For John Paul II, the faith and struggle of his countrymen in Nowa Huta heralded a new springtime for Christianity
by Krzysztof Mazur
When
Blessed John Paul II is declared a saint April 27, the date will be meaningful
for several reasons. First of all, it is the Second Sunday of Easter, which has
been recognized as Divine Mercy Sunday since the Jubilee Year 2000.
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Cardinal Wojtyła lays a stone from the tomb of St. Peter in the new Church at Nowa Huta in 1969. |
In his
homily for the Mass for the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, apostle of
the message of Divine Mercy and the first saint of the new millennium, Pope
John Paul II encouraged his listeners to make St. Faustina’s prayer their own:“Jezu
ufam tobie!” (“Jesus, I trust in you!”).
When Blessed John Paul II is declared a saint April 27, the date will be meaningful for several reasons. First of all, it is the Second Sunday of Easter, which has been recognized as Divine Mercy Sunday since the Jubilee Year 2000.
In his
homily for the Mass for the canonization of St. Faustina Kowalska, apostle of
the message of Divine Mercy and the first saint of the new millennium, Pope
John Paul II encouraged his listeners to make St. Faustina’s prayer their own:“Jezu
ufam tobie!” (“Jesus, I trust in you!”).
When,
after a long period of suffering, the Holy Father finally entrusted his soul to
the Lord in 2005, it was the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday. The significance of
this feast for John Paul II is no doubt part of the reason why Pope Benedict
XVI celebrated his beatification on Divine Mercy Sunday in 2011.
In
1982, on the first anniversary of the assassination attempt against him, John
Paul II famously said, “In the designs of providence there are no mere
coincidences.” The same could easily be said about the date of his
canonization, for April 27 was also a date of great importance for John Paul II
and the Church in Poland. On this date in 1960, a pivotal incident took place
in the city of Nowa Huta as Karol Wojtyła, then a young auxiliary bishop,
served in nearby Kraków. For the future pope, the events of this day and those
that followed would come to symbolize the beginning of the new evangelization.
COMMUNISM
AND THE CROSS
Nowa
Huta (literally, “The New Steel Mill”), the easternmost district of Kraków, was
originally constructed as a new city following World War II. At the heart of
the rapidly developing city stood the Lenin Steelworks, a grim maze of metal
catwalks, brick towers and massive blast furnaces — a symbol of the industrial
might of the Soviet Union.
The
decision to construct Nowa Huta adjacent to the ancient city of Kraków was a
deliberate strategy on the part of the communist authorities. For centuries,
Kraków had been the intellectual and cultural center of Poland, due largely to
the presence of the 600-year-old Jagiellonian University. The huge steel mill
was intended to transform this academic city into a prototypical city of
workers, an embodiment of communist ideology. According to communist
propaganda, the residents of Nowa Huta were expected to give up the old
Catholic worldview; one post-war newspaper stated that citizens should be
“snatched from the clutches of the clergy” and taught how to love communism.
Thus would “the new man” be forged.
Certainly,
Nowa Huta was a very comfortable place to live in those times. There was a
cinema and theater, as well as sports clubs, libraries and schools. However,
one structure was conspicuously absent from the urban plan: a church. Despite
the fact that the majority of the population consisted of Catholic peasants
from the surrounding villages, it was designed to be “the first communist city
without God.”
For
many years, residents of Nowa Huta tried to get permission to build the church
for which they longed. Following what came to be called the political “thaw” of
October 1956 the communist authorities finally gave permission to build a place
of worship in the city square. Citizens immediately placed a large wooden cross
there, and the square became the center of the city’s religious life. Regular
prayers, as well as occasional Masses, were organized near the cross. A church,
however, was not built. The citizens struggled for years to obtain construction
permits, until the authorities finally decided that a school would be built in
the city square instead. Moreover, it was ordered that the cross be removed.
On the
morning of April 27, 1960, a corps of workers guarded by armed officers arrived
early in the morning to tear down the Nowa Huta cross. A group of women saw
what was happening and equipped themselves with shopping carts, brooms, bricks
and bottles. A short time later, when a shift at the steel mill was let out,
more than a thousand men started making their way toward the cross carrying
shovels, pickaxes and other tools. In a spontaneous act of civil disobedience,
5,000 workers and citizens suddenly gathered in the square.
After
several hours, what began as a nonviolent protest devolved into street fight
against the militia and the police special forces. Lasting for days, “the
defense of the cross” led to bloody repression: a dozen people were killed and
hundreds were injured; more than 500 demonstrators were arrested; 87 received
prison sentences and many more lost their jobs. The witness of the protest,
though, was not in vain, for the cross remained standing over “the city without
God.”
BISHOP
WOJTYŁA AND THE NEW EVANGELIZATION
In “the
defense of the cross” in Nowa Huta, a young bishop named Karol Wojtyła played
an important role. Just two years earlier, Archbishop Eugeniusz Baziak of
Kraków had come under fire for recommending Wojtyła as an auxiliary bishop of
the archdiocese. The majority of Kraków priests were critical of the decision
because young Father Wojtyła was inexperienced and had no family connections
among the elite of Kraków. Archbishop Baziak defended the appointment, arguing
that he wanted a bishop “to grind, not for decoration.” Moreover, Father
Wojtyła “had been trained as a worker,” and understood the theoretical
foundations of communism. Such a man, the archbishop concluded, would be
particularly valuable to the Church in Kraków.
Ordained
Sept. 28, 1958, Bishop Wojtyła worked in this difficult ministry with great
sacrifice. From the beginning, he strongly supported efforts to build a church
in Nowa Huta. After the protests in the city square, he protected victims of
communist repression and organized open-air midnight Masses under the cross on
Christmas Eve — despite the severe Polish winter.
Pope
Paul VI was elected in June 1963 and appointed Wojtyła as the new archbishop of
Kraków several weeks after Christmas. Later, just three days following the
closing of the Second Vatican Council in December 1965, the pope presented
Archbishop Wojtyła with a stone from the tomb of St. Peter. “Take this stone
back to Poland,” he said. “May the church of Nowa Huta be built on it.”
Thanks
to the undying perseverance of the city’s Catholics, the first church in Nowa
Huta was finally built in 1977. When Cardinal Wojtyła traveled to Rome for the
conclave and was elected pope in October 1978, he took with him a piece of the
wooden cross of Nowa Huta.
During
his first apostolic journey to his homeland in June of the following year, the
communist authorities did not permit John Paul II to visit the church in Nowa
Huta. Instead, he celebrated Mass at the shrine and medieval Cistercian
monastery in Mogiła, a nearby village. Founded in the 13th century, the
monastery became famous for housing a relic of the Holy Cross.
In his
homily at the shrine June 9, 1979, the pope noted that the history of Nowa Huta
has been written “by means of the Cross,” referencing the ancient cross of
Mogiła and the contemporary cross in the city. Even amid rapidly changing times
and technological advancement, John Paul II explained, “the life of the human
spirit, which is expressed by means of the Cross, knows no decline, is always
relevant, never grows old.”
He
added, “Where the Cross is raised, there is raised the sign that that place has
now been reached by the Good News of Man’s salvation through Love. … A new
evangelization has begun, as if it were a new proclamation, even if in reality
it is the same as ever. The Cross stands high over the revolving world.”
It was
perhaps the first time that John Paul II used the expression “new
evangelization” — an idea that deeply influenced his pontificate and the
universal Church. In fact, he twice repeated the sentiment in his homily at
Mogiła, further noting, “From the Cross of Nowa Huta began the new
evangelization, the evangelization of the second millennium. This church is a
witness and confirmation of it.”
THE
WITNESS OF CHRISTIAN LIFE
For
John Paul II, it seems, the events of Nowa Huta were emblematic of the Church’s
task of reintroducing the Gospel in Western societies, especially those that
have lost a sense of God to progressive secularization. Thus, it is no
coincidence that divine providence has linked the date of John Paul II’s
canonization and the date of “the defense of the cross” in 1960.
As it
was in Poland more than five decades ago, the cross today is also, in a sense,
being removed from politics, academia, culture, family life and the media as
the Christian faith becomes increasingly marginalized. The new evangelization,
the “great springtime for Christianity,” therefore, depends on our own reaction
to the problems of the contemporary world. It depends on our willingness to
start a personal “defense of the cross” in the places where we live.
In his
encyclical Redemptoris Missio, John Paul II stated, “The witness of a
Christian life is the first and irreplaceable form of mission” (42). This
witness, he added, involves not only “taking courageous and prophetic stands”
in the face of corrupt political powers, but also exercising humility;
practicing charity toward the poor, weak and suffering; and “imitating Christ’s
own simplicity of life” (43).
This
task of the new evangelization, this call to Christian witness, is certainly
difficult and demanding. Yet, inspired by St. John Paul II and the men and
women of Nowa Huta, we too must have the courage to take up and defend the
cross in our society today.
KRZYSZTOF
MAZUR is a member of Our Lady of Mercy Council 15128 in Kraków. This article was published in Columbia Magazine.