CHAPTER 7
From Russia with Malice
A Vatican biography of Pope John Paul II noted he was born in the Polish town of Wadowice on May 18, 1920, the youngest of three children born to Karol Wojtya and Emilia Kaczorowska. He was baptized on June 20, 1920, in the parish church, “made his First Holy Communion at age 9, and was confirmed at 18. Upon graduation from Marcin Wadowita High School in Wadowice, he enrolled in Krakow’s Jagiellonian University in 1938 and in a school for drama.”
“The Nazi occupation forced closure of the university in 1939, and he had to work in a quarry (1940-44) and then in the Solvay chemical factory to earn his living and to avoid being deported to Germany… Aware of his call to the priesthood, he began courses in the clandestine seminary of Krakow, run by Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, archbishop of Krakow. At the same time, Karol Wojtya was one of the pioneers of the clandestine ‘Rhapsodic Theater.’”
“After the Second World War, he continued his studies in the major seminary of Krakow, once it had re-opened, and in the faculty of theology of the Jagiellonian University. He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Sapieha in Krakow on November 1, 1946. Shortly afterward, Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome where he worked under the guidance of a French Dominican. He finished his doctorate in theology in 1948 with a thesis on the subject of faith in the works of St. John of the Cross (‘Doctrina de fide apud Sanctum Ioannem a Cruce’). At that time, during his vacations, he exercised his pastoral ministry among the Polish immigrants of France, Belgium and Holland…
“In 1948 he returned to Poland and was vicar of various parishes in Krakow as well as chaplain to university students until 1951, when he took up again his studies in philosophy and theology. In 1953 he defended a thesis on ‘evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler’ at Lublin Catholic University. Later he became professor of moral theology and social ethics in the major seminary of Krakow and in the Faculty of Theology of Lublin.
“On July 4, 1958, he was appointed titular bishop of Ombi and auxiliary of Krakow by Pope Pius XII, and was consecrated September 28, 1958, in Wawel Cathedral, Krakow. On January 13, 1964, he was appointed archbishop of Krakow by Pope Paul VI, who made him a cardinal June 26, 1967” with the title of S. Cesareo in Palatio of the order of deacons, later elevated to the order of priests.
“Besides taking part in Vatican Council II [1962-65] where he made an important contribution to drafting the Constitution Gaudium et spes, Cardinal Wojtyła participated in all the assemblies of the Synod of Bishops.” The Cardinals elected him Pope at the Conclave of October 16, 1978, and he took the name of John Paul II. On October 22, he solemnly inaugurated his Petrine ministry as the 263rd pope. “At the age of 58, he was the youngest pope of the twentieth century” and the first non-Italian pope since the fifteenth century. He brought to the Vatican a burning opposition to Communism and a fervor to liberate Poland.
“As John Paul II set foot on his native soil, at the Okecie military airport, he fell on his knees and kissed the ground. He was greeted by the hated Polish head of state, Henryk Jablonski, and the Polish Primate, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski. The Pope was driven into Warsaw in an open-top car, he was welcomed by two-million people cheering ‘Long live our Pope.’ He was greeted by a further 250,000 people as he entered Victory Square for an open-air Mass. Many wept as he walked up to the altar and stood with open arms before a 30 ft cross draped in red.”
In an exchange of speeches with Jablonski, the Polish Communist’s knees were shaking. John Paul II said his visit was dictated by strictly religious motives, but he stressed that he hoped that his visit would help the “internal unity of my fellow countrymen and also a further favorable development of relations between the state and the church in my beloved motherland.”
He told the throng, and a world watching via television, “I have kissed the ground of Poland on which I grew up, the land from which, through the inscrutable design of providence, God called me to the chair of Peter in Rome, the land from which I am coming today as a pilgrim.”
Watching the spectacle on television in Moscow, grim-faced officials of the Soviet Union ’s espionage service, the KGB, heard the Pope say, “It is not possible to understand the history of the Polish nation without Christ.”
The men in KGB headquarters recognized a threat.
It materialized in August 1980 when Polish workers demonstrated defiance of the Communist authorities by going on strike at the Lenin shipyard in the port city of Gdansk. “Festooned with flowers, white and red Polish flags and portraits of Pope John Paul II,” said one international press account, “the plant’s iron gates came to symbolize that heady mixture of hope, faith and patriotism that sustained the workers through their vigil.”
“In September 1981,” the leader of the shipbuilders’ strike, Lech Walesa, “was elected Chairman of the First National Solidarity Congress in Gdansk. As the world watched and wondered if Soviet tanks would put an end to it all, Walesa and his fellow strikers stood their ground. Like soldiers before battle, they confessed to priests and received Communion in the open shipyard. To reduce the risk of violence, Walesa called for a ban on alcohol and insisted on strict discipline…
“The government team finally gave in on almost all of the workers’ demands. In addition to the right to strike and form unions, the Warsaw regime…reduced state censorship and access to broadcasting networks for the unions and the Church. At a nationally televised ceremony, where strikers and government representatives stood side by side and sang the Polish national anthem, Walesa signed what became known as the Gdansk agreement with a giant souvenir pen bearing the likeness of John Paul II.”
In January 1981, the KGB noted Walesa being received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican. Falling to his knees, “Walesa kissed the papal ring and then briefly resisted the Pope’s efforts to pull him to his feet. The union leader then had a rare private meeting with the Pope, which lasted for half an hour.” When they emerged, the Pope said, “‘I wish to assure you that during your difficulties I have been with you in a special way, above all through prayer.’ He declared that the right to form free associations was ‘one of the fundamental human rights.’”
In Poland, “as workers rushed to join up at hastily improvised union locals across the country, Walesa and the other ex-strike leaders quickly found themselves at the head of a labor federation that soon grew to 10 million members-fully a quarter of the Polish population…Walesa insisted that Solidarity should be a simple labor movement, not a political opposition. On the day he arrived at a Gdansk apartment building to open Solidarity’s first makeshift headquarters, a wooden crucifix under his arm and a bouquet of flowers in his hand, he told a group of reporters, ‘I am not interested in politics, I am a union man. My job now is to organize the union.’”…The KGB men who knew about revolutions thought otherwise.
“The country was soon swept by a spate of wildcat strikes over local issues. In some cases the Solidarity chapters were taking on the Communist Party bureaucracy by demanding the ouster of corrupt local officials or the conversion of party buildings to public hospitals… As rank-and-file militants threatened to spin out of Walesa’s control, [he pleaded,] ‘We must concentrate on basic issues. There’s a fire in the country.’
“All the while, the Kremlin watched with rising anxiety. Solidarity’s existence was incompatible with the Communist Party’s monopoly of power… Even more important, the drive for democracy within the Polishparty challenged the Leninist doctrine of centralized party discipline. Poland ’s festering economic crisis also put a strain on the entire Soviet bloc… The ‘Polish disease,’ [as the men in the Kremlin called it,] might infect other…countries…[and threaten] the future of the Soviet empire.”