Witness to Hope

by George Weigel

  Karol Wojtyła had always loved the Christmas season. Christmas 1981 was undoubtedly his most unhappy Christmastide since World War II. On Christmas Eve at 6 P.M., a candle appeared in the audience window of the Apostolic Palace—John Paul’s participation in a worldwide symbolic gesture of support for Poland launched by two Swiss clergymen, Maurice Graber, a Protestant, and Andre Babel, a Catholic.135 His traditional Christmas blessing Urbi et Orbi concluded with a special greeting to “my beloved fellow-countrymen,” and especially to “those who are suffering, who have been taken away from their dear ones, those who are afflicted by depression, even by despair.”136 John Paul’s World Day of Peace message for New Year’s Day, 1982, denounced the “false peace of totalitarian regimes.” That same day, at the Angelus, he thanked all who were praying for Poland and asked that they continue to do so, because what was at stake there was “important…not only for a single country, but for the history of man.”137

  He spoke as a Polish patriot, but he was always more than that. His culture-driven view of history gave him an insight into the travail of his country that transcended nationalism. That distinctive angle of vision on events also gave him an intuition of the future that, to many of his beleaguered countrymen, seemed hard to believe. Martial law for them was the end of a dream, or at least a lengthy interruption in their road to freedom. John Paul II saw it as a desperate move by a crumbling regime, and was confirmed in that view by General Jaruzelski’s wooden reply on January 6 to the Pope’s December 18 letter.138

  What he had told Solidarity’s intellectual leaders in November still held true. He delivered the same message to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See at their annual New Year’s meeting on January 16. Because human dignity was “inscribed in human conscience,” the quest for freedom was a rising, not a receding, tide in world affairs.139

  POLITICAL CRISIS/EVANGELICAL SOLUTION

  Five months later, John Paul’s own diplomatic ingenuity got a serious testing. The first papal pilgrimage to Great Britain had been scheduled to begin in late May 1982. Eight weeks before the Pope was due to arrive in London, Argentina’s military dictatorship seized control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, a British possession for the past 149 years. The Argentines had long claimed that British possession of the islands (which they referred to as “Las Malvinas”) infringed on their sovereignty. What Britain saw as an invasion, the Argentine regime saw as the recovery of lost territory it did not propose to leave again. A British battle fleet assembled and set sail for the South Atlantic to eject Argentina from the Falklands by force.

  The impending war put John Paul II in an exceptionally difficult position. The planned visit to Great Britain had aroused considerable hopes. The Catholic population of the United Kingdom was enthusiastic. An important ecumenical meeting had been scheduled with Archbishop Runcie, the head of the Anglican Communion, at Canterbury Cathedral. In a longer historical perspective, the visit seemed set to mark an end to hundreds of years of British suspicions about Catholicism and the Vatican. On the other hand, Britain was about to go to war with Argentina, a formally Catholic country, and to make matters even more complicated, Argentina had been the military aggressor in the current Falklands conflict. Vatican diplomats worried that a papal visit to a belligerent power in the midst of active hostilities would jeopardize the Holy See’s neutrality in international politics. The British bishops desperately wanted the visit to go forward and worried that a cancellation would have a terribly demoralizing effect on British Catholics. The Argentine bishops wondered how the Pope could visit a Protestant country making war on a smaller Catholic country. From many Argentines’ point of view, the Malvinas conflict was a matter of a Third World country struggling against First World colonialism. Wasn’t John Paul II a champion of the Third World and hadn’t he spoken forcefully against colonialism?

  As the Argentines dug in on the islands and the British fleet continued its arduous voyage south, the papal pilgrimage to Britain seemed impossible—until John Paul II arrived at an ingenious solution. Collegiality among the world’s bishops was the first step in his approach. On May 18, at the height of the fighting in the Falklands, and with Cardinal Basil Hume and several other British bishops already in Rome for a last-ditch effort to salvage the papal visit, John Paul summoned cardinals and bishops from Argentina to an urgent meeting. During the next several days, the issues were thrashed out under John Paul’s leadership, and the Pope decided that an insuperable political dilemma could only be resolved by an evangelical and pastoral solution. He would visit both Britain and Argentina, a strategy advocated by Cardinal Hume, and he would go as an advocate of peace and a messenger of reconciliation.140 On May 22, the Pope concluded the consultation by concelebrating Mass at the papal altar in St. Peter’s with the British and Argentine bishops.

  The papal pilgrimage to the United Kingdom was a great success, the Pope visiting Canterbury, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester, York, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Cardiff, in addition to London. Meeting Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, John Paul assured her of his prayers for the safety of her son, Prince Andrew, a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War. The Pope also had ecclesiastical reconciliation on his agenda. Praising the Reformation-era Catholic martyrs John Fisher and Thomas More at Westminster Cathedral, the Pope remarked that, “In this England of fair and generous minds, no one will begrudge the Catholic community pride in its own history.” The next day, John Paul and Archbishop Runcie jointly presided over a prayer service in Canterbury Cathedral, a historic ecumenical first. The Pope and the archbishop signed a Common Declaration of Unity, reviewing the ecumenical dialogue since Vatican II and expressing their hopes for the future. The declaration was, arguably, the high-water mark in post–Vatican II Anglican–Roman Catholic relations.141

  John Paul left the United Kingdom on June 2, and arrived in Buenos Aires nine days later for a two-day visit. Although the formal surrender did not take place until June 15, it was clear that Argentina would lose the Falklands/Malvinas War. The hurriedly arranged papal visit became an opportunity to offer encouragement to a people suffering a bitter defeat. Archbishop Alfonso López Trujillo, the President of CELAM, had been invited to the May consultation in Rome, and on returning to Colombia had quickly organized a special assembly of CELAM to meet John Paul in Buenos Aires. The papal visit to Argentina was, formally, a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Lujan. The CELAM meeting, with bishops from all over Latin America, was intended to make clear throughout the continent that the papal visit was a “crusade for peace.” John Paul’s role in preventing war between Argentina and Chile three years before helped give credibility to this interpretation of the visit.142

  The twin visits to Great Britain and Argentina marked the end of two years of continual crisis that had begun with the struggle over Solidarity’s legal registration and continued through Agca’s assassination attempt, the death of Cardinal Wyszyński, the Pope’s difficult recuperation, his intervention in the governance of the Jesuits, the imposition of martial law in Poland, and the beginning of the struggle to sustain the Solidarity movement. For all the difficulties involved, those sixteen days in late May and early June 1982 seemed a fitting coda to this phase of the pontificate. Presented with a dilemma that would have been unresolvable before, the Pope had found an evangelical and pastoral solution to the problem, because he had changed the way the papacy functioned in the Church and in the world.

  13

  Liberating Liberations

  The Limits of Politics and the Promise of Redemption

  NOVEMBER 25, 1981

  Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF].

  FEBRUARY 27, 1982

  Jesuit provincials meet with John Paul.

  MAY 13, 1982

  John Paul II visits Marian shrine of Fatima on first anniversary of assassination attempt.

  JUNE 7, 1982

  John Paul and President Ronald Reagan me
et in the Vatican.

  OCTOBER 10, 1982

  Pope John Paul II canonizes St. Maximilian Kolbe as a martyr.

  NOVEMBER 28, 1982

  John Paul establishes the Church’s first Personal Prelature for Opus Dei.

  JANUARY 18–19, 1983

  Vatican consultation reviews draft U.S. bishops’ pastoral letter on nuclear weapons.

  JANUARY 25, 1983

  Apostolic Constitution, Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, promulgates new code of Canon Law; Apostolic Constitution, Divinus Perfectionis Magister, revises process for beatifications and canonizations.

  FEBRUARY 2, 1983

  John Paul II creates eighteen new cardinals at his second consistory.

  FEBRUARY 24, 1983

  Emergency Vatican consultation considers risks of papal pilgrimage to Nicaragua.

  MARCH 2–9 1983

  John Paul visits Central America.

  MARCH 25, 1983

  The Holy Year of the Redemption opens.

  JUNE 16–23, 1983

  John Paul’s second pastoral pilgrimage to Poland.

  JULY 21, 1983

  General Jaruzelski formally lifts “state of war” in Poland.

  AUGUST 1983

  First biennial international humanities seminar at Castel Gandolfo.

  SEPTEMBER 2, 1983

  33rd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus opens in Rome.

  SEPTEMBER 29–OCTOBER 29, 1983

  Synod of Bishops considers penance and reconciliation in the Church’s mission; Synod’s work is completed by apostolic exhortation, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, issued on December 2, 1984.

  OCTOBER 5, 1983

  Lech Wałęsa awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

  OCTOBER 31, 1983

  Papal letter to Cardinal Johannes Willebrands marks Martin Luther’s quincentenary.

  NOVEMBER 16, 1983

  John Paul II sends personal letter to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, requesting direct contact with the Chinese government.

  DECEMBER 27, 1983

  John Paul II visits Mehmet Ali Agca in Rome’s Rebibbia prison.

  JANUARY 10, 1984

  Full diplomatic relations established between the Holy See and the United States of America.

  JANUARY 26, 1984

  John Paul names John J. O’Connor Archbishop of New York.

  FEBRUARY 11, 1984

  Salvifici Doloris, apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of suffering.

  APRIL 8, 1984

  Cardinal Bernardin Gantin named prefect of the Congregation for Bishops; Cardinal Roger Etchegaray named President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

  MAY 2–12, 1984

  Second papal pilgrimage to Asia.

  JUNE 12, 1984

  John Paul addresses World Council of Churches in Geneva.

  AUGUST 6, 1984

  CDF issues Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation.

  SEPTEMBER 9–21, 1984

  John Paul’s first pastoral pilgrimage to Canada.

  OCTOBER 19, 1984

  Father Jerzy Popiełuszko murdered by Polish state security officers.

  MARCH 22, 1986

  CDF issues Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation.

  On February 22, 1983, Archbishop Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, the apostolic nuncio in Nicaragua, was enmeshed in preparations for a controversial papal visit scheduled to begin in ten days when he got an unexpected phone call from Archbishop Eduardo Martínez Somalo, the Sostituto of the Vatican Secretariat of State. “This is urgent,” the Sostituto said. “The Pope wants to see you, Archbishop Obando, and Bishop Barni right away. Take the first plane.” The nuncio protested: “We’re in the last stages of organizing the visit.” His superior was sympathetic and said, “I’ll talk with the Pope and get back to you.” Martínez Somalo called back the next day with a one-word instruction: “Come.”

  The next plane out was to Miami, so the nuncio, Archbishop Miguel Obando Bravo of Managua (the leader of the Nicaraguan Church), and Bishop Julian Luis Barni, an Italian Franciscan missionary who was due to host the Pope in León, flew to Florida and then caught a plane for Rome, where they were met at the airport and taken directly to the Vatican. There, they went immediately into a meeting with John Paul II and his three senior curial officials: Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Archbishop Martínez Somalo, and Archbishop Achille Silvestrini, the Vatican’s “foreign minister.” The Curia was worried about a possible catastrophe in Managua.

  John Paul immediately got down to business. “Everything seems ready,” he said, “but there’s a lot of opposition to the visit. Should we cancel it? What do you think?” Montezemolo said that Archbishop Obando and Bishop Barni should respond first, so that what he said wouldn’t prejudice their answers. The two bishops reviewed the pros and cons of the visit, but seemed hesitant to offer a definitive recommendation. John Paul then asked Montezemolo again: “What do you think?”

  The Pope’s representative in Nicaragua said there were three things to consider: “There are possibilities, probabilities, and a certainty. The possibility is that we will make an agreement [with the regime about the visit], and they won’t respect it. The probability is that they will try to force something into the program. What is certain is that they will do everything they can to manipulate the Pope in favor of their revolution.” John Paul then asked Montezemolo whether, in his judgment and in light of the dangers, he should go. The nuncio replied, “Now we’ve gotten to the point where canceling the visit would be worse than going ahead with it”—a judgment seconded by Archbishop Obando and Bishop Barni.

  It was then about 1 o’clock. The Pope, who had been listening intensely and asking sharp questions, said, “Come back later this afternoon and you’ll have an answer.” When the three returned, the Pope was occupied with another issue that demanded his attention, but they met with Casaroli, Martínez Somalo, and Silvestrini. Cardinal Casaroli said that the Pope had decided to go. Montezemolo should return to Managua immediately and do everything in his power to deal with “the possibility, the probability, and the certainty.”1

  The veteran diplomats in the Secretariat of State were justifiably nervous about a papal visit to a country with an uncooperative, even hostile, regime. Some of them feared for the Pope’s physical safety in Sandinista Nicaragua—things could always get out of control.2 Christian liberation had become one of the leitmotifs of his pontificate, however, and John Paul II was determined to preach it. If there was going to be trouble in Nicaragua, he would face it when it came. But he would not back down when confronted by threats, implicit or otherwise. That was not part of the job description as he understood it.

  NO COINCIDENCES

  Given John Paul II’s role in igniting the Solidarity revolution in Poland and the impact the Polish revolution eventually had on late twentieth-century history, numerous commentators have been tempted to analyze his as a “political papacy.” Some depict the Pope as a wily diplomat, carefully negotiating Poland’s transition to freedom with its failing communist masters.3 Others portray a grandmaster of the geopolitical chessboard, the co-creator of a vast conspiracy to bring European communism to its knees.4 Then there is John Paul II, prophet of nonviolence, whose underground resistance struggle in post–martial law Poland takes its place alongside Gandhi’s Indian independence campaign and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s American civil rights movement in the annals of admirable twentieth-century politics.5

  There is truth in each of these variations on the theme of John Paul II, “political pope.” John Paul did in fact display impressive diplomatic skills throughout the 1980s. He did have what seemed an almost clairvoyant view of the path down which history was traveling. He did insist that authentic liberation from totalitarianism could not adopt totalitarianism’s violent instruments if it were to remain true to its purposes. In saying what he said and in doing what he did, though, the Pope did not understand himself to be acting primarily as a world political figure o
r a statesman.

  John Paul II’s personal answer to the question of how his papacy, and indeed his life, should be understood came in Portugal, at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, on May 12 and 13, 1982. He had gone there on pilgrimage on the first anniversary of Mehmet Ali Agca’s assassination attempt, to give thanks to God and to Mary for his life having been spared. Arriving in Fatima, the Pope succinctly summarized his view of life, history, and his own mission in one pregnant phrase: “in the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.”6

  The assassination attempt itself, the fact that it took place on the date of the first Marian apparition at Fatima, the reasons it took place, his survival—none of this was an accident, just as the other incidents of his life, including his election to the papacy, had not been accidents. And this, he believed, was true of everyone. The world, including the world of politics, was caught up in the drama of God’s saving purposes in history. That, to his mind, was the message the Second Vatican Council wanted to take to a modern world frightened by what seemed to be the purposelessness of life. The Church’s primary task was to tell the world the story of its redemption, whose effects were working themselves out, hour by hour, in billions of lives in which there were no “mere coincidences.”

  Politics did have a bearing on this. To carry out its primary task, the Church asked the world for the freedom in which to make its evangelical proposal, and the Church asked that the world consider the possibility of its redemption. That was all the Church asked, but the very asking had public implications, for only a certain kind of state could grant what the Church asked. The Church’s basic evangelical mission made the Church anti-totalitarian, because the things the Church asked of the world set boundaries on the reach and the pretensions of government.