Return of the Native

By John Kohan

COVER STORY

Return of the Native

John Paul brings a message of unity and hope to his weary homeland

The scene in the high-ceilinged chamber of Warsaw's Belvedere Palace had just the right amount of symbolism to satisfy history-minded Poles. There was General Wojciech Jaruzelski, standing ramrod straight in an olive-drab uniform encrusted with ten rows of ribbons, the very personification of his country's preoccupation with military honor. Next to him stood Pope John Paul II, a golden pectoral cross hanging over his white robes, the representative of a church that is heroically linked in Polish minds with the tribulations of a nation that has, throughout the centuries, suffered invasions, defeats and even dismemberment.

From the start of the 2-hr. 40-min. meeting, the first ever between the Pope and Jaruzelski, the general seemed uncomfortable with his guest. As Jaruzelski clutched his prepared text, his hands trembled nervously. Beginning his speech, he immediately sought to justify his decision to impose military rule on his unwilling countrymen 18 months ago. "It is said that Poland suffers," Jaruzelski said. "But who put in the scales the enormity of human suffering, torment and tears that have been successfully avoided?" Speaking in the code that all Poles understand, Jaruzelski was delicately implying that only his intervention had forestalled a Soviet invasion of Poland. Then, in an attempt to show his good faith, he expressed his readiness to end martial law as soon as the situation in Poland "develops successfully." This, he said, could occur at a "not distant date," though he would not be more precise. Jaruzelski gave the Pope two gifts: a breastplate of hussar's armor, from the battle in which Polish troops helped end the Turkish siege of Vienna exactly 300 years ago, and a painting of the Tatra Mountains, in which John Paul enjoyed hiking when he was Archbishop of Cracow.

The Pope listened patiently, with his head bowed, as the general made his case. Then, in a surprisingly direct response, John Paul asked Jaruzelski in effect to turn back the clock and honor the agreements that had given rise to Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Communist bloc. Said the Pope: "I do not stop hoping that the social reforms announced on many occasions, according to the principles so painstakingly worked out in the critical days of August 1980 and contained in the agreements, will gradually be put into effect." According to John Paul, renewal was "indispensable for maintaining the good name of Poland in the world." He hinted that liberalization might help Poland end its international isolation and improve relations "above all with the United States."

The second moment of high drama in the Pope's eight-day pilgrimage to his homeland was expected to occur this week, when he met with Lech Walesa, the ebullient, mustachioed electrician who has become an international symbol of the outlawed Solidarity movement. The Pope's conversations with the two main protagonists on the Polish scene would accent the central position that the church continues to occupy there. The visit also underscored the Pope's moral authority. Initially, the government had refused to allow Walesa to see him. It relented only after John Paul insisted upon the session.

The former union leader, who is now merely a "private citizen" in the government's eyes, was among the millions of Poles riveted to their television sets as the Pope arrived in Poland. Walesa spent most of the week in his home town of Gdansk, where he had returned to his job at the Lenin shipyards two months ago after spending nearly a year in detention. When Walesa asked permission from the shipyard management to take a day off to meet the Pope, the request was denied. Instead, a group of policemen turned up at his apartment; in an apparent effort to intimidate him, they followed him everywhere--to work, to Mass, and even, Walesa quipped, "to the lavatory."

Walesa had expected to meet the Pope on Sunday in Czestochowa, where John Paul celebrated the 600th anniversary of the Black Madonna, Poland's holiest religious painting. But Walesa stood by his telephone in Gdansk all day waiting for the summons that did not come.

It was no surprise that the same Pope who had visited Argentina and Britain during the Falklands war would want to try his brand of diplomacy in Poland. After five years in the Vatican--and 17 foreign pilgrimages--John Paul's longing for his homeland has, if anything, only deepened. When reporters accompanying him on the Alitalia 727 jet from Rome last week asked him what he felt like now that he was going home, John Paul responded with a single English word: "Myself."

Ordinary Poles, too, began to act like themselves, as if reinvigorated by the Pope's presence. At curbsides or huddled together in windows or on balconies, their faces reflected sullen amazement, fearful wonder and, finally, bittersweet joy. In an extraordinary pageant of the spirit, they gathered a million strong for Mass in a Warsaw stadium. When John Paul went to Czestochowa a million more covered the grassy slopes around the Jasna Gora monastery. Some Poles held banners in red and white, indiscriminately mixing religion and politics in messages such as HOPE-SOLIDARITY and YOU ARE THE REAL FATHER OF SOLIDARITY. Others laid flowers along the papal path or held up plain wooden crosses as tokens of what their nation had suffered.

During his journey across Poland, John Paul was trying to measure the great historical and psychological divide that separates this pilgrimage from his triumphal return in June 1979. His first homecoming had been spontaneously jubilant, as Poles in the millions turned out to greet a favorite son who had left for Rome eight months before as a Cardinal and come back as the first Polish Pope in history. The experience of standing shoulder to shoulder in quiet defiance of the country's Communist rulers had helped prepare the way for Solidarity's rise.

But today, under military rule, Poland has grown sullen and weary. By returning to his homeland in its hour of need, John Paul wanted to revive the spirit of his compatriots. Said a Vatican confidant of the Pope: "Some people in Poland expect the Pope to perform a miraculous change in the situation. But the Pope has only one wish--to bring a degree of unity and a measure of hope to a divided nation in which the people see no hope."

From the start the trip was fraught with risk. Jaruzelski's motive in allowing it was to give legitimacy to his regime, which the U.S. and many West European governments continue to view with suspicion. Some Vatican officials were worried that the Pope would be jeopardizing his prestige and that of the church by encouraging the hope that Poland's military government could be persuaded to loosen its grip. If John Paul's visit produced no concrete results, they argued, it could leave Poles in a deeper state of gloom than when he arrived. Ever present was the danger that the trip would release so much frustration and rage that neither the state nor the church would be able to contain it. Still, John Paul has gambled for high stakes before--and won.

Poles caught their first glimpse of the man whose portrait hangs in countless homes across the country as he stepped from the plane at Warsaw's Okecie Airport. Clutching his white skullcap against a sudden breeze, John Paul made his way down to the tarmac and, in his traditional gesture of respect, knelt to kiss the asphalt. While Polish President Henryk Jablonski looked on, the Pope explained with emotion that he had kissed the ground, "as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly mother." Said John Paul: "I consider it my duty to be with my compatriots in this sublime and difficult moment."

Looking at the small but somewhat restrained crowd that was being kept behind a rope, the Pope could see a large white banner that read, WELCOME HOLY FATHER. It was signed ACTORS in the familiar flowing red lettering that Poles have come to identify with the Solidarity logo. If that bit of subterfuge had conveyed a poignant message without violating official prohibitions on the display of the banned union's emblems, John Paul showed that he could be equally deft in making a point without resorting to inflammatory rhetoric.

As he continued to read his brief airport address in the clear, strong voice of a onetime actor, John Paul evoked Christ's words in Matthew 25:36 ("I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me") to express his personal concern for those detained under martial law. "I myself am not able to visit all the sick, the imprisoned, the suffering, but I ask them to be close to me in spirit," he said. Later, in what struck many listeners as a reference to the fact that he had been asked not to include in his itinerary the port of Gdansk, where the independent Solidarity union was founded in August 1980, the Pontiff called on Poles who could not see him "to welcome my presence in those places where my pilgrim path does not go."

Many residents of Gdansk and other cities the Pope would not visit came to Warsaw to see him. Jammed ten deep along the route of John Paul's motorcade, they raised homemade signs naming the cities from which they had come. Like the heroine of a Delacroix painting, one robust woman boldly thrust a banner reading GDANSK WELCOMES YOU toward a column of police as the procession filed past. The crowd roared its approval.

Trying to make the best of tightened security measures, Poles placed bouquets of flowers into the upright metal pipes of street barricades. In an equally incongruous display of church-state cooperation, young priests in black cassocks shared the responsibility for security along the Pope's route with young police officers carrying pistols in their holsters.

Most of the crowd massed in the cobblestone square in front of the newly restored Royal Palace. Elderly Poles dressed for Mass prayed fervently or chatted in hushed tones about the Pope's imminent arrival. About 20 university students from Poznan who had slept overnight on the floor of a Dominican cloister strummed guitars and sang religious and folk songs. Entire families huddled in the windows of nearby buildings that were decorated with white-and-red Polish flags, yellow-and-white papal pennants and portraits of the Pope and the Black Madonna. As John Paul rode past in the white Popemobile that had been brought from Rome, a wave of emotion surged through the crowd. Some Poles openly wept. Others thrust their fingers defiantly into the air in a V sign and chanted "Solidarnosc"and "Walesa."

The papal entourage came to a halt in front of St. John's Cathedral, a red-brick gothic church in the Old Town that has served as a rallying point for antigovernment demonstrators since the declaration of martial law. John Paul entered the church and descended to the underground crypt to pray in front of the tomb of the late Polish Primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, who died in May 1981.

The Pope then celebrated a memorial Mass for Wyszynski. In his homily John Paul urged Poles to consider the Passion of Christ. The Pontiff told the hushed assembly, crammed into every alcove of the vaulted church, that he stood beneath the Cross, "together with all my compatriots--especially those who are most acutely tasting the bitterness of disappointment, humiliation, suffering, of being deprived of their freedom, of being wronged, of having their dignity trampled upon." Then, in a second indirect appeal to jailed Solidarity supporters, he cited Wyszynski's three-year ordeal under house arrest during a state campaign against the church in the 1950s as an example of how to draw strength from adversity. The congregation burst into applause when John Paul thanked God that Wyszynski had been "spared the sad events associated with the date of Dec. 13, 1981," when martial law was imposed.

The Pontiffs tribute to the late Primate underscored how deeply Polish Catholics have felt the loss of Wyszynski, who almost single-handed shaped the church into a social force that Poland's Communist leaders can now ignore only at great risk. His successor, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, 54, a soft-spoken expert in canon law, realizes only too well that he cannot imitate the late Primate's autocratic style. Instead, he has tried to work in closer consultation with the church's 89-member episcopate.

But Glemp has come under criticism from some Catholic intellectuals and radical parish priests who actively supported Solidarity. They claim that he has not been forceful enough in pressing the Jaruzelski government to seek a dialogue with Polish society. Says a writer who specializes in religious affairs: "The church knows from experience that the only time the authorities listen is when the government is weak. Jaruzelski is weak now, and the more militant branch of the church believes it is time to set conditions for future cooperation."

With Solidarity no longer a third force in Polish politics, the church has once again moved into its traditional role as the only recognized voice of the disaffected and disenfranchised. Says Father Bronislaw Piasecki, Glemp's private confessor and the pastor of Warsaw's Saviour Church: "Because the government is absolutely isolated from society, it feels that the church is less dangerous than a legitimate political opposition." But if the church is strong in moral authority, it is hamstrung by the fact that it has no legal standing in Polish society and must constantly engage in a cat-and-mouse game with the state to protect its interests.

Difficult months of bargaining preceded the Pope's visit to Poland. John Paul was originally supposed to return home in August 1982 for the celebration at Czestochowa but the military crackdown intervened and Jaruzelski postponed the trip. When the government finally invited the Pope, he asked Jaruzelski to grant a general amnesty. The authorities adamantly refused. Warsaw also balked at including the cities of Gdansk and Lublin in the papal itinerary, fearing that supporters of the banned union, which was particularly strong in those two cities, might use the Pope's visit to stage demonstrations. The Vatican, for its part, would not give the government advance copies of the Pope's speeches except when an official reply was expected, and it refused to discuss barring Walesa from meeting the Pope.

In the weeks leading up to the visit, Polish clerics and government officials have been smiling through clenched teeth, but the struggle has continued in the official press. Challenging an unwritten understanding that granted the episcopate more permits to build churches, the hard-line weekly Rzeczywistosc bluntly questioned whether there were not too many churches going up at a time when the nation could ill afford them. The Warsaw daily Zycie Warszawy attacked the Roman Catholic community on a different front, claiming that it was "morally ambiguous" for the church to call for a general amnesty while giving aid to Solidarity's underground. Even Jaruzelski entered the fray, assailing "certain clergymen who espouse antisocialist activities and attitudes."

Especially controversial are the parish relief committees that have sprung up to channel food and funds to the families of the imprisoned (see box). A Jesuit priest from the city of Kalisz was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for collecting aid for the relatives of political prisoners. When the teen-age son of a relief worker died after he was mauled by the police, Cardinal Glemp lashed back, calling on the government to stop "infringing human and civic rights." Although the authorities have promised to investigate the event, Poles expect no results. When the Pope spotted the dead boy's mother in a crowded Warsaw church, he spoke to her softly for several moments, then embraced her and kissed her on the cheek.

Given the atmosphere of mistrust, church leaders were worried that the state might prove overzealous in protecting the Pope. Clerics in the industrial city of Katowice reportedly scotched a proposal by local security officers to build watchtowers around the site of an open-air Mass, fearing that it would make the faithful feel as if they were in a concentration camp. Residents of Cracow also wondered why a park that had been used for a papal Mass in 1979 had been subdivided with wooden railings that gave it the appearance of a cattle pen. The likely explanation: it was a clever way to keep the Pope from mingling with the people. A parish priest in Warsaw urged his congregation not to be intimidated by the security measures, noting that "God alone will determine the length of the Holy Father's life."

If official concern for the Pope's safety seemed exaggerated, the Polish police had good reason to fear an outbreak of antigovernment demonstrations. After the Pope left St. John's Cathedral, Solidarity supporters rallied in front of the Royal Palace and began to march through downtown Warsaw to the headquarters of the Communist Party Central Committee. Soon the crowd had swelled to 30,000. Gray-haired grandmothers walked resolutely alongside teenagers. Little girls riding on the shoulders of their fathers flashed the victory sign. If the procession, at times, had the air of a carnival, there were also moments of solemnity as the marchers joined in a chorus of O God, Who Has Protected Poland, a nationalist hymn sung by the shipyard workers who went on strike in Gdansk in August 1980.

People watching from apartments overlooking the mile-long route applauded from open windows. Encouraged by the support, the demonstrators shouted their slogans even louder: "No freedom without Solidarity," "Freedom of speech," "We want truth." When a group of priests waved from a church balcony, the crowd picked up the chant, "The priests are with us. The Pope is with us." Crucifixes bobbed alongside Solidarity banners and Polish flags. Said a Warsaw University student: "The Pope's presence gives the people courage to say what they think. What you see here is the real Poland."

When the marchers arrived at Central Committee headquarters, they found their route blocked by several hundred riot policemen. For a few tense moments they waited in front of the phalanx armed with shields and clubs. But security officials had apparently been told to avoid a confrontation at all cost; with uncharacteristic courtesy, they used their bullhorns to announce: "We are kindly asking you to please disperse." The spontaneous protest ended peacefully, but not before Solidarity supporters had taunted the riot squad with the cry: "See you tomorrow."

On the eve of the Pope's arrival, underground union activists had pulled off a daring propaganda ploy. At about 7:30 p.m., Radio Solidarity suddenly broke into officially controlled air waves to broadcast an old recording of John Paul praising the ideals of the banned union. Before the clandestine program could be drowned out, Polish listeners heard a message for the Pope from Zbigniew Bujak, who, as the fugitive former leader of Warsaw's Solidarity branch, is high on the government's "most wanted" list. Said Bujak: "We welcome you amid the continuing struggle for our union's rights, for freedom for those in jail, for restoration of man's dignity and human rights."

In an interview last month with the underground weekly Tygodnik Mazowsze, Bujak had promised to come out of hiding and be "somewhere along the route to greet the Pope." Despite the bravado, the estimated 50 members of the underground are in a quandary about what to do next. As the spontaneous display of support in Warsaw last week illustrated, Solidarity still commands the allegiance of a substantial part of the Polish population. But none of that translates into real political power. Indeed, after the Jaruzelski government resorted to force to quell street demonstrations last May, underground leaders urged their followers not to disrupt the Pope's visit with protests. Even Bujak has conceded that "our fight will go on for a much longer time--years, not months or weeks."

While union activists ponder their strategy, the regime has been picking off key members of the underground. Days before the papal visit, security police rounded up ten Solidarity workers in Cracow; most had been involved in running illegal presses. Some church leaders have even begun to question whether it would not be better to close the Solidarity chapter in Poland's history and move on. Says Father Piasecki: "The underground? Who are they? What is their program? How do they plan to carry it out? You cannot talk to a partner who is not visible."

But if Solidarity leaders were nowhere to be seen, then supporters were legion. More than one million people, the largest crowd that had assembled anywhere in Poland since the Pope's 1979 visit, jammed Warsaw's Tenth Anniversary soccer stadium for an open-air Mass on the second day of the Pope's visit. Some of them had arrived more than 24 hours early in order to greet the Pontiff. The crowd included delegations from Gdansk, Poznan, Radom, Lublin and other Polish cities. There were uniformed boy scouts, nurses in white tunics, peasant women in brightly colored scarves, and Silesian miners in black uniforms and tall hats topped with black feathers. Farmers from Lowicz, 50 miles southwest of Warsaw, were dressed in their native costume: straw hats with blue ribbons, elaborately embroidered red jackets and black felt pants.

As the crowd caught sight of the Pope arriving in his bulletproof car, hundreds of thousands of hands shot into the air in a V-for-victory sign. Red-and-white banners bearing the words SOLIDARITY and GDANSK sprouted from the stands and above the crowd outside the stadium amid hundreds of national flags and papal banners. A delegation from the Ursus Tractor Factory, once a hotbed of union activity, made its presence known with a sign reading URSUS WORKERS GREET THE POPE WITH SOLIDARITY. Another poster proclaimed: GOD, HONOR, HOMELAND, WE PRAY FOR THE PRISONERS. Security guards spread throughout the stadium made no attempt to pull down the offending slogans. But officers in blue berets were armed with movie cameras, which they trained on the crowd in an attempt to record the faces of those who were holding illegal banners.

Clad in a golden chasuble and wearing his gold mitre, John Paul held a crucifix in his left hand as he spread his arms wide to offer his blessing to the multitude. The Pope stood beneath a 40-ft. white crucifix with the image of Christ in reverse relief, as if the body had been scooped out of the cross, and delivered a homily in which he called for national reconciliation through "mutual dialogue and agreement." The crowd broke into applause when he declared that "I, too, have lived deeply the whole experience of these years since August 1980." But the Pope urged his compatriots to seek a moral victory in which there would be only winners and no losers. Said John Paul: "A victory through effort and the cross, a victory achieved through defeats, is part of the Christian program of life and of the life of the nation likewise." Before him stood a row of priests in white albs, bearing 200,000 hosts that, when divided into four, would permit 800,000 people to receive communion.

Before leaving Warsaw, John Paul paid unannounced visits to monuments commemorating his homeland's tragic ordeal in World War II. Accompanied only by Glemp, Franciszek Cardinal Macharski of Cracow and Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the Pope visited the grim confines of Pawiak Prison, an infamous Nazi death house that has been preserved as a monument to thousands of Poles who were tortured and executed there. In a small square in front of the prison entrance, he knelt in silent prayer before a mulberry tree bearing dozens of painted metal plaques with the names of Pawiak victims.

John Paul also visited the site of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. The Pope stooped to lay a bouquet of red carnations at the base of the tall black granite and marble monument and paused to study the heroic figures in bas relief, representing the 69,000 Jews who held out against Nazi forces for three weeks. News of the Pope's unexpected arrival spread quickly. Poles rushed to the windows of drab prefabricated apartment blocks overlooking the monument and congregated in a park laid out after the war on the rubble of the ghetto.

The Pope traveled next to the monastery of Niepokalanow, 30 miles west of Warsaw, to pay tribute to Poland's newest saint: Father Maximilian Kolbe. While a prisoner in Auschwitz in 1941, Kolbe volunteered to die in the place of another Polish inmate who had a wife and children. He was canonized by John Paul in a solemn pontifical ceremony last October in the Vatican.

Despite drizzly skies, a crowd of almost half a million Poles waited patiently in an open field near the Franciscan monastery that Kolbe had founded. Most of them were peasants who had traveled from nearby farms, sometimes in horse-drawn carts, for a glimpse of John Paul. One banner held above the crowd bore the insignia of Rural Solidarity, the independent farmers' union that was organized in May 1981 and dissolved in October 1982. But there were also more traditional symbols of Polish patriotism, including an ensign emblazoned with a golden Polish eagle wearing a royal crown and brandishing a cross. The crowd roared enthusiastically when it caught sight of the white-and-blue helicopter carrying the Pope from Warsaw. He returned that feeling, joining with them as they sang a hymn.

During a Mass in memory of Kolbe, John Paul spoke of the plight of Poland's private farmers. He praised church-related agricultural groups that had once served as the nucleus of Rural Solidarity for striving "to restore to your work in the fields its own special dignity." Then John Paul counseled the crowd "to overcome evil with good." Said he: "It is the program of the gospel, a program that is difficult but possible, a program that cannot be dispensed with."

The Pope's next stop was Czestochowa, the spiritual highlight of his trip. But the thought of the Black Madonna's "tear-filled and sad" eyes said John Paul moved him to reflect again on Poland's recent troubled history. While a crowd of a million people listened from the open fields and woods below the Jasna Gora shrine, the Pope described the creation of Solidarity in August 1980 as a "testimony which amazed the whole world, when the Polish worker stood up for himself with the gospel in his hand and a prayer on his lips." The pictures coming out of Poland in those days, he said, had "touched hearts and consciences."

Later in the day, John Paul used the emotionally charged word solidarity for the first time. He was not referring directly to the banned trade union. Instead, he thanked his compatriots for their "solidarity" in aiding those "interned, imprisoned, dismissed from work." But the meaning was clear enough to the 750,000 young people who had gathered for a special Mass. They applauded loudly and waved red and white handkerchiefs. Speaking from a floodlit altar atop the huge stone ramparts of the monastery, the Pope told his youthful listeners to remember that the Virgin Mary understood "your sense of injustice and humiliation and the lack of prospects for the future." Then he issued a gentle but firm challenge to the state. "Man," he said, "cannot remain without a way out."

If the outspoken Pontiff put the Jaruzelski government through some anxious hours during his first days in Poland, more trouble lies ahead this week. On Monday the Pope visits Poznan and Katowice, an industrial city where steelworkers and coal miners put up stiff resistance to martial law. Then John Paul moves on to Wroclaw, scene of some of the most violent clashes between Solidarity demonstrators and riot police. His trip will end with a sentimental return to his home town of Cracow.

Western governments are reluctant to link a religious pilgrimage to East-West diplomacy, but the papal visit will doubtless prove a pivotal event in shaping the alliance's attitudes toward Poland. Support for the economic sanctions that were imposed after the military crackdown has been eroding slowly but inexorably. The West German government argues that trade restrictions have not influenced Jaruzelski's policies and that, if anything, they could further diminish what little leverage the West had. In Italy, business with Poland goes on as usual. Even U.S. diplomats feel uneasy about the continuing deadlock and have quietly dropped their demand that Solidarity be restored. Said U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz earlier this month: "Everyone is watching the Pope's visit to see if it will have any sense of change that has a lasting component in it."

As Jaruzelski reminded John Paul at Belvedere Palace, the Polish government has been waiting for the right moment to end martial law, which was only suspended last December. Before the Pope's arrival, officials in Warsaw were hinting privately that July 22, Poland's National Day, could be a propitious time for such a gesture. They also held out the hope that on that day the government might declare a general amnesty and release some of the 200 people that it claims are still in detention for martial law violations. Ironically, last week's upsurge of support for the banned union may make it more difficult for Jaruzelski to ease the pressure on his countrymen.

The Soviet news agency TASS reported John Paul's pilgrimage without mentioning the Solidarity demonstrations, saying only that the visit was of a "religious character." But Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko stressed in a speech to the Supreme Soviet that his country was prepared to defend its "legitimate interests" in the region. "Poland," said Gromyko, "has been and will remain an indivisible part of the socialist community."

There have been signs in recent weeks that tolerance for Jaruzelski's peculiar mix of Communism and Polish nationalism may be wearing thin in Moscow. The Soviet weekly New Times, for example, took some uncomradely potshots at Polityka, a moderate Polish weekly that is thought to represent the views of some members of Jaruzelski's inner circle. The Moscow publication bluntly stated that Polityka, and by implication the Jaruzelski regime, had lost its bearings and seemed intent on making Poland "a land of pluralism." That message has not been lost on the hard-liners in Poland's divided and demoralized Communist Party. Jaruzelski has rebuffed past challenges to his approach, but the embarrassing display of national defiance that seemed to follow in the Pope's wake could make it more difficult for him to convince his rivals in Poland's Politburo--and Moscow--that his policy of normalization is firmly on track.

The seeds that John Paul sowed in the hearts and minds of Poles as he traveled across his native land will take months to mature. But, just as when he first returned as Pope in 1979, it was clear that something undefinable but palpable had changed. Whether that was good news or bad was another question. The first trip produced the optimism and euphoria that led to the creation of Solidarity, but it would be difficult to dare hope this time that anything but more frustration, hardship and agony lay in store for the long-suffering Polish nation.

--By John Kohan. Reported by Roland Flamini, John Moody and Thomas A. Sancton with the Pope

With reporting by Roland Flamini, John Moody, Thomas A. Sancton This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.