The Pope Who Brought Down the Walls
Karol POLEJOWSKI
John Paul II quickly won the hearts of people across the globe. Just as quickly, he became the nightmare of communist officials, who saw him as a mortal threat to their grip on power.
.‘Good God!’ exclaimed Edward Gierek, the then top man in Poland’s communist regime, as he answered the phone on the evening of October 16, 1978. Moments before, his close aide, Stanisław Kania, informed him that the Vatican’s College of Cardinals had chosen Karol Wojtyła as the new pope.
Spontaneous crowds gathered in the Main Square of Kraków, Wojtyła’s former archdiocese. And it wasn’t just the city that was overwhelmed with joy – a wave of excitement spread across the country. For the communists, who saw the Church as both an enemy and a threat, this was a sign of potential troubles. Addressing the Politburo the following day, Gierek stated frankly: ‘Comrades, we’ve got a problem.’ Still, it’s unlikely that even he foresaw the magnitude of the challenges John Paul II would pose to the whole Eastern Bloc.
Lenin’s Legacy Undone
.‘Religion is the opium of the people,’ Karl Marx had declared in the mid-19th century. A few decades later, Vladimir Lenin would echo those words. In the totalitarian Soviet state, where the authorities sought to control every aspect of life, the constitutional right to religious freedom was a mere smokescreen concealing a ruthless, near-obsessive campaign against Christianity. The Soviets pursued the same intense campaign in the eastern Polish areas they occupied in 1939 as part of the Stalin-Hitler pact.
Simultaneously, German forces suppressed the Church in western and central Poland, often resorting to violence. As a result, one in every five Polish clergymen died in the Second World War. ‘But the rest survived. Many of them. I won’t let them act, think or even breathe,’ says a fictional secret police officer, Julian Kordek, in the feature film Karol: A Man Who Became Pope. It is 1946. A young Wojtyła is being ordained, while in postwar Poland – handed over to the Soviets by the Allies – a new wave of repression against the Church begins. Although Kordek is a fictional character, the film accurately depicts communist tactics. Priests were thrown in jails, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński was placed under house arrest in 1953, and Wojtyła was shadowed by secret police informants. The regime sought to break both the Church and the spirit of the Polish nation.
But their strategy failed. The Millennium of Poland’s Baptism, celebrated in 1966 after a 10-year-long pastoral program known as the Great Novena, clearly showed that the people had not been intimidated or secularised. The Catholic Church remained a powerful and truly independent institution. Despite all the countermeasures taken by the authorities, hundreds of thousands of Poles participated in the celebrations.
Another milestone in the national awakening was John Paul II’s first pilgrimage to his homeland in June 1979. Months before this journey, the Pope’s inaugural address included the now-famous words ‘Be not afraid!’ – a message to the world, but especially to people living behind the Iron Curtain. Later, during a sermon in Warsaw’s Victory Square, John Paul II delivered another historic call: ‘Let your Spirit descend and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land.’
A Pontificate that Changed the World
.This hope, voiced on June 2, 1979, started becoming reality less than a year later. In August 1980, a strike broke out at the Gdańsk Shipyard – then named after Lenin – and rapidly spread throughout Poland. Thus was born the NSZZ ‘Solidarity,’ a social movement, independent of the communist government. ‘Solidarity’ had John Paul II’s backing from the start; he hosted its leaders at the Vatican in January 1981.
However, Poland’s journey to freedom was once again darkened by clouds gathering on the horizon. In May 1981, Mehmet Ali Ağca shot and seriously wounded the Pope. There’s strong evidence that the attacker was following orders from Bulgarian intelligence, likely at Moscow’s behest. That December, newly appointed General Secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law in the Polish People’s Republic to crush ‘Solidarity’ and maintain communist rule.
But the avalanche of freedom, once set in motion, could not be stopped. In June 1983, the Pope’s second pilgrimage to Poland lifted the spirits of the democratic opposition and rekindled hope in the hearts of millions. The communists were helpless. ‘Our only hope is that God takes him soon,’ said Czesław Kiszczak, Jaruzelski’s chief aide and former Interior Minister. Fortunately, this dark wish never came true – nor did the efforts of the secret police, who worked tirelessly to neutralise the Vatican’s influence.
John Paul II’s papacy changed more than just Poland. His eastern policy – focused on the consistent defence of human rights – bore fruit in Ukraine, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and other countries of the Eastern Bloc. It revived religious and national awareness, strengthened dissident circles and undermined the foundations of the communist system. It complemented perfectly the stance of US President Ronald Reagan, who openly confronted the ‘evil empire’.
Tangible results of the Pope’s work began to emerge in the late 1980s. Poland’s June 1989 elections resulted in a landslide victory for ‘Solidarity,’ leaving the communists defeated and unable to regain control. The Autumn of Nations soon led to democratic reforms across the Soviet Union’s outer empire. In 1991, the USSR collapsed.
The Return of History
.However, political scientist Francis Fukuyama was wrong when he proclaimed the end of history after the Cold War. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s political and military elites have been steadily working to rebuild the empire. It has been two decades since John Paul II passed away. But his spirit still guides us as we navigate today’s turbulent world.
