The Pope in Poland: The Pilgrimages of John Paul II, 1979–1991

Near the beginning of this fine book, James Ramon Felak notes that by 1978, the gathering crisis facing the communist regime in Poland “could not have gotten worse. And then it did” (p. 10)—with the stunning election of a cardinal named Karol Wojtyła as bishop of Rome. There is a conventional wisdom, not wrong so much as oversimplified, about the four initial pilgrimages of the Polish pope to his homeland. According to it, the first in 1979 was the one that changed everything, that set in motion the chain of events that led to the collapse of communist rule in Poland and, by extension, the rest of the Soviet empire. The lasting image of the second papal visit in 1983, with martial law still in effect, is of General Wojciech Jaruzelski trembling in the presence of his morally intimidating guest. The third, in 1987, with the lords of the PRL starting to lose their grip on power, is remembered hardly at all. Finally, in 1991, two years after Solidarity set Poland on the road toward democracy, John Paul II returned, it was said, as killjoy scold, lecturing his compatriots about misuse of their newfound freedom. Moreover, these journeys tend to be seen as distinct and separate from the others, each a response to and reflection of the Polish condition of the moment. But Felak invites readers to refine and deepen their comprehension of this quartet of papal homecomings beyond the takeaway headlines and their narrowly political focus. Making effective use of archival documents housed in Warsaw, and a well-chosen selection of published primary and secondary materials, he argues that these pilgrimages should be seen as a coherent whole in separate phases best understood in Catholic religious terms that bore on the proper ordering of society and public life, held together by the pope's steadily increasing emphasis on “the connection between freedom and truth” (p. 274) and the responsibilities that connection required.One comes away from this book newly impressed with John Paul's masterful planning and conduct of his missions to communist Poland before, during, and after martial law. This conclusion is reinforced by the author's detailed account of their many complications—the background, the tug of war over arrangements and itinerary, and the differing intentions and reactions of the various players: the pilgrim pope himself, the PZPR, the Church in Poland, and the Polish opposition forces. It is easy now to take for granted how well and peacefully things worked out, and to forget the fears that the massive gatherings to see and hear the pope could lead to chaos, riot and violent response, or the nightmare vision of Warsaw that he might emulate de Gaulle in Québec and call openly for regime change. For his part, John Paul repeatedly and brilliantly crafted messages careful enough not to go beyond the limits of what his autocratic hosts would permit him to say, but bold enough not to disappoint the millions who wished him to speak truth to power. In confirmation of the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the Warsaw authorities bet every time that they could negotiate terms for a papal visit that would play to their advantage, only to see the pope upset their calculations by, for example, linking their favored propaganda talking point of “peace” with a corresponding insistence on upholding of human rights. By 1987, the pope sharpened his critique of the practice and theoretical underpinnings of the communist system, sensing its increasing vulnerability in the time of Mikhail Gorbachev. In response, all the PRL chieftains and mouthpieces could do was to complain fruitlessly to nervous Vatican bureaucrats that their boss was breaking the deal that had been agreed upon, or to harrumph oddly, considering the source, that John Paul's bravura showmanship was demeaning to the dignity of the papal office. In addition, the pope deftly handled his interactions with Wojciech Jaruzelski and Lech Wałęsa, both cases touchy for differing reasons. In sum, occasional minor missteps aside, it added up to a triumphant performance by a public figure with few equals in recent history.To borrow from the children's song, one of these four visits was not like the others, and when John Paul returned to a newly democratic Poland in 1991, he was widely expected to do a victory lap celebrating the end of dictatorship and congratulating his fellow Poles on their feat. Instead, he delivered stern, sometimes reproachful words that made even admirers wonder if he had lost his touch with his Polish flock or misjudged the right tone for the occasion. Felak excels in explaining the motivations of the pope, and why he thought it urgent to speak of the present and future, not the past: this time he came to tell his compatriots, in prophetic fashion, “not what they wanted to hear but what he believed they needed to hear” (p. 252). John Paul cherished a vision of his native land as an exemplar of Catholic social teaching, but as he saw it Poland, in the flush of liberation, was rushing to adopt some of the less attractive qualities of the secularized West, above all an errant conception of freedom as license to do whatever one chose rather than the classic Catholic definition of the true, full freedom to be found in adherence to Christian values. So he approached this tour as a necessary renewed catechization of the country and went back to basics by preaching on the Decalogue, with its admonitory succession of thou-shalt-nots. Considered in this light, in Felak's persuasive telling, the battle John Paul waged against communism in Poland becomes, in a sense, secondary, a consequence rather than the ultimate point of the broader, universal theme of the proper exercise of human liberty that united the pilgrimages of the Polish pope to his homeland during a crucial era in its history.