POZNAŃ, Poland (OSV Information) — Because the twentieth anniversary of St. John Paul II’s loss of life approached April 2, prime world leaders and thinkers gathered in Poznań, Poland, to debate his legacy.
A standard thread of their recollections and interventions was that the pope from Poland was a sensation of the occasions whose steadfast religion introduced humanity extra freedom and true religious management — and continues the drive for freedom in right now’s world.
Hanna Suchocka, Polish prime minister in early Nineteen Nineties and ambassador of Poland to the Holy See within the remaining years of John Paul’s preach stated in her remarks that audio system on the convention she and her crew organized are “the final technology that may level out that papal educating will not be solely historical past” however is rooted in actuality.
She stated John Paul “turned an indication of hope for all of us — those who lived underneath the communist rule, but additionally those who lived on ‘a greater aspect’ of the wall.” She identified that “we didn’t battle for a free world” underneath the Iron Curtain of Chilly Struggle divisions to change into closed “but once more” right now, polarized in opposition to one another and that every one the extra now we have to reject “trivializing” John Paul’s educating and remind the world of “its true that means.”
The Pope of Solidarity
If there are two those who instantly come to thoughts as iconic Poles to anybody on this planet, it’s most likely Karol Wojtyła, elected Pope John Paul II, and Lech Wałęsa.
The chief of the primary free commerce union in a communist nation — Solidarity — a motion that led to first free elections in Poland in June 1989 and ultimately the autumn of communism all through Jap Europe, stated that the pope was a believer in the reason for freedom from communism. It was the pope’s religion within the peaceable revolution that stored Solidarity leaders stepping into occasions of persecution, Wałęsa stated.
“When a Pole turned pope — a yr after his election he got here to Poland and arranged us to wish, to not begin a revolution. He allowed us to note how many people there are. On the similar time the pope stated: ‘change the face of the earth.’ We stopped being afraid,” Wałęsa instructed a packed auditorium on the Adam Mickiewicz College in Poznań March 26 in the course of the convention titled “John Paul II — to Learn Historical past, to Type Historical past.”
Pope’s 1978 Go to to Poland
Elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978, John Paul visited his nation solely seven months later, in June 1979. Eleven million folks in a nation of 36 million on the time came to see the pope in person.
“As much as that time I used to be organizing the battle in opposition to communism. The pope accelerated these processes and made them cold,” stated Wałęsa, who was president of Poland from 1990 to 1995.
Norman Davis, professor of historical past at Oxford, Cambridge and London universities, stated that Solidarity, a motion supported spiritually and organizationally by the pope, was a “sensation of the occasions.”
John Paul “was a grasp of conveying info not by harsh phrases. He by no means condemned the communist system. He all the time spoke in a mild language that was a lot stronger than harsh phrases. He didn’t offend anybody, however acquired his level throughout,” Davis stated.
Struggle for Freedom
Hans-Gert Pöttering stated that when he was about to satisfy the pope for the primary time in 1981, John Paul was an hour late to that assembly.
“He was on the cellphone with Lech Wałęsa,” the German lawyer, historian and conservative politician, stated in Poznań, testifying to the continued dedication of the pope to assist the liberty motion.
“If somebody instructed me then, ‘Poland will probably be free,’ I wouldn’t imagine it,” stated Pöttering, who served as president of the European Parliament 2007-2009.
He identified that “we wouldn’t be in Poznań right now” if it weren’t for John Paul telling the Polish folks, “Don’t be afraid, change the world.”
However this message, he stated, has an all of the extra highly effective dimension right now when “we’re challenged by the dictator within the Kremlin,” he stated. Pöttering made the feedback as he stood subsequent to the chief of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Main Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, Ukraine, representing a rustic that has been combating a full-scale Russian invasion since Feb. 24, 2022.
‘Obligation to Present Solidarity’
Following the educating of John Paul, “it’s our obligation to indicate solidarity to our buddies in Ukraine in order that they’re free folks,” Pöttering highlighted.
“We within the EU (European Union) — Poland, Germany — we’re not simply residing in a corporation, we live in a EU primarily based on values of the dignity of the human being, the core of the educating of John Paul II. The individual is answerable for himself and for the opposite,” the European chief stated, emphasizing that this job falls on right now’s youth, who should be “engaged” of their societies.
Main Archbishop Shevchuk spoke subsequent, addressing the lots of of younger folks within the room, together with giant teams of Ukrainian college students who later stood within the line to take an image with him.
“For John Paul II,” the prelate stated, “younger folks had been extra vital than assembly with senior political leaders. He knew that it’s the youth that can determine the destiny of their nations and of the world.”
John Paul and Youth
Main Archbishop Shevchuk stated that John Paul “was not afraid of youth — typically bishops are afraid of younger folks, however it was not a characteristic of John Paul.”
He stated that younger persons are destined to “construct bridges, reminiscence and communion amongst nations.”
In 2001, he stated the Polish pontiff instructed Ukrainians that “freedom will not be solely a present however a problem” and that younger folks defending Ukraine right now put these phrases into apply “defending freedom on the worth of their very own blood,” and that it was the phrases of John Paul that turned for them a “signpost construct freedom.”
Main Archbishop Shevchuk thanked Wałęsa, who was on stage, for having a Ukrainian flag pinned to his shirt as an indication of solidarity because the warfare started.
Forming ‘Genuine Neighborhood’
Papal biographer George Weigel stated that the reality about humankind that we meet in Christ is “the reality that we’re creatures who lengthy to type genuine neighborhood, to stay in solidarity with others, creatures made for love, not merely for satisfaction,” and due to this fact are desirous about freedom “in a particular manner.”
As a Christian fashioned by John Paul, “you’ll consider freedom as tethered to reality and ordered to goodness,” Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Coverage Middle, instructed the convention in a pre-recorded video.
The main American theologian stated that John Paul’s educating exhibits a visual distinction between “freedom of indifference” and “freedom for excellence.”
The primary, he stated, “might be summed up by desirous about Frank Sinatra and that well-known music of his, ‘I did it my manner.’ It is a freedom of self-absorption. It’s a freedom untethered to any notion of reality and goodness. It’s freedom as I would like it. I would like it now. I would like it my manner.”
‘Freedom for Excellence’
“Freedom for excellence” — a time period coined by the Belgian Dominican ethical theologian Father Servais Pinckaers, who deeply influenced John Paul, Weigel stated — “means choosing the proper factor, which we are able to know by cause, aided by supernatural religion … and doing in order a matter of ethical behavior.”
He added that John Paul taught about “freedom as choosing the proper factor for the precise cause, as a matter of ethical behavior, or what an older vocabulary would name advantage, ‘habitus’ being translated from Latin in some respects as ‘advantage.’”
Within the encyclical “Centesimus Annus,” Weigel stated, “John Paul II taught that freedom untethered to reality turns into self-destructive. Or, if you’ll, it cannibalizes itself. And I’m afraid that’s the state of affairs we discover in a lot of the Western world right now. If there’s solely your reality and my reality, and nothing that both of us acknowledges as the reality, then how will we settle the dispute?”
Weigel stated “it’s as much as us to assist heal the breach between that freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence, between the dictatorship of relativism and a real train of freedom within the public area.”
Remarks on John Paul’s legacy by prime world leaders and thinkers “actually made a mark in our conscience,” stated Michal Senk, director of the Middle for the Considered John Paul II, a Warsaw-based suppose tank. “It left us with conviction that freedom is intertwined with reality and aligned with goodness and that we have to carry that legacy of John Paul II forward,” he instructed OSV Information.
Imaginative and prescient of Freedom
“Within the context of a simply peace for Ukraine, this imaginative and prescient of freedom turns into a robust name to behave with ethical readability, pursuing not solely political peace however a peace grounded in advantage and reality,” he added.
Ambassador Suchocka, who’s a lawyer, concluded: “Possibly it’s my skilled twist, however John Paul II is just like the structure — he must be interpreted. Interpretation is vital. The interpretation for right now might be completely different than it was 30 years in the past, however the textual content and its message stay fixed: Don’t shut yourselves off, open yourselves up. And dialogue — with out dialogue, and the power to grasp one another, we’ll perish.”
Paulina Guzik is worldwide editor for OSV Information. Observe her on X @Guzik_Paulina.
