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PAGE 2 — The Georgia Bulletin, April 27,1989
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Pope Welcomes Walesa After Solidarity Legalization
BY JOHN THAVIS
VATICAN CITY (NC) — Pope John Paul II met with
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa at the Vatican and said he
hoped Poland had embarked on a new course of social
transformation.
The 30-minute encounter April 20 was a richly symbolic
one, crowning a series of Polish political changes that have
made Walesa and his once-outlawed labor union key
players again in the life of the country.
Walesa said he had come to personally thank the Polish-
born pope for his unwavering support of Solidarity and
social reform in their common homeland.
“I cannot imagine my own life or the life of Solidarity
without the existence of this great man,” Walesa said
before the meeting.
The pope greeted the labor leader with unusual warmth.
When Walesa walked into the pope’s study and fell to his
knees, the pope drew him up, pulled him back in front of
photographers and hugged him.
“We need to show them how Mr. Walesa greets me and
how I welcome him,” the pope said.
During the private meeting, a Vatican spokesman said,
the pope praised all those who have worked for reconcilia
tion in Poland.
The pope re-emphasized a point he made the previous day
during a general audience talk, saying that he hoped the
country “will have a new opportunity” to transform “the
social, political, economic and moral life of the entire socie
ty,” the spokesman said.
The legalization of Solidarity, an independent trade
union, was announced in Poland April 17, one of a series of
reforms worked out in round-table talks involving govern
ment and opposition leaders. Other announced steps in
clude elections under a multiparty system.
The pope said the changes in the country were due to
“the efforts of those who
have overcome prejudices,
resentments and mistakes
which have divided them.”
After the meeting, a
pleased Walesa said he felt
like he had “recharged his
batteries” and was ready
to “tackle any problem.”
Walesa also met for 45
minutes with the Vatican
secretary of state, Cardinal
Agostino Casaroli. Walesa,
his wife Danuta and
several advisers later
lunched with the pope.
Walesa gave the pope a
gift of a book titled “How
Solidarity Was Born.” The
pope, in presenting Walesa
with a mosaic depicting
Mary, said he wanted it to
be “a memento for a
reborn Solidarity.”
SHARING GOOD NEWS — Lech Walesa, leader of the Polish trade
union Solidarity, meets Pope John Paul II at the Vatican April 20, three
days after the Polish government announced it was legalizing the
union. (NC photo from UPI-Reuters)
It was Walesa’s first visit
to the Vatican since 1981,
the year martial law was
declared and Solidarity
was closed down by the
government. The two
leaders have met during
the pope’s visits to Poland
in 1983 and 1987.
In a talk shortly before
the papal audience, Walesa
said the pope’s moral sup
port had been essential for
Solidarity’s hard-won success. He said that if the pope had
not lived following a shooting in 1981, Solidarity would not
have survived either.
Walesa was speaking at Rome’s Sacred Heart Universi
ty, home of Policlinico Gemelli Hospital, where the pope
was operated on after the shooting.
“Precisely here the life of Solidarity was saved, because
here the life of our great Polish pope was saved,” Walesa
said in a poignant meeting with doctors and nurses of the
hospital staff.
Immediately after he arrived in Rome April 19, Walesa
said the pope “has always been at our side” in the past.
“I want to ask the pope to give his blessing to this difficult
road of reform,” he said.
Other Polish church leaders have already expressed
strong support for the round-table results. Among those ac
companying Walesa on his trip to Italy was Bishop Tadeusz
Goclowski of Gdansk, the shipbuilding city where Solidarity
was born in 1980 and where Walesa still lives and works.
Vatican sources said the bishop’s presence in the official
delegation demonstrated the church’s direct interest in
Poland’s social reform.
Introducing Bishop Goclowski at Sacred Heart Universi
ty, Walesa described him as “one of the authors and plan
ners of the round-table talks” between government and op
position representatives.
A few days before his visit to the Vatican, Walesa met
with Polish leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski for the first
time since 1981, a sign of his new standing in the country.
When he arrived in Rome, Walesa was met at the airport
by Poland’s ambassador to Italy, who gave the labor leader
two roses — one red and one white, Poland’s national col
ors.
A Polish Vatican official said Walesa’s meeting with the
pope, coming after the recent flurry of political gains,
represented a “personal triumph” for the Solidarity leader.
The official also noted that the pope had met five days
earlier with Jozef Czyrek, a top member of Poland’s Com
munist Party hierarchy and a foreign affairs official. That
meeting, the official said, in a sense balanced that of
Walesa and showed that the Vatican is working with both
sides.
The Walesa meeting came at a promising moment in
Vatican-Polish relations.
Poland’s bishops and state representatives recently
agreed on a proposed law that would give the church and its
organizations legal standing for the first time under
Poland’s communist regime.
Vatican officials have said the move opens the way to the
establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Holy
See and Poland. Diplomatic relations have been sought for
years by the Polish government.
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