The Pope as Pole

POLAND’S mourning for John Paul II is special, as might be expected: All the newspapers are framed in black, every shopping mall is closed, and not a single TV station is daring to run commercials. Poland has lost not just a pope, but a national redeemer, the person who led us out of Soviet captivity and across the Red Sea into the land of liberty and democracy.

Normally a cantankerous lot, Poles rally around about once a generation, and then their enthusiasm becomes overwhelming. The last time was when, under the Pope’s influence, they organized Solidarity, the first free trade union in the Communist world. The Pope’s death has brought them together again in sadness, but also out of gratitude, that Providence gave them this man to begin with. As the poet Czeslaw Milosz observed, in the depths of our humiliation, we got a king that we had always dreamed of.

RS

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Radek Sikorski

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POLAND’S mourning for John Paul II is special, as might be expected: All the newspapers are framed in black, every shopping mall is closed, and not a single TV station is daring to run commercials. Poland has lost not just a pope, but a national redeemer, the person who led us out of Soviet captivity and across the Red Sea into the land of liberty and democracy.

Normally a cantankerous lot, Poles rally around about once a generation, and then their enthusiasm becomes overwhelming. The last time was when, under the Pope’s influence, they organized Solidarity, the first free trade union in the Communist world. The Pope’s death has brought them together again in sadness, but also out of gratitude, that Providence gave them this man to begin with. As the poet Czeslaw Milosz observed, in the depths of our humiliation, we got a king that we had always dreamed of.