Intervention by the historian Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio at the conference ‘Twenty years without John Paul II: the man who broke down walls come’ Senate of the Italian Republic, 26 March 2025
Wojtyla was a wind of unconquered hope for the Church, the West, Eastern Europe. He was a protagonist of the Cold War and globalisation as Pope. Only twenty years after his death he is hardly remembered. A subtle and constant diminishing of his importance began immediately after his death, despite the widespread grief.
David Maria Turoldo, a fine poet and sensitive Christian, wrote: ‘Wojtyla, you are the wind of hope that has not been defeated by the barbed wire of Auschwitz, and not only for your Poland. A wind of hope that crosses all borders...wind stronger than your pride, o men playing with your infinite fears.’ Wojtyla was a wind of unconquered hope for the Church, the West and Eastern Europe.
A young man who grew up feeling the despair and humiliation of Poland, destined to be a land of slaves for the Reich. He became bishop of Krakow under an oppressive communist regime and then Pope on 16 October 1978, the day of the first great deportation of Jews from Rome (no one remembered it then). As Pope he was a protagonist of the Cold War and globalisation. Only twenty years after his death he is hardly remembered. A subtle and constant re-evaluation of various kinds began after his death, despite the widespread grief: he was too great, too disturbing, the expression of a Christianity that was perhaps annoying to ‘men who play with their infinite fears’, a bit like those of the 21st century.
For this reason, in 2011 I wrote the biography "Giovanni Paolo II". John Paul is alive in the devotion to the ‘saint of the family’, but he has found no place in historiography. There have been few studies after his death. It seems that his dimension, great and complex, does not fit into the measures of current thinking and narrating. I feel it is a very positive opportunity to talk about him.
When the West discovered Cardinal Wojtyla in October 1978, he was 58 years old: he felt he was a child of Polish history, in which resistance and martyrdom were intertwined. He invited Christians to discover the ‘new martyrs’, who are numerous today - according to him - as in the first centuries. His people were considered by Polish epic poetry as the ‘Christ of the nations’ - as the national poet Adam Mickiewicz said.
The young Karol had lived through a time of suffering with the Nazi occupation, the assassination of so many compatriots, the repression of the Church and intellectuals, and the massacre of the Jews. His patriotism was the memory of a pluralistic Poland, that of the Jagiellonians: ‘the Polish spirit - he wrote - is, after all, multiplicity and pluralism, and never narrow-mindedness and closure’. He added: ‘cultural, ethnic and linguistic variety is part of the constitutive order of creation and as such, cannot be eliminated’.
A friend of the Jews since childhood, he stood out in a world marked by anti-Semitism. A pro-Semite, in 1968, when the communist government launched an anti-Semitic campaign, he visited the synagogue in Krakow, as did Primate Wyszyski in Warsaw. In 1986 he went to the synagogue in Rome, welcomed by the unforgettable Rabbi Toaff, and spoke of Jews as ‘elder brothers’ (an idea of Mickiewicz). He only mentions two names in his will: his faithful secretary Don Stanislao and Rabbi Toaff, a reference that has not yet been fully deciphered. He felt he was a witness to a history of suffering caused by Nazism: ‘the concentration camps will always remain the real symbol of hell’, he said in 1976. But also of a country and a Church deprived of freedom by communism. He wrote of this: ‘An evil of gigantic proportions, an evil that made use of state structures to carry out its nefarious work...’ However, he once said to me: ‘It can't be said that I don't have antibodies against communism, but Europe has forgotten too much about the evil of Nazism’.
All that pain hadn't weakened him. He presented himself at the loggia of St Peter's as Pope, saying: ‘Do not be afraid!’. He was ‘the wind of unconquered hope’. The response to the fear and resignation of the East, and to the discouraged conformism of the West, was ‘do not be afraid’, taken from the Gospel, source of audacity. He appeared fundamentalist to democratic Catholics - few of whom understood his value, feeling uncomfortable with his model of a Polish priest and his devotion. Traditionalists thought he would restore order in the Church after Paul VI.
He must have puzzled many: he was a child of the Council, considered Paul VI as a father. He wrote in his will: ‘As a bishop who participated to the Council from the first to the last day, I wish to entrust this great legacy to all those who are and will be called to realise it in the future. As for me, I thank the eternal Shepherd who allowed me to serve this great cause...’. He was a patriot, with a theology of the nation - he tried to develop it in every country he visited, who had a universalist and non-nationalist vision and believed that the Church should go ‘beyond all borders’ and reunite the family of nations. He went to the United Nations twice, persuaded that he was supporting an institution he considered crucially important.
His Catholicism was a force delivering people from the evil that imprisons the heart, as well as from the powers that oppress the people. He believed faith changes hearts and history. Not a Christianity irrelevant to history, nor a secularised and political religion. Based in the Central European city of Krakow, he witnessed the tragedy of an amputated Europe. He awakened Poles from their resignation. And powerful energies were released: Carter's advisor, Brzezinski, said: ‘Without the Pope, his tenacity, that combination of moderation and obstinacy that is his style, many of the things achieved before our very eyes would never have begun to happen’.
He worked with his bare hands for the liberation of the East. Helmut Kohl, still in November 1989, told the Polish historian Geremek: ‘We both know that that we will not live to see a reunified Germany’. On 9th November 1989 the Wall crumbled. John Paul II would have been a Nobel Peace Prize winner if he hadn't been the Pope of Rome. 1989 and Wojtyla reversed the paradigm of the French Revolution of 1789, origin of many revolutionary processes: no revolution was possible without bloodshed. The paradigm was overturned by John Paul II who showed how the strength of the people can change history in a peaceful way. However, the pressure of the masses is not enough, there needs to be leadership, and this was largely provided by Wojtyla. A watershed for political culture, 1989 was not due to Woytjla, yet without him that history would not have been possible.
John Paul II is the Pope of life: he published Evangelium vitae, in which he denounced a loss of the meaning of life, widespread violence, abortion, disregard for the weak. He understood the catholicity of the Church as an embrace for all, refusing to see borders as walls, since he had experienced the anguish of the Wall. In 1999, he said of migrants that ‘catholicity is not only manifested in the fraternal communion of the baptised, but is also expressed in the hospitality shown to the stranger, independently of his religious affiliation’.
The Polish Pope believes Europe is central to the mission of the Catholic Church. It is not exclusivism. His visits to the southern hemisphere include countries on the margins. If you examine his speeches in whatever country he visited, you realise how intelligently he established the meaning or the (often weak) identity of each nation. Years later, you could see that his visit had not been forgotten.
Today here in the Senate, we must remember his special relationship with Italy, he called it his ‘second homeland’. He was the bishop of Rome and the primate of Italy in depth, convinced that Italy had a mission in Europe, in the Mediterranean and between the South and the North. He believed that this was why the Pope resided here. In 1994, in a difficult moment, when he felt national unity challenged, he called for a great prayer for Italy and suggested this invocation: ‘Accompany the steps of our nation, often difficult but full of hope’. The world was moving towards unification at the risk of conflict between nations, ethnic groups and religions, and the world had to be put back together.
Before 1989 he witnessed the globalisation process and the reactions to it, which we would later call ‘clashes of civilisation’, nationalism and religious radicalism. In 1986 he invited the world religious leaders to Assisi, an audacious initiative that aroused perplexity and led to the break with Lefebvre's traditionalists. He wanted to reject the fatal attraction of religions towards the sacralisation of war. The beginning of his pontificate almost coincided with the return of Khomeini to Iran, while religions were once again exercising a public role. In Assisi, people prayed side by side and this prayer was intended to disarm religions and allow peace to emerge from the depths of their message. The Pope concluded, encouraging a peace movement between religions: peace ‘is a workshop that is open to everyone and not only to specialists, sages and strategists. Peace is a universal responsibility: it is achieved through the thousand small acts of daily life...’
In 2000, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur pointed out a fundamental characteristic of the pontificate and told him: ‘...you have encouraged peaceful dialogue between the religions spread across the face of the earth. The memory of the meeting in Assisi is particularly dear to me, as it is to the hearts of many men and women. This spirit of openness has remained firmly rooted in the convictions of the man of the Church that you are. These convictions constantly invite those you meet to prayer and meditation, to rise to the occasion...’.
He was open to everyone, to young people, to other religions, to his enemies and he was loyal to his friends. All this was rooted in his very strong convictions, in his Christ-centred faith. Olivier Clément, seeing him pray, spoke of him as a ‘prayer block’. Wojtyla loved to pray. Don Stanislao, looking back over his life full of meetings, speaks of a day-to-day plot of his spiritual life. Mystic, but very human, sympathetic, with a capacity for affectionate relationships, especially with children, he was the man who met the most people in the world, said Ratzinger. Karol Wojtyla embodied the Catholicism of his time. He revealed - I use the words of the theologian Henri de Lubac - ‘the character of Christianity as being at the same time social, historical and interior... that character of universality and totality...’. ‘Homo catholicus et totus apostolicus’, but also very human, a man among men and women.
(translation by editorial staff)
