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Benedict XVI in the land of Karol Wojtyla
Meekness and courage of the Pope in Poland
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Of Benedict XVI’s visit many different images remain in the memory: from the homage to his predecessor to the human warmth of the crowd. From the defense of Tradition to the solicitude
of the visit to Auschwitz.
An account by the Vatican expert of La Stampa
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by Marco Tosatti
Benedict XVI created a
variety of different images with his visit to Poland; the first really
“his own”, not inherited – as was his taking part in the
World Youth Day in Cologne –from his predecessor. Of all the images,
naturally, the tremendous one of the visit to Auschwitz stands out; because
pain and horror prevail over everything, or almost. And precisely for that
reason I shall speak of them at the end of the unusual
“polyptych” drawn by Pope Ratzinger.
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 | | Benedict XVI saluting the crowd that greeted his arrival at Warsaw airport on his apostolic visit to Poland from 25 to 28 May 2006 | | |
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The icon of memory
The friendship linking Joseph Ratzinger and Karol
Wojtyla, two very different people, yet united by steadfast, imperceptible
affinities, is no secret. Benedict XVI resolved to pay homage to his great
predecessor in the country he so loved; and sought to grasp the mystery of
that quite extraordinary man almost by questioning the genius loci. Because, and this he
explained in the general audience immediately after his return to Rome,
faith «is not something solely of the mind or of feeling, real faith
involves the whole person: thoughts, affections, intentions, relations,
body, activity, daily work». And the Pope had seemed to peer, with
those intense, penetrating eyes, into the places where Karol’s life
had been spent, and above all at the sanctuaries that had marked his life: Czestochowa, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and of the Divine Mercy, in Lagiewniki, just
out of Krakow. The young Wojtyla went to Kalwaria to pray, in a landscape
of forests and mountains; in Lagiewniki lived Sister Faustina Kowalska,
bearer of the message of the Divine Mercy, of which John Paul II made
himself echo and interpreter, and that Benedict XVI has made his own:
«A central message precisely for our time: Mercy as power of God, as
divine limit against the evil of the world». In Kalwaria the German
Pope showed one of the narrow breaches in an armor woven of reserve and
shyness. In Wadowice he said: «I reached the birthplace of my great
predecessor, the servant of God John Paul II, with great emotion, in the
city of his childhood and youth. Wadowice could not be left off the
itinerary of the pilgrimage I am making on Polish soil in his tracks. I
decided to halt precisely here, in Wadowice, in the places where his faith
awoke and ripened, to pray together with you that he may soon be raised to
the glory of the altars. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the great German poet,
said: “Who wants to understand a poet, should visit his
country”. Thus also to understand the life and ministry of John Paul
II, it was necessary to come to his naive city. He himself confessed that
here, in Wadowice, “it all began: life began, school began, studying,
theatre began… and the priesthood”». Shortly after, in
Kalwaria, he pronounced the words that would ensure him membership of the
“Saint now” party”: «I would like to say that I
also, like dear Cardinal Stanislaus – he was speaking impromptu
– hope that Providence may soon grant the beatification and
canonization of our beloved Pope John Paul II».
The icon of human warmth
It is difficult to resist “Polish
hospitality”. And in fact Benedict XVI let himself be won over. It is
true that, as a good German, he was ready to submit to the fascination of
what lies eastwards; it’s true that a large basis of his liking, as
he himself admitted, was there already, fed by the Poles’ flags that
wave in such numbers at every general audience; it’s true that Poland
is “different” from the rest of Europe, a country in which
Catholicism, the faith, is still a widespread legacy, not a thing which has
to be spoken of with caution in public, for fear of offending other
people’s feelings; it’s true that on that basis, on that faith
Pope Ratzinger relied, and how, for taking off again in the Old Continent;
but all that said, I have never seen him smile as much. And a very special
relationship was set up. Just to start with, with the numbers. If the
reception seemed warm on the day of his arrival in Warsaw, but not like
election day, everything had already changed by his first mass in Pilsudski
Square, in front of the historic “Victoria” hotel. Without
letting myself get entangled in the usual dance of difference between the
numbers counted by enthusiasts and sceptics, for a Friday morning there
were a great many people. And to the amazement of many, there were people
who knelt at the consecration: on the grass, on the pavement, in the middle
of the street.
The crescendo continued with the arrival in
Czestochowa. I remember John Paul II, in 1983, while the country was still
caged in by General Jaruzelski’s coup d’état; and the
crowd that stretched from the bastions over the great open space to the
trees. Benedict XVI was not treated to lesser generosity. Tens of thousands
of people shared with the Pope, kneeling in front of them, in the most
total silence, the adoration of the Eucharist, and then they chanted the
litanies to Our Lady, they went through a liturgy interwoven with
tradition, with a simplicity and a naturalness quite unexpected; and they
took Communion in thousands, and Polish president Lech Kaczynski was the
first to receive the host from the hands of the Pope.
Krakow was regal in its reception. And how could one
resist the crowd in Kalwaria shouting: «Wir lieben dich»,
«We love you», and answered with a thunderous: «We shall
remember! We shall remember», to his plea to pray for him and for the
Church? Or showered him with «Sto Lat», «A hundred
years», the celebratory chant that up to a few year ago was reserved
for Karol Wojtyla? It was impossible to resist, and in fact he didn’t
resist. So much so that in Blonie, on Saturday evening, during the
encounter-vigil with young people, Pope Ratzinger was clearly seen to move
his lips, as if joining in the young people’s songs, and clapping his
hands in tune. A hint, a sketch, immediately suppressed, almost as if he
were afraid of exaggerating, or of wanting to imitate John Paul II, who
used to lend himself whole-heartedly to the spectacle. But enough to betray
his delight, the joy transparent also in the smile and in the face. He was
touched, in evident manner; and the dyke of his shyness seemed to give way
under the overwhelming wave of affection.
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 | | 28 May, Benedict XVI praying at Auschwitz concentration camp, in front of the 22 plaques recalling in various languages the victims of Nazi folly | | |
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The icon of the dotting of the «is»
He dotted many is and crossed many ts. He recalled that at the beginning of his pontificate John
Paul II had written to Cardinal Wyszynski: «This Polish Pope who
today, full of fear of God but also of faith, begins the new pontificate,
would not be sitting on Peter’s Chair had there not been your faith,
that did not bend before prison and suffering, your heroic hope, your trust
in the Mother of the Church to the end; had there not been Jasna
Góra and all this period in the history of the Church in our
country, bound up with your service as bishop and primate». And
Ratzinger commented: «How can we not thank God today for what came to
be in your country and throughout the whole world, during the pontificate
of John Paul II? Before our eyes entire political, economic and social
systems have changed. People in different countries have regained their
freedom and sense of dignity. “Let us not forget the great workings
of God”». That much for gratitude and history. On Christianity:
«As in past centuries so also today there are persons or milieu that,
by neglecting this centuries-old Tradition, would like to falsify the word
of Christ and rid the Gospel of truths that are, according to them, too
uncomfortable for modern man. They try to create the impression that all is
relative: even the truths of faith are alleged to depend on the historical
situation and on human evaluation. But the Church cannot silence the Spirit
of Truth». The bishops and the Pope are responsible for the truth of
the Gospel, but «every Christian is bound to continually compare his
own convictions with the dictates of the Gospel and of the Tradition of the
Church in the commitment to remain faithful to the word of Christ, even
when it is demanding and humanly difficult to understand. We must not fall
into the temptation of relativism or of the subjective and selective
interpretation of Holy Writ. Only the whole truth can open to us our
belonging to Christ dead and risen for our salvation».
Having thus dealt with “do-it-yourself
religion” and partial adherence, another very delicate point comes to
mind. He faced it when speaking to the priests gathered in the Cathedral of
Saint John in Warsaw. «On the occasion of the Great Jubilee Pope John
Paul II several times exhorted Christians to do penitence for their past
unfaithfulness. We believe that the Church is holy, but in her there are
sinful men. One must reject the desire to identify only with those who are
without sin. How could the Church have excluded sinners from its ranks? It
was for their salvation that Jesus became incarnate, died and rose again.
We therefore need to learn to live Christian penitence with sincerity. In
practising it, we confess our individual sins in union with others, before
them and God. There is point, however, in keeping ourselves from the
presumption of setting ourselves up arrogantly as judges of earlier
generations, living in other times and in other circumstances. It requires
humble sincerity not to deny the sins of the past, and nevertheless not to
indulge in facile accusations in the absence of real evidence or by
ignoring the different mindsets of those times. Furthermore the confessio peccati, to use an
expression of Saint Augustine’s, must always be accompanied by the confessio laudis, by the
declaration of praise. Asking forgiveness for the evil committed in the
past we must also remember the good accomplished with the help of divine
grace that, though planted in pots of clay, has often brought forth
excellent fruit». Two schools of thought immediately arose. One went
in for a “Polish” reading, relating it to the problem of the
priests who collaborated in some manner with the regime in past decades.
It’s a delicate question; not least because we know how unreliable
the - very generic - lists compiled by the secret services may be. And the
Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Stanislaus Dziwisz, has done well to
prohibit the publication of the names until a commission has checked
individual positions, and the accusations.
A second school of thought, without denying that
Benedict XVI could have also been referring to that specific case, tends to
read a wider implication in those lines: that they call a halt to
“self-flagellation”, to the mea
culpa decided by John Paul II at the time
of the Grand Jubilee of 2000, aimed at the cleansing of the memory of the
Church on the threshold of the third millennium. And on the same occasion,
Benedict XVI decided to dot another “i”: «The faithful
expect one thing only from priests: that they be specialists in favoring
the encounter of man with God. The priest is not asked to be an expert in
economy, in housing or in politics. It is expected of him that he be an
expert in the spiritual life». And finally, he reminded the young
people in Blonie Park in Krakow how difficult it can be to say aloud that
one is Christian: «This refusal of Jesus by men, mentioned by Saint
Peter, has gone on through the history of mankind and come down even to our
times. It doesn’t take much sharpness of mind to detect the manifold
proofs of the rejection of Jesus, even where God has granted us to grow up.
Often Jesus is ignored, mocked, hailed as king of the past, but not of
today and even less of tomorrow, cast aside into the junk room of questions
and people who should not be spoken of aloud and in public… A strong
faith must go through ordeals. A living faith must always grow. Our faith
in Jesus Christ, to remain such, must face up to the lack of faith in
others».
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 | | Benedict XVI looking at a picture
of John Paul II given him by the faithful of Wadowice, 27 May | | |
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The icon of pain
It was impressive to see Benedict XVI going solitary
into the lager, moving ahead alone, followed, many yards back, by
cardinals, bishops, and the crowd. Alone, as if he had to face an enemy,
and the others were holding back in apprehension. His face taut, pinched. A
thought crossed my mind: so Jesus must have walked toward Gethsemane that
night. Alone. Benedict XVI advanced, with his short rapid steps, toward the
place that is the symbol of Evil, for the third time: he had already been
there, to Auschwitz, in 1979, with John Paul II, and then the following
year with the German bishops. And truly he moved as if knows the way well.
A flurry of images fix themselves in the memory: the prayer at the wall of
the death, the wind blowing off his skullcap, the sign of the cross; the
tears of a survivor, the taut face of the Pontiff as the lament of Caddish
rises in the air, the prayer for the dead, and the rainbow behind him, a
sign that sealed the visit, in a sky swollen with clouds and storm.
Benedict XVI’s words have aroused – as
often happens when a Pope touches upon the Jewish world – reactions
and arguments; there is no point in going over them here. But the opening
of the Pontiff’s speech, an impassioned cry, surely deserves to be
remembered. «To speak in this place of horror, of the piling up of
crimes against God and against man that has no equal in history, is almost
impossible – and is particularly difficult and oppressive for a
Christian, for a Pope who comes from Germany. In such a place words fail,
in the end only stunned silence can remain - a silence that is an inward
cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you bear all this?
It is in this attitude of silence that inwardly we bow deeply to the
numberless crowd of those who suffered here and were put to death; this
silence, however, then becomes a loud demand for forgiveness and
reconciliation, a cry to the living God never to permit such a thing
again». Joseph Ratzinger, as «son of the German people»,
has said of himself: «I could not not come here. I had to
come». Too dense and rich his speech to try to give a summary. But
there is a passage that perhaps marks a particular moment in relations
between Jews and Catholics; and surely throws particular light on Pope
Ratzinger’s understanding of the history and the role of the Jewish
people. «At bottom, those violent criminals, by the annihilation of
this people, aimed to kill the God who called Abraham, who speaking on
Sinai established the directional criteria for mankind that remain valid
for ever. If this people, simply by its existence, constitutes a testimony
of that God who spoke to mankind and took on its burden, then that God
finally had to be dead and dominion belong only to man - to those who
believed themselves the strong who had been able to make themselves masters
of the world. With the destruction of Israel, with the Shoah, they wanted, in the end, to tear
up the root on which the Christian faith is based, replacing it definitely
with a do-it-yourself faith, faith in the dominion of man, of the
strong». But reading the words of Benedict XVI, one gets the
impression that the allusions (like that relating to the extermination of
the Rom: «They became counted among the useless elements in universal
history, in an ideology in which what counted was only the measurable
useful; all the rest, according to their conception, was classified as lebensunwertes Leben –
a life not worth living») are very much more relevant than we think,
and refer not only to the evident bestial iniquity of sixty years ago, but
speak to the West of abortion and euthanasia.
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