John Paul II: A Man, a Pope, a Legacy

In October 1978 when Pope John Paul I died, the idea that his successor would not be Italian seemed inconceivable. When it was announced that the Archbishop of Krakow would be the next Pope, the news was greeted with much uncertainty. It woud not take John Paul II long to end all that uncertainty. His was a Papacy marked by bold assertions and symbols of the depths of the certainties of his beliefs.

In 1979 Pope John Paul II returned to Poland. It was an event whose significance cannot be under-estimated in its impact on later events. Nine years before the Pope's return, the Solidarity movement formed to plead for access to clothes dryers for workers at the Gdansk shipyard. The first steps of Solidarity's struggle resulted in a massacre at the shipyard gates, but the movement would not be doused by state pressure. The Archbishop of Krakow recognized this long before he gained the role of Pope. During his 1979 visit as Pope, John Paul publicly communicated and demonstrated his staunch support for Solidarity to the extent that but for the large crowds attending the Masses, some high ranking Polish Communist Party officials contrived schemes to assassinate the Pope. During the thirteen months of martial law in Poland and during the next few years when Solidarity was officially illegal, Vatican support for the movement did not diminish. Local Polish clerics sustained Solidarity during its darkest hours and provided the Pope direct and reliable information to help him apply his diplomatic talents to convey the appropriate messages to encourage Poles to continue their struggle and to encourage communist leaders to allow the Church to continue its activities without restraint. It was a mission that inevitably cost several distinguished Polish clerics their lives, and it was a fragile balance that no other person serving as Pope during that time would be able to accomplish.

The same is true of the Pope's efforts to mend relations with Jews and to bridge the vast gap resulting from the 1054 Great Schism that created the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholich Church. Only a Pope who had direct experience and knowledge of the Holocaust could take the right actions to improve Christian/Jewish relations. He recognized that although theological differences remain, mutual respect and co-existence are possible for Christians and Jews. He later applied that philosophy to attempt to improve relations with the Islamic world. It is a philosophy his successor would be wise to continue to apply.

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