POLAND MOURNS: By his life and example, John Paul lifted up their hearts; now his death has broken them. Dan McLaughlin reports from Warsaw
From the Baltic Sea to the southern mountains, Poland mourned the death of its favourite son yesterday with an outpouring of prayers, hymns and gratitude for a Pope who was the nation's spiritual guide through a quarter of a century of tumultuous change.
After dwindling hopes for John Paul's survival were extinguished on Saturday night, millions of Poles gathered in churches and town squares to contemplate the life and loss of a man who embodied this deeply Catholic nation's resistance to communist rule.
Tearful, candlelit masses gradually dispersed in the cold early hours yesterday, but the dawn of a glorious spring day saw Poles pour from their homes once more to give thanks for the life of Karol Wojtyla, who was born near Krakow on May 18th, 1920.
After becoming Pope in 1978, he returned to communist Poland the next year to celebrate Mass with some 300,000 people on the main square of the capital Warsaw, where his electrifying sermon energised a downtrodden democracy movement.
Yesterday more than 100,000 people gathered again on that square to hear Mass, beneath an altar bedecked in yellow and white flowers and flanked by a huge picture of John Paul, who stood here 26 years ago and urged Poles to "renew the face of the earth".
"We had no strength, no great will, I had only 10 people who were willing to work with me and fight for freedom in a nation of 40 million," Lech Walesa, the leader of the ultimately victorious Solidarity movement recalled yesterday.
"The Holy Father tells us: 'Don't be afraid, change the face of the earth, be strong believers.' Then all of a sudden people thought about his words and woke up. They regained the will for action."
On a sunny Pilsudski Square yesterday, policemen and soldiers bowed their heads in prayer alongside nuns, doctors, teachers and teenagers, before sending hymns into a blue sky where red and white Polish flags carried black sashes of mourning.
People were "praying that, in each of us, in our town in Poland, in Europe and the modern world, we can see the fruits of the life and mission of John Paul II to the end," Bishop Piotr Jarecki told the crowd on what was called Victory Square in communist days.
"The birth of such a Pope among Poles was the fruit of God's love for us," he continued. "Only one thing remains - to be as loyal and true to his legacy as we can.
"From the symbolic place where John Paul II lit the flame of freedom, dignity and solidarity, Warsaw is praying for mercy for the Holy Father."
Anna Bohdziewicz (54) who distributed underground books at the time of the Pope's 1979 visit, evoked the extraordinary feeling among the huge crowds that formed the day before the Pope arrived, as they walked to this square where he would speak.
"This feeling was something absolutely new because people were together, happy, and somehow free because they came because they felt like it, putting flowers on the square where the Mass was supposed to be," she said.
"And the next year you had Solidarity, and it was the same feeling. I think it broke some kind of fear - I'm sure, because suddenly people saw that there were a lot of people who feel the same, who think the same, and this was a kind of power."
Using John Paul's entreaty like a rallying cry, Solidarity's peaceful strikes and protests forced the communist government into bargaining with them in early 1989, a concession that emboldened other opposition groups across the old Eastern Bloc.
"It's hard to image that Poland's road . . . could be as it is today without the Pope," said Bronislaw Geremek, a former foreign minister and leading Solidarity activist. "Thanks to him, we were the first communist nation which showed the world how to free itself from that system."
Walking through central Warsaw with a clutch of yellow and white tulips, students Maciej Winkowski and his girlfriend Beata admitted they were too young to grasp fully the Pope's significance as a crusader against communism.
"But our parents explained the power of having our Pope - 'one of us' - in the Vatican at that time. It was like God was really with us despite Poland's troubles," said Maciek.
Flags and ribbons in yellow and white - the Vatican's colours - fluttered with Poland's red and white banner across the country, from the Baltic port and Solidarity stronghold of Gdansk to towering Mount Giewont in the southern Tatra mountains.
There, yellow and white pennants streamed from a giant steel cross that stands on the snowcapped peak, beneath which John Paul celebrated Mass in 1997.
"I thank God for the people who took that cross to the peak of the mountain. That cross looks out on the whole of Poland, from the Tatras to the Baltic," the Pontiff said then. "That cross speaks to us saying, 'Lift up your hearts!' I pray that all of Poland will look toward that cross and hear that invitation - let us lift up our hearts!"
In the nearby town of Zakopane, Poland's top ski resort, prayers were offered for a sport-loving native of southern Poland who was reputed to have skied on every mountain in the region, as well as having been a keen hiker and handy goalkeeper.
Thousands of people travelled to the southern town of Czestochowa to pray at the Jasna Gora sanctuary, where the icon of the Virgin Mary known the Black Madonna is credited with miraculous powers. Dozens of teenagers from Warsaw had gone there late last week to pray for the Pope's recovery.
"We had to pray while there was still hope. Now we have to learn to live without him," said one of them, who told Polish television that his name was Adam.
All Poland's television channels and radio stations devoted the weekend to events at the Vatican, interviews with leading clergy and religious commentators, and archive footage and recordings of John Paul's speeches and worldwide travels.
In the town of Krosno a weekend rock concert was cancelled, while in Poznan a top-flight football match was abandoned and players prayed together on the pitch after fans chanted "Stop the game!" The entire fixture list was scrapped after the Pope's death.
"I knew him well. I'm too upset to speak," said Zbigniew Boniek, one of Poland's footballing greats.
As dusk fell yesterday, candles glimmered along walls, in alcoves and on window sills around Warsaw, and people contemplated the future without a Polish pope.
Just as some had held out hope to the last that John Paul would survive his latest health crisis, so many people looked forward with trepidation to a new papal era.
"Without John Paul, Poland is an orphan. He was our father," said Zofia Tumulska (50) at the Mass in Warsaw. "There will never be another Pope like John Paul." Outside St Anne's church, which was the capital's focal point for vigils for the Pope's health, businessman Jozef Romanzuk (40) agreed.
"It's a great loss for Poland," he said. "The Pope was a symbol of the new Poland. Now, we are beginning a new history, in which we Poles are left alone."
Fr Adam Boniecki, a friend of John Paul, said "part of the world has collapsed with his death." "We can never be the same again, just as after the death of a parent we are not the same. We have become adults," said Fr Boniecki, who is editor-in-chief of the popular Catholic magazine Tygodnik Powszechny.
"I had the unique opportunity to be able to watch him when he prayed in his private chapel. He was on earth and elsewhere at the same time," Fr Boniecki added, calling the Pope "a saint in his lifetime." Even the pugnacious Lech Walesa seemed doubtful of his nation's ability to cope with its loss.
"It is as if Poland has lost its mother, because he looked after Poland as a mother looks after her family," the former Solidarity chief and Polish president said. "When a mother passes away, the family often breaks down - may this not happen this time."
The current Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski called the government together on Saturday night, reportedly to discuss the potentially huge impact on Poland of a period of national mourning.
"A great Pope has left us, our greatest compatriot too. He was a good father to us all, believers and non-believers," said Mr Kwasniewski, an avowed agnostic and former communist, with Prime Minister Marek Belka and the rest of his cabinet looking on.
"There would never have been a free Poland without a Polish Pope," Mr Kwasniewski said. "The Pope was the apostle of reconciliation. He helped break the Iron Curtain and to enlarge the European Union. We have lost our highest moral authority."
Polish artists and writers also paid tribute to a Pope who was known for his love of literature and music.
"Not only have we lost a great Pope but also a great compatriot who knew how to rattle our consciences and who pushed Poles towards freedom," said leading film-maker Andzrej Wajda. "I hope his death will allow us to overcome our quarrels, to find a common language, so that we can live together in the future."
Many Poles were sad but resolute yesterday, and insisted that despair ill-befitted the memory of a Pope who embodied hope, strength and dignity to his last breath.
"The Pope said 'Don't be afraid,' and I'm not," said Barbara Zielinska, a civil servant. "He brought Poles closer to God, fulfilled his mission and now he has left."
An associate of John Paul, Fr Michal Czajkowski, said Poland had a responsibility to move on and meet the challenge of following the pontiff's example.
"Now we have to stand on our own feet," he said. "Thanks to the Pope, our place in Europe and the world is secure."