Speeches that Changed the World

POPE JOHN PAUL II

Born Karol Wojtyła on 18 May 1920 in Wadowice, Poland.

He studied Polish literature and later theology (in which he graduated) at Jagiellonian University, Krákow, in 1938–9 and 1945–6, working in industrial jobs for much of the intervening war period while Poland was occupied. In 1946 he published the first of several volumes of poetry and was ordained a priest. He undertook graduate research in Rome, earning a Ph.D. in 1948. After service as a parish priest and further academic research, he was appointed as Professor of Social Ethics at the Catholic University, Lublin (1954). He was active in the modernizing Vatican II council’s deliberations of 1962–5 (which he helped to implement), rose to the Archbishopric of Krákow in 1963 and became a cardinal in 1967. In 1978 he was elected as the 265th pope, taking the name John Paul II. As pope, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt (1981), became a figurehead for Polish national aspirations, and inaugurated a new style of international papal appearances and large-scale events. His encyclicals rejected both communism and unrestrained capitalism, while his theological and moral stance reinforced core Catholic values and practices (such as rejecting birth control or the ordination of women).

Died 2 April 2005 in Rome.

In 1978, the Roman Catholic Church broke with a tradition lasting 455 years by electing a pope who was not Italian. The College of Cardinals chose, by a huge majority, Karol Wojtyła, who took the papal title John Paul II. He was also the first ever Polish pope, and as such his election took on layers of political significance. He came from a country with a very deep Catholic tradition, but which, since 1945, had lain behind the Cold War’s iron curtain, governed by a Soviet-backed regime that was, at root, antipathetic to religious belief.

During the early 1950s, Poland’s Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Wyszyńksi, had spent some years in prison on account of his anti-communist criticisms. But, as Stalinism went into retreat and Poland’s new leader, Wladysław Gomulka, began to adapt party rule to local circumstances, church–state relations evolved. For the price of avoiding overt comment on politics, the church was able to maintain its traditional role. It was an uneasy if workable compromise.

The election of Karol Wojtyła to the see of Rome changed that. Poland now had an independent voice on the world stage – one of maximum moral and spiritual integrity – who could not fail but be listened to as an alternative source of leadership and authority for Poles. Moreover, Wojtyła was not a man to compartmentalize spiritual matters from social life. He was a former university professor of ethics, and as Archbishop of Krákow since 1963 he had been at the forefront of defending the church’s position.

In 1979, the new pope visited his homeland just as rising popular discontent at the country’s low standards of living was reaching a critical phase. The following year, striking shipyard workers in Gdansk created an independent trade union movement, Solidarity (in Polish, Solidarność), to which Polish workers flooded, overawing the regime. But in 1981 a backlash swung into place: Solidarity was declared illegal, its leaders imprisoned, and nervous Poles feared military intervention from the Soviet Union and their other Warsaw Pact allies. During that year, John Paul II narrowly survived an assassination attempt, which an Italian investigation laid at the door of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev – though the debate continues.

In 1983, John Paul II returned to Poland for his second visit as pope. He addressed more than a million people at the large Jasna Góra monastery, in Częstochowa. The important pilgrimage site contains an ancient artifact of huge religious-national symbolism, an icon of the Virgin Mary, and in times of crisis or thankfulness Poles have gathered there. They did the same on 18 June 1983 to hear John Paul II’s words. Carefully embedded among those words were some that implicitly acknowledged the current struggle of the Polish people. On hearing references to ‘solidarity’ or ‘workers’, the crowd raised Solidarity banners, and they clapped tumultuously in appreciation as the speech ended.

A few years later, John Paul II witnessed the collapse of Poland’s communist regime in 1989. His period in office subsequently saw an increasingly conservative stance on church and social matters; but in the 1980s he seemed almost a political revolutionary.

OUR LADY OF JASNA GÓRA is the teacher of true love for all. And this is particularly important for you, dear young people. In you, in fact, is decided that form of love which all of your life will have and, through you, human life on Polish soil: the matrimonial, family, social and national form – but also the priestly, religious and missionary one. Every life is determined and evaluated by the interior form of love. Tell me what you love, and I will tell you who you are.

I watch! How beautiful it is that this word is found in the call of Jasna Góra. It possesses a profound evangelical ancestry: Christ says many times ‘watch’. . . Perhaps also from the Gospel it passes into the tradition of scouting. In the call of Jasna Góra it is the essential element of the reply that we wish to give to the love by which we are surrounded in the sign of the Sacred Icon.

The response to this love must be precisely the fact that I watch! What does it mean, ‘I watch’?

It means that I make an effort to be a person with a conscience. I do not stifle this conscience and I do not deform it; I call good and evil by name, and I do not blur them; I develop in myself what is good, and I seek to correct what is evil, by overcoming it in myself. This is a fundamental problem, which can never be minimized or put on a secondary level. No! It is everywhere and always a matter of the first importance. Its importance is all the greater in proportion to the increase of circumstances which seem to favour our tolerance of evil and the fact that we easily excuse ourselves from this, especially if adults do so.

My dear friends! It is up to you to put up a firm barrier against immorality, a barrier – I say – to those social vices which I will not here call by name but which you yourselves are perfectly aware of. You must demand this of yourselves, even if others do not demand it of you. Historical experiences tell us how much the immorality of certain periods cost the whole nation. Today when we are fighting for the future form of our social life, remember that this form depends on what people will be like. Therefore: watch!

. . . ‘I watch’ also means: I see another. I do not close in on myself, in a narrow search for my own interests, my own judgements. ‘I watch’ means: love of neighbour, it means: fundamental interhuman solidarity.

Before the Mother of Jasna Góra I wish to give thanks for all the proofs of this solidarity which have been given by my compatriots, including Polish youth, in the difficult period of not many months ago. It would be difficult for me to enumerate here all the forms of this solicitude which surrounded those who were interned, imprisoned, dismissed from work, and also their families. You know this better than I. I received only sporadic news about it.

. . . ‘I watch’ also means: I feel responsible for this great common inheritance whose name is Poland. This name defines us all. This name obliges us all. This name costs us all.

Perhaps at times we envy the French, the Germans or the Americans because their name is not tied to such a historical price and because they are so easily free: while our Polish freedom costs so much.

My dear ones, I will not make a comparative analysis. I will only say that it is what costs that constitutes value. It is not, in fact, possible to be truly free without an honest and profound relationship with values. We do not want a Poland that costs us nothing. We watch, instead, beside all that makes up the authentic inheritance of the generations, seeking to enrich it. A nation, then, is first of all rich in its people. Rich in man. Rich in youth. Rich in every individual who watches in the name of truth: it is truth, in fact, that gives form to love.

. . . Even if I am not among you every day, as was the case for many years in the past, nevertheless I carry in my heart a great solicitude. A great, enormous solicitude. A solicitude for you. Precisely because on you depends tomorrow.

‘Our Polish freedom costs so much’