The End and the Beginning
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29. Stefan Olszowski, “URGENT NOTE from a conversation with Archbishop Luigi Poggi, chairman of the Committee for Working Relations between the Apostolic See and the Government of the Polish People’s Republic, on March 17, 1983.” This document was obtained from the Polish foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and given to the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.
30. It is possible that Poggi pushed back and that Olszowski failed to report it, but that seems unlikely, given the general tenor of Poggi’s approach, which was further illustrated the next day.
31. “Notes from a conversation with Archbishop Poggi from the Office of Religious Affairs—18.III.83.” This document was obtained from the Polish foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and given to the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.
32. “Code Message No. 1256/II/2095 from Rome, April 25, 1983.” This document was obtained from the Polish foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and given to the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.
33. Cited in ibid.
34. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 538.
35. Ibid., pp. 538–39.
36. Author’s conversations in Katowice, May 2008.
37. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 151.
38. Author’s interview with Father Robert Tucci, S.J., September 25, 1997.
39. Author’s interview with Bohdan Cywiński, November 14, 1998.
40. For a detailed account of Poland II, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 459–64. Stanisław Dziwisz provides telling details in A Life with Karol, pp. 150–56. See also Timothy Garton Ash, “The Pope in Poland,” in Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).
41. Cited in Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, p. 474.
42. Dziwisz, A Life with Karol, p. 151.
43. Ibid., p. 150.
44. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 549.
45. Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, December 2, 2008.
46. Ibid.
L’Osservatore Romano may not have understood, but the Stasi did. Its agents had been busy during Poland II, which, according to Stasi analysis, had been one long “display of anti-socialist manifestations.” An East German spy reported that John Paul had made a “veiled attack against the Soviet Union,” the evidence for which, ironically enough, was the Pope’s defense of Polish sovereignty. Of perhaps more concern in both East Berlin and Moscow, however, was what the Stasi analysts regarded as the weakness of Poland’s communist leadership in the face of what the Stasi described as a relentless papal assault. The Polish comrades had “suffered defeats” and had shown themselves “inconsistent in important questions,” backing off under the pressure of “Church demands.” The entire pilgrimage, the analysis concluded, had been “an encouragement of counter-revolutionary forces in their hostile anti-state activities”; worse still, Poland II aligned the Pope “with the political line of U.S. imperialism vis-à-vis Poland and the increasing attacks of the reactionaries against socialism.” The Stasi’s analysis was based in part on a lengthy report on John Paul II’s remarks to the Polish bishops during their meeting at Częstochowa on June 19, where, according to the analysts, the Pope “laid out the long-range aims of the Vatican’s battle against the socialist order and support of the counter-revolution.” [See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 216–21.]
47. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 540.
48. Ibid., p. 541.
49. Głębocki, “The Underground,” p. 121.
50. See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 225–28. The report of this meeting contained at least one bizarre target assignment: operatives were to do what they could to impede the work of professors at the Pontifical Gregorian University, “in which the policies of the Roman Curia vis-à-vis the socialist states are formulated.” In fact, the general cast of mind in the Gregorian faculty at that period would have been broadly sympathetic to the pre–John Paul II Ostpolitik and highly critical of John Paul’s critique of the theologies of liberation.
51. See ibid., p. 233. This LICHTBLICK report would have raised a few eyebrows at the U.S. bishops conference, whose staff was then in the forefront of efforts to impede Reagan administration policies on nuclear weapons and on Central America.
52. See Głębocki, “The Underground,” p. 125.
53. Cited in Antonin Lewek, “New Sanctuary of Poles: The Grave of Martyr-Father Jerzy Popieluszko.” (Warsaw, 1986); pamphlet obtained by the author at the St. Stanisław Kostka Church in Warsaw.
54. Michael Kaufman, Mad Dreams, Saving Graces—Poland: A Nation in Conspiracy (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 141.
55. These details are taken from Weigel, The Final Revolution, pp. 148–51.
56. John Paul II expressed his concern for Father Popieluszko at his general audience on October 24, 1984, and in his Angelus remarks on October 28, and deplored his murder at the general audience of October 31 and the Angelus of November 1.
57. The “Litany of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim,” was a staple of the devotional life of Kraków seminarians during Wojtyła’s years of preparation for the priesthood. John Paul II reproduced it as an appendix to his vocational memoir, Gift and Mystery
58. Cited in Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War, p. 207.
59. Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, December 13, 1997.
60. See Broun, ed., Conscience and Captivity, pp. 93–94.
61. Author’s interview with Andrzej Grajewski, May 26, 2008. In his memoir, The Martyrdom of Patience, Cardinal Casaroli conceded that the Ostpolitik had met its most intransigent resistance from the Husak regime in Czechoslovakia.
62. Author’s interview with Pavel Bratinka, October 23, 1991.
63. Author’s interviews with V´clav Vaško, October 22, 1991, and Father Václav Malý, October 25, 1991.
64. For a more detailed discussion of the evolution of the resistance Church in Czechoslovakia, including comments on John Paul II’s role by leading Catholic dissidents, see Weigel, The Final Revolution, pp. 174–85.
65. Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13, 1998, and April 16, 1998. John Paul II met Sakharov himself in 1989, encouraging him to remain active in democratic reform politics in the Soviet Union. See Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 569–71.
66. See Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 244–46. Given the report’s warnings about any unwarranted distribution that might compromise its source, it seems likely that the Stasi analysis was based on information from LICHTBLICK (the German Benedictine Eugen Brammertz) or his former student, ANTONIUS (Dr. Alfons Waschbüsch).
67. E-mail to the author from General Edward Rowny, U.S. Army (Ret.), April 5, 2005.
68. Author’s interview with Andreas Widmer, January 28, 2009.
69. “Report on the Visit of Wojciech Jaruzelski, Chairman of the State Council of the Polish People’s Republic, to the Vatican, January 13, 1987,” archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department IV, No. D IV Wat.0.22–1–87, archived March 23, 1987. This document was obtained from the Polish foreign ministry archives by Dr. Andrzej Grajewski and given to the author. The translation from the Polish was done by Paula Olearnik.
70. Author’s interview with Archbishop Tadeusz Gocłowski, C.M., December 4, 2008.
71. Ibid.
72. The citation was from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes], no. 31.
73. Details are taken from Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 543–48.
74. Ibid., p. 548. On Polish communist complaints about John Paul II’s “tone,” see Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, pp. 253–54.
75. Author’s interview with Andrzej Grajewski, July 14, 2009. Kotowski told Grajewski that he had done this both for “reasons of state” and because “the people needed it.”
&
nbsp; 76. Author’s conversation with Piotr and Teresa Malecki, Stanisław and Danuta Rybicki, Maria Rybicka, Karol Tarnowski, and Danuta Ciesielska, November 8, 2008.
77. Memorandum to the author from Andrzej Grajewski.
78. On the 1988 discussion and the work of the Round Table, see Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours, pp. 491–505.
79. On the Velvet Revolution, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 605–7.
80. Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13, 1998, and April 16, 1998.
81. The viciousness and brutality with which the KGB attacked Orthodoxy was one of the reasons that Vasili Mitrokhin began creating his archive. See Andrew and Mitrokhin, “The Penetration and Persecution of the Soviet Church,” in The Sword and the Shield, pp. 486–507.
82. See Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939–1950 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1996), pp. 148–88.
83. According to Irina Alberti, one of John Paul II’s private diplomatic agents in Russia, the diplomats and ecumenical officers of the Roman Curia were normally acquiescent and accommodating to the demands of their Russian Orthodox interlocutors, on the strategic grounds that the dialogue had to be maintained and that, if humiliation and accommodation were the price, so be it. Thus these men were “surprised,” according to Mrs. Alberti, when Patriarch Pimen flatly refused to have the Pope in Russia in 1988. [Author’s interviews with Irina Alberti, April 13, 1998, and April 16, 1998.]
84. For a detailed account of the Moscow meeting of Casaroli and Gorbachev, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 571–76.
The 1974 “Furov Report” was a KGB document categorizing the Orthodox hierarchy into three classes. Pimen was in category “A,” men whose characteristics the report described in these terms: the “A” bishops affirm both in words and deed not only loyalty but also patriotism towards the socialist society; strictly observe the laws on cults, and educate the parish clergy and believers in the same spirit; realistically understand that our state is not interested in proclaiming the role of religion and church in society; and, realizing this, do not display any particular activeness in extending the influence of Orthodoxy among the population [Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 490].
Patriarch Pimen’s successor, Patriarch Aleksy II, was also in the Furov “A” category, and was known to the KGB as DROZDOV [ibid., p. 499].
85. Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, February 18, 1998. For the text of John Paul II’s letter to Gorbachev and the text of the Soviet leader’s response, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 573–75.
86. Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, December 17, 1998.
A memorandum of conversation of this meeting, likely dictated by Mikhail Gorbachev afterward, is available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB298/index.htm.
87. Zbigniew Brzeziński, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), p. 461.
88. Author’s conversation with Henry Kissinger, September 4, 2007.
89. “Havel: Sharing a Miracle,” L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], April 30, 1990, p. 4.
90. Author’s interview with Joaquín Navarro-Valls, January 20, 1997.
91. Ibid.
92. Author’s interview with Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, December 5, 1997.
93. Author’s interview with Jan Nowak, May 13, 1998.
94. Author’s interview with Bohdan Bociurkiw, August 10, 1996.
95. Author’s interview with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, February 14, 1997.
96. “Us and them, all the time” was Stanisław Dziwisz’s description of the situation during one of the author’s conversations with Pope John Paul II, who agreed, saying “Si, eranno loro e noi [Yes, it was them and us].” John Paul then elaborated the point: “The communists tried to be accepted, not just as a political authority, but as a moral authority, as an expression of the Polish nation. But the Church became that expression, especially in Cardinal Wyszyński. The communists tried to pretend that we did not exist; but this was impossible.” [Author’s conversation with Pope John Paul II, September 10, 1996.]
97. See Weigel, The Final Revolution, pp. 26–30.
98. Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 635.
99. “The Polish Pope in Poland,” New York Times, June 5, 1979.
100. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), p. 193.
101. Ibid., pp. 195–96.
102. Ibid.
103. A particularly apt capturing of this facet of Reagan’s personality and policy may be found in Anderson and Anderson, Reagan’s Secret War.
Reagan and John Paul II shared, as well, the same disdain for liberal bromides about the nature of and purposes of communism, which no doubt helps explain, at least in part, the boundless liberal animus against them during the 1980s.
104. For more on John Paul II and Mikhail Gorbachev, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 604–5.
105. Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 257.
106. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 542.
107. Cardinal Agostino Casaroli: “Ostpolitik: Chipping Away at Marxism’s Crumbling House,” L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], June 18, 1990, pp. 6–7.
Chapter Five
1. Pope John Paul II, Letter Concerning Pilgrimage to the Places Linked to the History of Salvation, 11.
2. The curial cardinals who had heard Cardinal Karol Wojtyła preach the Lenten retreat for Pope Paul VI and the Roman Curia in March 1976 should not have been surprised by this facet of John Paul II’s vision, as, during that retreat, he had described the next quarter century as a “New Advent” for a Church en route to its third millennium. See Karol Wojtyła, Sign of Contradiction (New York: Seabury, 1979), p. 206. One of John Paul II’s closest collaborators, Cardinal Stanisław Ryłko, stresses that the Great Jubilee was “both the focal point and the center of the pontificate. Everything aimed at this, and everything in a sense revolved around it.” [Author’s interview with Cardinal Stanisław Ryłko, December 15, 2007.]
3. John Paul II’s address to the cardinals, with its characteristic italicized emphases, may be found in L’Osservatore Romano [English Weekly Edition], June 22, 1994, pp. 6–8. For a more complete account of the 1994 consistory, the fifth extraordinary consistory of the pontificate, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 741–43.
4. John Paul II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 6 [emphasis in original].
5. Ibid., 10 [emphases in original].
6. Ibid., 4.
7. Ibid., 23 [emphasis in original].
8. Author’s interview with Bishop Rino Fisichella, March 13, 2008.
9. For a more detailed analysis of Tertio Millennio Adveniente, see Weigel, Witness to Hope, pp. 743–46.
10. In a break with tradition that rattled the Roman Curia and the Holy See’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Archbishop Renato Martino, John Paul II appointed Professor Glendon the head of the Vatican delegation to the 1995 UN-sponsored Beijing World Conference on Women.
11. Sepe had previously served in the third-ranking post in the Secretariat of State and as secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy. Sebastiani was named president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, with the American cardinal Edmund Szoka (who had reformed the Vatican’s budgeting and auditing procedures in the wake of the Banco Ambrosiano scandal of the early 1980s) being moved from the Prefecture to the Governatorato of Vatican City to make room for Sebastiani; some of Szoka’s reforms did not survive the change of leadership at the Prefecture for Economic Affairs.
12. According to the Central Committee, “The symbol [i.e., logo] of the Jubilee represents the centrality of the Christian message. In the blue field in circular form is inserted the cross, which sustains humanity gathered in the five continents, represented by as many doves. The blue fiel
d symbolizes the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, who became Man through the work of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The light which radiates from the center of the cross indicates Christ, the Light of the world, the only Savior of mankind, ‘yesterday, today, and always’ The intertwinement of the doves signifies the unity and brotherhood that the children of God are longing for. The vividness and harmony of the colors want to recall joy and peace as desirable gifts of the celebration of the Jubilee.” However noble the sentiments, critics wondered why a Church whose message had inspired Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bernini had approved a design that was more evocative of Disney World than of the mysterium incarnationis.
The Diocese of Rome held an architectural competition to build a “Millennium Church” in the parish of St. Sylvester, located in the suburban neighborhood of Tor Tre Teste. The competition was won by an American, Richard Meier, who, as one fellow architect put it, was “known for his sophisticated neo-Corbusian essays in white panels and gridded glass.” What was intended to be a church for the future turned out to have been a trip into the past, “the tradition of mid-20th-century modernism.” [Duncan G. Stroik, “Modernism Triumphs in the Eternal City,” Catholic World Report, August–September 1996, pp. 58–61.]
13. “St. Peter’s Facade Is ‘the Restoration of the Century,’ ” ZENIT News Service, September 28, 1999. The restoration brought out the pastels remaining from the original facade as designed by Carlo Maderno.
14. The first of the regional Synods was the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for America, which met from November 16 through December 12, 1997; that it was styled the “Synod for America,” and not “for the Americas,” was a reflection of John Paul’s conviction that, as the entire New World was once the subject of a great evangelization from Europe, so North, Central, and South America ought to consider various possibilities of engaging together in the new evangelization for which the Pope had called in the 1990 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio. Less than five months later, the Special Assembly for Asia met in Rome, from April 19 through May 14, 1998. The Synod Special Assembly for Oceania then met from November 22 through December 12, 1998. The sequence was completed by the Special Assembly for Europe, which met from October 1 through October 23, 1999.