Loading ...In 1963 he was promoted to archbishop and in 1967 he became Cardinal Wojtyla, at a time when the Polish Catholic church was being severely oppressed by Poland’s communist government. His appointment as cardinal by Pope Paul VI was welcomed by the government, but only because he was woefully underestimated.
Fear not. Man’s daily deeds have a wide span,
a strait riverbed can’t imprison them long.
—“Material”
The Polish secret police, the UB, had not been worried at Wojtyla’s promotion to archbishop, considering him a poet and apolitical dreamer. In 1967, the UB (the Polish secret police) analyzed Wojtyla as follows: “It can be said that Wojtyla is one of the few intellectuals in the Polish Episcopate. He deftly reconciles … traditional popular religiosity with intellectual Catholicism … he has not, so far, engaged in open anti-state activity. It seems that politics are his weaker suit; he is over-intellectualized … He lacks organizing and leadership qualities, and this is his weakness …”
General Wojciech Jaruzelski, former secretary of the Polish Communist Party, later admitted just how badly Wojtyla had been underestimated: “My Communist colleagues decided that the Bishops ahead of Karol Wojtyla on the list of candidates were not good for the state, so they pushed Karol Wojtyla. The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways.” Current Biography called Wojtyla “a resilient enemy of Communism and champion of human rights, a powerful preacher and sophisticated intellectual able to defeat Marxists in their own line of dialogue.” According to George Weigel, Wojtyla demanded permits to build churches, defended youth groups and ordained priests to work underground in Czechoslovakia. Wojtyla was once asked if he feared retribution from government officials. “I’m not afraid of them,” he replied. “They are afraid of me.”
In 1969 Wojtyla published The Acting Person, considered his principal academic work.
In 1978 Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II. He is said to have wept that day, October 16th, and to have put his head in his hands. Becoming Pope is “a clear cut off from one’s previous life, with no possible return,” one biographer wrote.
In 1979 John Paul II made his first trip to Poland as pope. Within a year, Polish tradesmen formed the now-famous Solidarity labor union, headed by Lech Walesa. The pope received Walesa at the Vatican in 1981.
Yet can the current unbind their full strength?
It is he who carries that strength in his hands:
the worker.
—“Material”
On May 13, 1981 John Paul II was shot and severely wounded in an attempted assassination by Mehmet Ali Agca. [In another improbable parallel, Ronald Reagan was also shot and severely wounded by another disturbed assassin, John Hinckley Jr., on March 30, 1981.]
In 1982 the pope and Ronald Reagan first met, in the Vatican. According to Time Magazine they agreed “to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire. … The operation was focused on Poland … Both the pope and the president were convinced that Poland could be broken out of the Soviet orbit if the Vatican and the United States committed their resources to destabilizing the Polish government and keeping the outlawed Solidarity movement alive after the declaration of martial law in 1981.” According to UPI: “Thus began a series of unofficial, intermittent contacts that some writers and historians have elevated to the status of holy alliance, while others have denied almost their very existence.”