Amidst the high-powered guests and pomp and ceremony of this Sunday's penultimate step in John Paul's canonisation, there will also be those whose memories of the Pope far precede his elevation to the throne of St. Peter.

 

Report by Nick Hodge

 

One such guest is Jacek Broel-Plater, a 79-year-old retired engineer from Krakow. For him –  likewise dozens of other students who were mentored by the future pontiff –  Karol Wojtyla was no  ivory-towered icon, but “Uncle.”

 

Uncle combined a rare mixture of qualities. And to groups of students across the country, he was a resoundingly approachable, considerate and humorous man who brimmed with energy and always found time to lend an ear.

 

He was a professor of philosophy with a common touch, skiing most of the slopes in Poland's stretch of the Carpathians, and leading bands of students on much-loved hiking and canoeing trips.

 

“He had an immense gift with both crowds and the young,” Broel-Plater affirms.

 

I met with Broel-Plater and Irena Urbanska, a former soloist for the Polish Radio and Television Choir. Talking over coffee in Krakow's Old Town, the two former student companions reminisced about life with Uncle during the fifties, and how Poland was transformed by Wojtyla's election to the papacy in 1978.

 

Liberty in friendship

 

Jacek Broel-Plater first met Reverend Wojtyla in 1953. The 33-year-old priest had just taken on his first Cracovian parish at the Baroque church of St.Florian's.

 

It was a trying time in Poland. Freedom of speech was out of the question. Show trials, surveillance and incessant propaganda were the norm, culminating in the arrest of the Primate of Poland, and the gunning down of dozens of protesting workers in Poznan in 1956.

 

“There was undoubtedly a certain pressure on students,” Broel-Plater remembers.

 

“In certain colleges,” Urbanska adds, “the entire class was signed on to the communist Association of Polish Youth, so regardless of whether you wanted to or not, you received legitimation and were a member of the organisation.

 

“But young people will always find a way to feel unconstrained and free-spirited,” she affirms.

 

Some found freedom in sport, others in music. Jazz, outlawed by the state, became a form of clandestine protest, with secret gigs held in flats. Others took to the great outdoors.

 

“For example, I was practically unaware of what Krakow looked like during Sundays, because every Saturday afternoon I left town. And once you were in the mountains you were free.

 

You were only with who you wanted to be with, and nobody interfered.”

 

Reverend Wojtyla had not been back in Krakow long before he had gathered a following of talented young students. They came from a mixture of backgrounds, some, like Broel-Plater and Urbanska, from the recently demounted nobility, others from workers' families.

 

The young priest was a great listener - a man who inspired trust. “There was an extraordinary strength emanating from him,” Urbanska recalls.

 

“When talking to him, you really felt that you were the most important person for him,” she describes.

 

A sympathetic ear meant a lot, not least to students like Broel-Plater and Urbanska, whose families – or what remained of them - did not live in Krakow.

 

War wounds ran deep. Jacek Broel-Plater had lost three brothers fighting the Nazis in the 1944 battle for Warsaw –  later dubbed  the Warsaw Rising – and he himself had taken a bullet as a young scout weaving amongst the barricades. The bullet destroyed half his liver, and it was a miracle that the 12-year-old  survived.

 

“I would say that we met often but irregularly,” says Broel-Plater. “When a problem arose, then I would go over to his quarters on Kanonicza Street.

 

“But of course there was always concern about bugs, as undoubtedly, the priesthood was in the front line of surveillance.”

 

Hence the trips to the countryside, where students would call Wojtyla Uncle, so as to avoid recognition. It was a name that stuck. The group named itself “Uncle's Circle.”

 

Once out of town, the students would discuss philosophy, and Uncle would regularly offer advice on affairs of the heart, including matters such as learning to accept a partner's faults, as well as strengths.

 

“I never met a man who had so balanced a view of the dignity of both sexes,” remembered one  member of the circle, years later.

 

A morning mass might be staged by the riverbank, using a canoe as an altar, and paddles strapped together for form a cross.

 

“For him there was an element of rest and recreation,” says Broel-Plater, noting that Wojtyla was an avid worker, always writing letters, even when on the bus.

 

“And from our side,” he adds, his voice heavy with emotion, “time spent with him was not time wasted.”

 

The students were devoted to Wojtyla, who treated them like family.

 

Urbanska remembers regularly getting up in the dead of night and crossing the city to sing  in masses led by the young priest during Advent.

 

“I must confess, I wasn't an entirely humble girl. But he exerted such a dazzling influence that there was simply no conception of not going. I wonder all my life how I got up at 4.30  in the morning, in winter, when it was pitch black outside, so as to get to St. Catherine's in Kazimierz [a district in Krakow].

 

“And it wasn't like it is now. In those days it was a district that was very much beyond the pale, inhabited by thieves, criminals and drunkards,” she smiles.

 

“That was an example of the kind of influence he had on young people.”

 

Surge of Solidarity

 

Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope on 16 October 1978.

 

“What happened in Krakow, no one is capable of describing,” Urbanska reflects.

 

“The whole city went out onto the streets. Bells rang. Churches threw open their doors for the entire night.”

 

That very midnight, Jacek Broel-Plater, together with friends, sent a telegram to the Vatican signed by Uncle's Circle.

 

The reply came back within the week. Broel-Plater still has a copy, and taking it from a folder, his voice trembles with emotion as he reads the words written thirty years ago.

 

“My very dearest,” the reply begins.

 

“Amongst the many telegrams that were received in Rome over the last few days, there was also a telegram signed by Uncle's Circle.

 

“During our last meeting, which took place during my name day, we remembered how Uncle had reacted years ago, after being ordained as a bishop [in 1958]. What I said then, I want to repeat once more today. Uncle remains, and likewise Uncle's Circle....”

 

The contacts were not broken. Indeed, the Pope's first return to his homeland in June 1979 was to change the course of history.

 

“The first event was the mass on Blonia [an ancient common in Krakow], to which close to 2 million people came of their own free will,” remembers Urbanska, who was singing on stage with the choir of Polish Radio.

 

“It was one great surge of enthusiasm. People felt together, they felt free. There was no militia. It was a completely different world that appeared.”

 

The entire event had been coordinated by volunteers.

 

“It was then that Poles saw just how many of us there were.”

 

As Urbanska and Broel-Plater recall, it was also the moment when it became abundantly clear just how scared  the authorities were of the Polish pontiff in their midst.

 

“What was quite amusing was that there were 2 million people on Blonia,” says Urbanska, “and the television only showed some of the nuns that were standing by the stage, or the choir singing, and perhaps a few people sitting in official seats.

 

“It was a kind of manipulation. Because they understood that this man simply threatened the People's Republic of Poland. Something had begun to happen that was beyond the normal, official mode.

 

“From that moment, the first pilgrimage, Poles somehow felt together, and that they could do something independently of the authorities, the government and the Party.”

 

The Solidarity protest movement was founded the following year.

 

“10 million joined Solidarity – that was something quite extraordinary,” Urbanska affirms.

 

Both she and Broel-Plater were members.

 

Throughout the decade, although obliged to juggle matters all over the globe, the Pope worked tirelessly behind the scenes in support of the movement.

 

The gifts that he had shown back in the fifties proved to more than useful.

 

“It is amazing, as the day only has twenty-four hours, but he had time for everything. He had this incredible aptitude for organisation.

 

“We'll probably never know the full extent of what the Pope did for Solidarity,” muses Urbanska, “but his input was invaluable.”

 

As Poles turn to this Sunday's ceremony, many memories will be triggered off. But perhaps the most vivid remains the late pontiff's speech on Warsaw's Victory Square, during his first pilgrimage to Poland in 1979. Most of the nation watched the address, either there in Warsaw or on television.

 

“Do not be afraid,” the Pope declared, before quoting the Gospel.

 

“Let thy Spirit descend and renew the face of the land..... this land,” he said. (pg)