Polish friends: In Pope John Paul II's home town of Wadowice he is remembered as one of their own, reports Derek Scally
The world mourned the death of a Pope yesterday, but the people of Wadowice, outside Krakow, mourned the loss of a son.
His picture looks down from above the basilica entrance. In the window of the adjacent souvenir shop are busts of a grim-faced Pope John Paul II in plaster and brass. Journalists swarm around the Pope's former home.
The last people in the town who knew him as a young priest have come together behind closed doors to remember how he began his religious life there 60 years ago.
Jozef Klauzner (72) was a 12-year-old altar boy when he met Karol Wojtyla in November 1945. The young priest had returned to Wadowice for his first Mass after his ordination.
"I went into the sacristy and saw him there, praying deeply on his knees," he said. "He was very thin and pale, dressed in a black suit. When he was finished, I helped him dress. He put on a golden robe with a lamb embroidered on the back. He was not nervous, he was never nervous. He prepared himself for the ceremony, concentrated and calm."
He remembers still the excitement in the town at the first Mass of Karol Wojtyla. The war had ended just six months earlier and the townspeople had worked overtime to reconstruct the church for the Mass.
After the young priest read the gospel, the homily was delivered by Fr Edward Zacher, the local curate.
"Father Zacher was very cheerful and said he was very glad that Karol didn't become an actor but became a priest instead," says Mr Klauzner, who remembers that Fr Wojtyla was a regular visitor to his home town. "He came back every chance he got. He came here for all the festivals so often that he once joked: 'Aren't you bored with me? What have I to offer'?"
It is clear that Mr Klauzner's memories fill him with immense personal pride. But thoughts of the Pope's death bring him back to reality. "There are no words to tell how I feel," he says, breaking down and temporarily leaving the room. He returns, drying his eyes. "This is more than the loss of a mother and a father. He connects us with God. We will never again have such an important man in Poland, in the world."
Andrzej Len stands watching the people gathered outside the church in Wadowice before disappearing inside his photography shop across the town square. The walls of his shop are filled with his own photographs, including many he took of the Pope.
Mr Len was another altar boy at his Masses back in the 1940s, when his father helped out in the church.
"He always recognised me, he knew me and always asked after my father," says Mr Len. "Even now with my wife and children, after so many times in the Vatican, the Pope always recognised me."
Mr Len kept up correspondence with the Pope over the years. As soon as he heard the news on Saturday night, he hurried to join the rest of the town in the packed church. They stayed on after Midnight Mass, keeping vigil until 3am.
His wife, Teresa, sits quietly, watching compassionately as her husband weeps. She has been in the Vatican six times, the last occasion being just before Easter.
The crippled Pope she saw at the hospital window was not the man she remembers from 1978, when she was one of just five people from the Krakow area able to travel to the Vatican for his inauguration. At his first audience the following day, they were let in a back door of St Peter's and shown to special seats. "Everyone tried to touch him and get his attention. To get a better look at him, people were standing on chairs. In the Vatican," she gasps.
"The Pope had already passed us and then I called: 'I'm from Wadowice'. He turned around and said: 'I bless and greet everyone from Wadowice'."
The couple are joined in their shop by Emil Rzycki (75), who remembered how, even as Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla defied the Communist authorities. In 1966, the archbishop was invited to attend the 100th anniversary of his former school in Wadowice. "But a few days before, when the Communists got word that he was coming, they closed the school," remembers Mr Rzycki. "Everyone was really annoyed, so they went to the church to celebrate instead."
Mr Rzycki met the Pope often. The two had friendly, intimate conversations with him and he was the one who told him that his best friend, Bobek, had died.
"He looked sad. I'm sad now too, but I understand," says Mr Rzycki, letting out a breath of resignation. "We can do nothing now, only pray."