AS our great Pope is buried, I feel sorry for the Polish people most of all-sorry, and joyous with them. Today, my telephone correspondents in Poland tell me, they feel like orphans. Papa Wojtyla has been such a Protector to them, such a shelter, such a tower of strength at their side and at their rear and in their forefront. Someone told me during the week my father died that losing a father is like having a big tree on the edge of the forest come down, and feeling the wind upon one’s own face. The Poles feel like that today. So do we all.
Karol Wojtyla was born three or four hours by car from the villages across the border in Slovakia where all four of my grandparents were born. He told me once that he had gone skiing not far from those villages in the Tatra mountains that are shared by Poland and Slovakia. And, actually, I first met the Pope when he came to consecrate Saints Cyril and Methodius, the new Slovak cathedral in Toronto.
Comments