NEWS FEATURE: Pope returns to Poland for longest _ and perhaps last _ visit of his papacy

c. 1999 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II will fly to the Baltic seaport of Gdansk Saturday (June 5) to begin a visit of almost 13 days to Poland _ his longest to his homeland in the two decades of his papacy and perhaps his last. Although John Paul, 79, suffers […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II will fly to the Baltic seaport of Gdansk Saturday (June 5) to begin a visit of almost 13 days to Poland _ his longest to his homeland in the two decades of his papacy and perhaps his last.

Although John Paul, 79, suffers the debilitating effects of what is believed to be Parkinson’s disease and leans on a cane when he walks, he will follow a punishing schedule on his seventh visit to Poland.


The pope will crisscross the north and east of the country on 23 helicopter flights to complete his promise to visit each of Poland’s 43 dioceses during his papacy. He will canonize a 13th century princess, beatify 108 Polish Catholics killed by the Nazis during World War II, pray at a monument to Jewish victims of the Holocaust and address the Polish parliament.

Revisiting the scenes of his youth, he will spend two hours in the industrial town of Wadowice, where he was born Karol Josef Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, and make a pilgrimage to his family tomb in Krakow, the ancient former capital where he attended university, was ordained a priest and served as archbishop for 24 years.

Polish authorities plan to surround the pope with tight security. They also have suspended the licenses of private citizens to bear arms and forbidden the sale of alcohol at each stop on the pope’s itinerary.

The trip will be John Paul’s 87th outside Italy since he became Roman Catholic pontiff in October 1978. Scheduled to last 12 days, 15 hours and 7 minutes, it is not only his longest visit to Poland, but the longest he has made to any country in Europe and the fourth longest to anywhere in the world.

If he is able to make an eighth visit to Poland, it will not be before the year 2001 because he plans to devote next year to jubilee celebrations in Rome marking the start of the third millennium of Christianity. There is only one trip he hopes to make outside of Italy in 2000 _ to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, possibly in March.

According to Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, it was the pope himself who requested the rigorous schedule in Poland. His only break will be a day and a half of rest at the 17th century Camaldolese Monastery in the village of Wigry, set on a lake in a remote wooded area near the Lithuanian border.

Navarro-Valls said the trip will”summarize the whole pontificate because of the very many dimensions it has.” The trip’s start at Gdansk evokes memories of the Solidarity free labor movement, born at the Gdansk shipyard following the pope’s first return to his homeland in 1979. John Paul gave strong support to Solidarity in the struggle that ended with the collapse of the country’s communist regime in 1989.


In his speech to the Polish Parliament on June 11, John Paul is expected to attack the values of post-communist Poland. He has made no secret of his displeasure over the capitalist, consumerist and secularized society of what formerly was Eastern Europe’s most Catholic country.

Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader later elected president of Poland, said during a visit to Rome this week he expects the pope’s visit to encourage”a new evangelization of Poland and the world”that will counter materialism with the values of the church’s social doctrine.

The pope’s prayers, also on June 11, at the monument in Warsaw to victims of the Holocaust and his beatification of World War II martyrs on June 13 will recall his own youth during the Nazi occupation of Poland and his emphasis as pope on human rights and the need for dialogue instead of war to resolve disputes between and within nations.

The martyrs to be made blessed, one step before sainthood, include three bishops, 52 diocesan priests, 26 priests belonging to religious orders, eight nuns, seven monks, three seminarians and nine lay persons, among them a widow who volunteered to die in the place of her pregnant daughter-in-law.

The pope’s last appointment on June 17 before departure ceremonies at Krakow’s Balice Airport is a private one. John Paul, who was born Karol Josef Wojtyla, will visit the tomb of his mother Emilia, who died giving birth to a stillborn child in 1929, his older brother Edmund, a physician who died in 1932 fighting an outbreak of scarlet fever and his father Karol, an army officer who died of a heart attack in 1941.

DEA END RNS

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!