Pope John Paul II
and Communism

    John Paul II has been credited with helping to bring down communism in eastern Europe by sparking what amounted to a peaceful revolution in his Polish homeland...actually,  John Paul II was a catalyst in the collapse of Communism.

    On June 2, 1979: Historic homily of John Paul II at Victory Square in Warsaw: "It is not possible to understand the history of the Polish nation without Christ."

    January 15, 1981: John Paul II receives in audience a delegation headed by Lech Walesa of the Polish Independent Syndicate Solidarnosc.

    Solidarity is the labor movement against Communism that took place in Poland in the 1980s and eventually brought democracy to Poland and the downfall of communism in eastern Europe, including Russia.                    The Pope with Lech Walesa

    Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity worker movement that ultimately toppled communism, credited John Paul with giving Poles the courage to rise up. "The pope started this chain of events that led to the end of communism," Walesa said. "Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of communism. "He simply said: Don't be afraid, change the image of this land."              

   January 13, 1987: John Paul II receives in audience the Communist President of the Council of the People's Republic of Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski... click to enlarge                                                                                                              

    The struggle to build the Nowa Huta church is one of the great clashes between the Catholic Church and Communists in post-war Poland. Of all the conflicts between the Church and the Communists involving Karol Wojtyla, this story perfectly expresses his growth into political leadership.

    Nowa Huta was a brand new town built by the Communists in the early 50's outside of Krakow. The town was in Wojtyla's jurisdiction. It was meant to be a workers' paradise, built on Communist principles, a visible rebuke to the "decadent," spiritually besotted Krakow. The regime assumed that the workers, of course, would be atheists, so the town would be built without a church. But the people soon made it clear they did want one. Wojtyla communicated their desire, and the regime opposed it... but eventually the church was build and consecrated by bishop Karol Wojtyla.

    Later, as Pope, John Paul II spoke of human dignity, the right to religious freedom and a revolution of the spirit--not insurrection. The people listened. As George Wiegel observed, "It was a lesson in dignity, a national plebiscite, Poland's second baptism."

    John Paul II's 1979 trip was the fulcrum of revolution which led to the collapse of Communism. Timothy Garton Ash put it this way, "Without the Pope, no Solidarity. Without Solidarity, no Gorbachev. Without Gorbachev, no fall of Communism." (In fact, Gorbachev himself gave the Kremlin's long-term enemy this due, "It would have been impossible without the Pope.") It was not just the Pope's hagiographers who told us that his first pilgrimage was the turning point. Skeptics who felt Wojtyla was never a part of the resistance said everything changed as John Paul II brought his message across country to the Poles. And revolutionaries, jealous of their own, also look to the trip as the beginning of the end of Soviet rule.

    The Pope’s epic June 1979 pilgrimage to his homeland there were nine days on which the history of the 20th century pivoted. In those forty-some sermons, addresses, lectures, and impromptu remarks, the Pope told his fellow-countrymen, in so many words: “You are not who they say you are. Let me remind you who you are.” By restoring to the Polish people their authentic history and culture, John Paul created a revolution of conscience that, fourteen months later, produced the nonviolent Solidarity resistance movement, a unique hybrid of workers and intellectuals — a “forest planed by aroused consciences,” as the Pope’s friend, the philosopher Jozef Tischner once put it. And by restoring to his people a form of freedom and a fearlessness that communism could not reach, John Paul II set in motion the human dynamics that eventually led, over a decade, to what we know as the Revolution of 1989.

    It took time; it took the Pope's support from Rome--some of it financial; it took several more trips in 1983 and 1987. But the flame was lit. It would smolder and flicker before it burned from one end of Poland to the other. Millions of people spread the revolution, but it began with the Pope's trip home in 1979. As General Jaruzelski said, "That was the detonator."

    In 1979, John Paul II receives in audience the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko. In 1989, the Pontiff arranges the first meeting ever between a Pope and a Kremlin chief. He meets with Mikhail Gorbachev in the Vatican. They announce the Vatican and Moscow will establish diplomatic ties.

    It was Gorbachev himself who acknowledged publicly the role of John Paul II in the fall of Communism. "What has happened in Eastern Europe in recent years would not have been possible without the presence of this Pope, without the great role even political that he has played on the world scene" (quoted in La Stampa, March 3, 1992).  

    Perhaps the most significant statement the pope made after the fall of Communism throughout his entire pontificate was that "the claim to build a world without God has been shown to be an illusion" (Prague, April 21, 1990). For John Paul II it was only a matter of when and how Communism would fall. Communism as a system, in John Paul II’s opinion, fell not only by the hand of divine Providence, but as a consequence of its own mistakes and abuses. John Paul II repeated the content of Christianity, its religious and moral message, its defense of the human person, insisting that this is a principle to be followed. Thus in his estimation, Christianity itself became the determining factor in the fall of Communism.

    The fall of Communism meant that a Europe of the spirit was being reborn. While celebrating the fall of Communism, however, John Paul warned against the dangers of capitalism. "Unfortunately, not everything the West proposes as a theoretical vision or as a concrete lifestyle reflects Gospel values." He saw in capitalism certain "viruses": secularism, indifferentism, hedonistic consumerism, practical materialism, and also formal atheism.   

    In Cuba: The Pope deployed a similar strategy in Cuba in January 1998 as in Poland in 1979. He did not mention the current Cuban regime, once, in five days. Rather, he re-read Cuban history through the lens of a Christianity that had formed a distinctively Cuban people from native peoples, Spaniards, and black African slaves, and he re-read the Cuban national liberation struggle of the 19th century through the prism of its Christian inspiration. Here, as in Poland in 1979, the Pope was restoring to a people it authentic history and culture. In doing so, he was also calling for a reinsertion of Cuba into history and into the hemisphere, asking the Cuban people to stop thinking of yourselves as victims (the theme of Fidel Castro’s welcoming address), and start thinking of themselves as the protagonists of their own destiny. 

The Pope with Putin, President of Russia, Nov. 7, 200
 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/communism/
http://www.daughtersofstpaul.com/johnpaulpapacy/meetjp/thepope/jpcommunism.html
http://www.fpri.org/ww/0106.200004.weigel.popehistory.html
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/101303/pag_pope.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3190110.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/13/column.shields.opinion.shields/