The Jaruzelski regime could harass this kind of cultural resistance, but it could never stop it. The Kolbe Church eventually became Poland’s first private television studio, with technicians who had been fired by state TV. As videocams became available, they were used to make films that were distributed underground. Eventually, the “station” at the church got transmitting equipment and started broadcasting, including the first film on the life of Jerzy Popiełuszko.
As Adam Michnik put it, Poland after martial law was not “socialism with a human face” it was “communism with a few teeth knocked out.” The economy continued its slow-motion collapse and the average Pole’s material quality of life steadily deteriorated. That was another reason cultural resistance was so important. An independent world of ideas and creativity helped sustain hope in a time of apparent hopelessness. The regime had tried to maintain what the Pope’s old friend, Father Mieczysław Maliński, called a “culture of closed mouths.” It had failed.
Meanwhile, during its months in prison, the Solidarity leadership had come to conclusions similar to those reached by other democratic dissidents in east central Europe. The reconstruction of “civil society” through culture was the prerequisite to economic and political change. This meant a new type of resistance. Information was a key to effective resistance through culture, and here was another important role for the Polish Church—the Church was a sanctuary of truth telling in a world dominated by lies. Or, as Father Maliński said, “People came to church to find out what the hell was going on in the rest of Poland.”
As he walked across the marble floors of the Apostolic Palace to the papal library, General Wojciech Jaruzelski knew he had lost the gamble he had made on December 13, 1981. “Normalization” on the post-1968 Czechoslovakian model would not work in Poland. There could be no reconstruction of Polish society and the Polish economy without the cooperation of the Solidarity leaders, because these were the only men the Polish people trusted. Perhaps Jaruzelski remembered John Paul’s counsel in June 1983: talk to these people, don’t jail them.
The myth of self-reforming communism died hard. Two weeks after General Jaruzelski met with the Pope, the new leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, addressed the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, defended his proposals for perestroika, or “restructuring,” and reaffirmed his commitment to the basic principles of communism. Gorbachev came from a different generation than his three immediate predecessors, Comrades Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. Their formative political experience had been Stalin’s purge trials, and they never quite rid themselves of the slightly reptilian look of men who had been parties to betrayal, torture, and murder in their youth. This was not Gorbachev’s world, and he looked different, accordingly. But the man whose “nice smile” and “iron teeth” had been praised by no less than Andrei Gromyko still believed in reform communism.
He was not the kind of man to roll the tanks into a “fraternal” Warsaw Pact state to enforce the Brezhnev Doctrine. This gave General Jaruzelski, the Solidarity leadership, and John Paul II more maneuvering room. But neither was Mikhail Gorbachev willing to concede that communism was doomed no matter how much “restructuring” he accomplished. Alchemy could not become chemistry as long as alchemists held on to their basic assumptions about the way the world worked. The same was true of communism. Self-reforming communism, holding on to its delusions about the human person, was as impossible as scientifically serious alchemy.
For those committed to a path beyond communism, like John Paul II, it was essential to prepare the moral and cultural ground on which free societies could flourish. Freedom was not at risk only in east central Europe, however, and communism was not the only threat to the truth about the human person. The cast of characters on the world stage and the structure of history’s drama had changed dramatically since Karol Wojtyła had been presented on the loggia of St. Peter’s, more than seven years before. But the basic issues remained the same. The basic issues were always the same.1
GOSPEL, HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY
John Paul II began 1987 with three characteristic personal gestures. On January 12, he baptized forty-nine babies in St. Peter’s Basilica. On February 20, he received Mehmet Ali Agca’s mother, Mrs. Muzeyyen Agca, in a private audience. And on March 8, he began the annual Lenten retreat he had invited the Father General of the Jesuits, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, to preach. Lent 1987 would produce one of the most dramatic scenes of the pontificate and would test the well-oiled machinery of papal travels as it had never been tested before.
Latin America, the demographic center of world Catholicism, was in the midst of long-delayed transitions to democratic politics and market-oriented economics throughout the 1980s. John Paul II had been to the continent seven times, an average of once a year. In the third and fourth weeks of Lent 1987, he was on his way to one of the holdouts against democratization, General Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, and to an Argentina consolidating its transition to democracy in the wake of a military junta that had massively violated civil liberties and led the country to defeat in the Falklands/Malvinas War. En route to his first destination, an overnight stop in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Pope held one of his impromptu airborne press conferences, walking up and down the aisle of his Alitalia jet and fielding questions in half a dozen languages for three-quarters of an hour.
One reporter asked whether the Church in Chile should play the same role as it did in the Philippines. John Paul didn’t hesitate: “I think it is not only possible but necessary, because this is part of the pastoral mission of the Church.” General Pinochet’s recent remark, that things would be better if the Chilean bishops stopped acting like a political party and “spent ninety percent of their time praying,” had not gone over well. John Paul understood that some leaders wanted, as he put it, “to separate us from this mission,” namely, the Church’s defense of basic human rights. The Pope was having none of it. As he said, the Church could not “let itself die” by abandoning the cause of human rights. Those who said, “Stay in the sacristy and do nothing else” had better understand that.
Then, when a reporter asked whether the Pope expected to help restore democratic politics to Chile, John Paul gave a succinct summary of the relationship between the Gospel, human rights, and democracy: “Yes, yes,” he said, “I am not the evangelizer of democracy, I am the evangelizer of the Gospel. To the Gospel message, of course, belongs all the problems of human rights, and if democracy means human rights then it also belongs to the message of the Church.”2 The sequence here was instructive: from evangelism to culture formation to political change.
Chile
General Augusto Pinochet had become President of Chile in a September 1973 military coup that deposed the government of Salvador Allende, an avowed Marxist who had been elected president by minority vote in 1970. The Pinochet dictatorship banned left-wing political parties, “recessed” the centrist parties (including the Christian Democrats), reversed Allende’s statist economic policies, and engaged in considerable repression of civil liberties. There were “disappearances” in Chile—perhaps as many as 1,000—and the regime used torture against its leftist enemies. Yet Chile, unlike neighbor Argentina, did not suffer the horrors of a civil war, which in Argentina resulted in as many as 14,000 “disappeared.”3
The Chilean bishops had been justifiably worried by the Allende government’s declared intention to create a Marxist state in Chile and the steps it had taken to do so. By the same token, the bishops, led by Cardinal Raúl Silva Henriquez, SDB, of Santiago, opposed the Pinochet regime’s human rights violations from the outset. Cardinal Silva established a “Vicariate of Solidarity” in Santiago to support victims of governmental repression. The cardinal was also a key figure in engaging the Holy See as mediator when Chile and Argentina seemed on the verge of war in 1978. That successful effort, which had been concluded in 1985 with the Treaty of Montevideo, helped set the stage for a papal pilgrimage in 1987. Chileans were grateful for what John Paul
II had done in a seemingly hopeless situation.
Cardinal Silva had retired in May 1983. His replacement, Juan Francisco Fresno Larraín, was a compromise choice, a man of deep piety whose appointment, it was hoped, would ease tensions within the Chilean hierarchy. There had been no disagreement among the bishops about the necessity of defending human rights, but there were disagreements about whether this was best done by public pressure or quiet persuasion. Fresno, who was named cardinal in 1985, chose one of the key leaders of the Vicariate of Solidarity, Monsignor Christian Precht, as his deputy (or “pastoral vicar”) and became a public advocate of democracy and reconciliation. Shortly after his appointment, Archbishop Fresno established contacts with leaders of the banned centrist political parties, meeting with them individually. In each case he had three questions: What do you expect for the future? What are you prepared to do? What are you willing to give up? The archbishop then brought the opposition politicians together and read them what they already agreed upon. These consensus points became the basis of the “National Accord for Democracy” announced in August 1984.
Some of the Chilean bishops were afraid that a papal visit would strengthen the Pinochet regime. Cardinal Fresno and Monsignor Precht were convinced that the Pope’s presence, the preparations for such a visit, and the experience of community it would generate could help revive civil society in Chile, and thus take the country a step closer to democracy. The strategy of the visit reflected the approach John Paul had succinctly summarized during his flying press conference en route to Montevideo.
The basic message would be evangelical and moral—that “Chile’s vocation is for understanding, not for confrontation,” as Monsignor Precht later put it. Elaborating on this theme in his thirty Chilean addresses, John Paul confirmed the Church in its role as defender of human rights and promoter of reconciliation. At the same time, he was signaling the opposition and the government, each of which included serious Catholics, that a nonviolent transition to the law-governed democracy envisioned in the National Accord was the right path to take.
The second strategic goal for the pilgrimage was to give the Chilean people an opportunity to vote with their presence and their applause on the road they wanted to travel in the future. To leading figures in the Pinochet regime, “reconciliation” was code language for a politicized Church meddling in its affairs. On the other extreme was a leftist opposition that wanted confrontation (violent, if necessary), and that claimed “the people” were uninterested in reconciliation. During the visit, “reconciliation” was the word most applauded in John Paul II’s public addresses, and the pilgrimage became an informal plebiscite on Chile’s future.
The third goal was to create an experience of civil society by what Monsignor Precht called “reconquering the streets.” Chile’s streets had been places of repression, danger, and confrontation. The Popemobile’s travels through Chile’s cities reversed the public imagery of “street life” over the past decade and a half. The street was now a place where Chileans prayed together, rather than a place of riots and police beatings. The papal Mass venues were deliberately set up to mix people together as they hadn’t been for years. Once again, as in Poland and the Philippines, the experience of social solidarity, created by a mass public religious event that reclaimed the country’s authentic culture, proved a potent antidote to the politics of violence.4
John Paul arrived in Santiago on April 1, 1987, and was greeted by President Pinochet, who defended the past thirteen and a half years of dictatorship. The first moment in “reconquering the streets” followed, as the Pope made a triumphal entry into the capital city, where the Chilean Church welcomed him at the cathedral. Later in the day, he went to the top of a hill overlooking the capital and blessed the city, making special mention of those in exile for their political convictions.5
The Pope met General Pinochet the next day at the presidential palace, where the two men had a private meeting at which the papal nuncio, Archbishop Angelo Sodano, was present. There were no set speeches; Pope and president had a conversation. Pinochet pressed the Pope: “Why is the Church always talking about democracy? One method of government is as good as another.” John Paul politely but firmly disagreed. “No,” he said, “the people have a right to their liberties, even if they make mistakes in exercising them.”6 Pinochet later told the nuncio that the Pope’s answer had made him reflect more carefully on the issue. For the moment, though, he wanted a photo that would imply a papal blessing on his regime. So Pinochet’s entourage maneuvered John Paul onto a balcony of the presidential palace overlooking a courtyard packed with regime supporters, where the two men were photographed together—a vignette misinterpreted and misreported as the Pope conferring legitimacy on the government or somehow soft-pedaling his human rights convictions.7 That the opposite was the case should have been clear from the Pope’s remarks to students in Valparaíso that same day. Speaking in a stadium where Pinochet’s opponents had once been detained and tortured, he urged nonviolence while applauding the youngsters’ desire “for a society more congruent with man’s proper dignity.”8 The choice of venue was not accidental. Neither was the suggestion that change was imperative.
The real confrontation came the next day, April 3. The papal Mass for the beatification of a native-born Chilean, Sister Teresa of Jesus “of the Andes,” was about to be held at Santiago’s Bernardo O’Higgins Park, with perhaps as many as a million Chileans in attendance.9 Monsignor Precht, in charge of liturgical services during the pilgrimage, came to the venue early and sensed that something was wrong. The crowd in front of the altar platform wasn’t responding as crowds usually did during the warm-up for the Mass. The Pope was told that something seemed amiss and that there might be trouble. His response was simple: “We are going to do everything as planned.”10 During the biblical readings in the first part of the Mass, a riot started in the crowd to the Pope’s left. In addition to making it impossible to hear the readings, the rioters started burning tires they had brought into the park. The police were late in responding. When they did charge into the venue, water cannons, beatings, and tear gas compounded the disruption, in which 600 rioters and police were injured. At the height of the chaos, a Chilean government official turned serenely to Father Roberto Tucci, the organizer of John Paul’s travels, and said, “It is good this happened, so the Pope will see how these people are”—by which he meant the leftists who were burning tires.
For his part, Tucci, for the first and only time during the pontificate, was thinking seriously of pulling the Pope out of a venue. The combination of burning rubber and tear gas was making it hard for the Pope and others on the altar platform to breathe. But the smoke gradually diminished, the late-arriving police restored a measure of control, and John Paul carried on.11 Children received their First Communion from the Pope in tears—not from emotion, but from inhaling smoke and tear gas. At the end of the Mass, John Paul deliberately stayed on the altar platform longer than planned, kneeling before the altar, looking out into the park. No one was going to drive him away from such a scene. Cardinal Fresno, mortified, came up to the Pope and said, “Forgive us.” John Paul responded, “For what? Your people stayed and celebrated [the Mass]. The only thing you can’t do in these situations is give in to the rioters.”12
On the way back to the nunciature, the streets of Santiago were packed with people trying to show solidarity with the Pope who had refused to give in. Neither Father Tucci nor Monsignor Precht believes that what happened in O’Higgins Park could have taken place without the prior knowledge and tacit acquiescence of the Pinochet regime. The overriding theme of the papal pilgrimage had been reconciliation; the government had to show that Chile was inherently violent in order to justify its own repressive measures. In a police state governed as Chile was in 1987, it was inconceivable that agitators could have brought tires and gasoline into a controlled venue without the regime turning a blind eye. The fact that the riot went on for some time before the police intervened also raised
suspicions. Moreover, not a single rioter was ever arrested, despite both the violent police intervention that eventually stopped the riot and the fact that the entire episode had been filmed.13
After the Mass and riot at O’Higgins Park, John Paul met opposition political leaders at the Santiago nunciature. The government was not happy with the idea of the meeting, but the nuncio, Archbishop Sodano, had told them that it was good in itself and would be good for the country. In his brief prepared remarks, John Paul stressed that human rights were inalienable, but should be defended without violence.14 The themes were familiar, but the meeting’s impact was considerable. Officially speaking, there was no formal political opposition in Chile. John Paul’s meeting with leaders committed to a nonviolent democratic transition demonstrated that the official reality was not, in fact, reality.15
Something crucially important for a peaceful transition to democracy had taken place during the papal visit to Chile. Chileans by the millions had “voted” for the proposal that their country’s vocation was for understanding, not for confrontation. The streets had been taken back. As Father Tucci said to Monsignor Precht, after watching the attitude of the Chileans in the streets, “This is a country of witnesses, not just curious observers.” The Chilean people had experienced something that had not been part of their national life for more than thirteen years: the public mingling of people of different views who were able to be civil because, as Monsignor Precht later put it, “You have to be honest with your father”—in this case, John Paul II.16 Even the government had learned something. After acting unilaterally for years, it had been forced to cooperate with the Church in arranging the visit. The interaction was itself a kind of reconciliation.17
The visit’s Chilean organizers thought the Western media, keeping score between the Pope and General Pinochet, missed a lot of this. Monsignor Precht remembered years later that the two principal images of the trip had been the photo of the Pope and General Pinochet on the balcony and “the spectacular” in O’Higgins Park. Both events had involved governmental manipulations that went unreported. The more significant point was that the conceptual structure of the pilgrimage had not been reported. Cardinal Fresno, Monsignor Precht, and their colleagues were convinced that restoring civil society was the precondition to restoring of democracy. The precondition to restoring civil society was national reconciliation. That was what they, and John Paul II, were trying to accomplish in five days.
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