John Paul II made no secret of his intense interest in the political upheavals and religious controversies in his native Poland. But a book of his private correspondence about to be published in Poland demonstrates an astonishing attention to detail--and an acute sensitivity to anything he saw as a departure from church teachings. In "John Paul II: Greetings and Blessings," Marek Skwarnicki, a well-known Roman Catholic writer in Cracow, makes public the letters he received from John Paul through his entire papacy, right up until two weeks before his death. At the same time, a previously unpublished rare 1988 interview with the pope provides new insights into his frame of mind as the Polish communist regime began to crack. Together, these two new pieces of evidence provide a fuller portrait of John Paul and help explain his complicated feelings about his country.
The early letters in Skwarnicki's book contain frequent reminders of the pope's concerns for those activists--in many cases, personal friends--who were persecuted after Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski's regime imposed martial law in 1981, hoping to crush the Solidarity movement. The letters in his final years are dominated by frequent news of illnesses and deaths of common acquaintances. His last letter makes clear the end is near. "Everything is in the hands of God," he wrote.
But the most revealing letters are from the 1990s, when the role of the church in a newly free Poland divided many of those who had battled the communist system. As a bishop and then cardinal in Cracow, the future pope had written often for Tygodnik Powszechny, a prestigious Catholic weekly with a decidedly independent voice. His letters indicate he continued to read the paper closely once he was installed in Rome. But as younger writers and editors began to replace the generation represented by Skwarnicki, he worried about the publication's liberal leanings. He wrote disapprovingly of its increasing focus on secular issues, and he complained about the frequent use of the term "controversial pontificate" when referring to his rule. While acknowledging that all pontificates are controversial and that the church always needs "ferment," he wrote: "That ferment is the love of the church, and can never be any liberal criticism of the church."
Those misgivings weren't simply a product of the 1990s, when Poles began openly debating such issues as abortion, religious education in public schools and the influence of the church on public policy. The pope voiced similar concerns when he invited Jas Gawronski, an Italian journalist of Polish origin who is now a member of the European Parliament, to dinner in the Vatican in October 1988. With Gawronski's tape recorder running, he freely discussed his feelings about the mounting pressures on the communist authorities and his hopes--and fears--about the future. Afterward, though, the pope asked Gawronski to treat their conversation as off the record. Stanislaw Dziwisz, the pope's longtime personal aide who is now archbishop of Cracow, recently gave Gawronski the green light to publish it.
That conversation left no doubt that the pope was fully behind the push for democracy in his homeland, and that he wanted Western leaders to back more sweeping changes. "The West mainly wants order. The West, as I see it, has to change its approach to communist Europe," he told Gawronski, adding that it was no longer enough for Western nations to send money to and invest in their poorer neighbors on the other side of the East-West divide. "We have to somehow integrate more this part of Europe with our Europe."
The pontiff also fretted about the chronically rebellious Poles' overplaying their hand, and about the "passivity" of the Russian people in the face of oppression, suggesting that this might be a legacy of their Orthodox faith. While looking forward to the day when his vision of a united Europe would become reality, he also worried that "the East might lose more" than the West when that integration took place--in terms of the spiritual values that had been nurtured during decades of oppression.
Observing the new Poland of the 1990s, the pope thought his fears were proved justified. But he found room for hope from an unexpected direction. In one of his letters to Skwarnicki, he applauded the publication in Tygodnik Powszechny of articles by religious writers he approved of, including Americans Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel, who would later write a widely praised biography of him. As he saw it, those Americans had a better understanding of Catholic issues than some of his wavering countrymen. Despite his strong ties to Poland, John Paul was always far less interested in the nationality of Catholic writers than in the nature of their message.
