Wielkopolski.
This extraordinary event prompted me to sketch a brief contribution about the extraordinary personality who, without a doubt, is Karol Wojtyła in the modern world. Naturally, there are certain personal reasons for this: first, my relatively good knowledge of the Holy Father’s biography; second, personal threads intertwining in my life with Karol Wojtyła’s “paths.”
It so happened that in 1949 I completed the Public Elementary School for Boys named after Marcin Wadowita in Wadowice. The following year I found myself within the walls of the Wadowice Secondary School and Gymnasium, then steeped in the atmosphere of the interwar period, presented in caricatured form by Emil Zegadłowicz in his novel Zmory. This atmosphere was created by the teaching staff, including the then principal Jan Królikiewicz, an outstanding classicist and, incidentally, chairman of the 1938 Matura Examination Board before which the young Karol Wojtyła appeared. The second figure at the school, apart from Tercjan, was Rev. Dr. Edward Zacher, the school prefect (something like a deputy principal for religious education), an outstanding expert in theology as well as physics and astrophysics.
I first encountered the name Karol Wojtyła at the beginning of November 1946, when the parishes of the Wadowice deanery announced a solemn first Mass for November 10, to be celebrated by the newly ordained priest Karol Wojtyła, a graduate of the Wadowice Gymnasium in 1938.
At this point I must note that this date escapes even very meticulous biographers. For example, Rev. Kazimierz Figlewicz, writing about Karol Wojtyła’s ordination on November 11, 1946, by Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha in a private chapel at Wawel, mentions the celebration of his first Mass on All Souls’ Day and then states that the solemn first Mass took place only several days later in Wadowice. The Mass mentioned above was attended by a large gathering of the local community, as it was the first first Mass after the interruption caused by wartime operations. Rev. Dean Leonard Prochownik and Rev. Dr. Edward Zacher, the newly ordained priest’s catechist, took an active part in it.
The following years brought a decline in interest in the Wadowice priest. Memories resurfaced only in September 1958, when Karol Wojtyła received episcopal consecration from Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak, apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Kraków. After Archbishop E. Baziak’s sudden death in June 1962, Bishop Karol Wojtyła was elected capitular vicar, but the Diocese of Kraków remained “sede vacante” (the see remained unoccupied). The road to the archiepiscopal see is shrouded in many mysteries. Here is what Władysław Machejek, a writer and journalist well acquainted with Kraków’s realities, once wrote on the subject: “I do not know how it is now, but under Gomułka the Polish government’s consent was needed for the appointment of bishops in the country. After the failure of several candidates, the Kraków party leadership of the time suggested that Kraków had a people’s bishop, Karol Wojtyła, with whom disputed matters could be settled to mutual benefit. Then the Central Committee Secretary—Zenon Kliszko—came to Kraków and asked Bishop Karol Wojtyła to come to Wawel. Thus began Karol Wojtyła’s dynamic rise, as memory recorded it.” (Życie Literackie no. 44/88). Tadeusz Szulc gives a similar version of the appointment in his biography of John Paul II (Warsaw, 1996).
As a result of the arrangements reached at the turn of 1963 and 1964, the decision was made to appoint Bishop Karol Wojtyła Archbishop Metropolitan of Kraków. The solemn entry into Wawel Cathedral took place in March 1964. Soon afterward, in June 1967, Pope Paul VI elevated Archbishop Karol Wojtyła to the rank of cardinal. At the age of 47, the nominee became one of the youngest members of the College of Cardinals. Here it is fitting to recall the Bard.
Amid discord, God strikes a mighty bell, For the Slavic pope He opened a throne
Juliusz Słowacki
When, on October 16, 1978, a bluish wisp of smoke rose into the sky from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, it announced to the world that a Pope had been elected. At around 7 p.m., on
the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Cardinal Felici appeared and called out: “I announce to you joyful news: we have a pope—habemus papam—Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, who has taken the name John Paul II.”
The folk poet Emilia Michalska from the village of Pruchna in the Beskid region of Bielsko expressed this joyful news as follows:
“Habemus papam!—throughout the world
A grateful ‘Te Deum’ runs
Across the whole earth, Sigismund from Wawel’s
Tower has spoken. The Holy Father
Poland has given to the world.”
The Holy Father’s subsequent activities are generally known to Polish readers. Yet on May 13, 1981, when John Paul II raised his hands in St. Peter’s Square to bless a child greeting him, a Turkish terrorist, Mehmet Ali Agca, crossed the Holy Father’s path. Once again I will refer to the words of the folk poet
—Emilia Michalska:
“The thug raised
A right hand armed with steel and lead.
A crack. A whistle. At once blood stained
The snowy whiteness of the cassock, the singing
Fell silent in terror, the organs fell silent,
A lament rose to heaven from
Thousands of churches.”
My next encounters with the Holy Father took place in September 1990. On September 19, I attended a general audience in St. Peter’s Basilica, and the following day my wife and I attended a private audience in Castel Gandolfo. Writing about the extraordinary personality of John Paul II, it should be emphasized that the pontificate of the Polish Pope was closely observed and comprehensively analyzed by all kinds of Vatican experts. Leaving aside the religious-theological and philosophical-ethical aspects, it is worth recalling the Holy Father’s position on matters referred to as the social teaching of the Church, as well as John Paul II’s personal role in the fall of communism. The Church’s social teaching can be summarized as follows: the Church firmly condemns “socialism,” while at the same time distancing itself from capitalist ideology and attributing to it responsibility for manifestations of glaring social injustice. Regarding Polish affairs, John Paul II believed that the process of evolutionary change in Poland, which he had supported since his first papal visit to his homeland in 1979, was inevitable. On April 6, 1989, the Round Table, which the Holy Father discreetly supported, announced Poland’s transformation through parliamentary democracy and economic reforms. This created the basis for abandoning the idea of real socialism in Poland—an unprecedented event achieved by peaceful means, which had to serve as a model for other countries of Eastern Europe. Instead of a conclusion, I will quote an excerpt from an article by M. Gorbachev written in 1992: “Everything that happened in Eastern Europe in recent years would not have been possible without the presence of this Pope and without the extraordinarily important role, including the political role, that he played on the world stage.”