(ZENIT News / Krakow, 04.14.2023).- During the first two weeks of March, the media highlighted complaints against Saint John Paul II regarding alleged bad handling of three cases of priests accused of sexual abuses. There were acts of vandalism against monuments remembering the Polish Pope in his country. Now that Poles are going out on the streets to defend his memory and reject the lies against the holy Pontiff, the media does not report the demonstrations in his favour.
First there was a concentrated attack by the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s weekly Newsweek, TVN television and the Onet portal. They spread rumours about coverups of John Paul II’s abuses when he was Archbishop of Krakow. Newspapers of anti-Catholic bias, such as El Pais in Spain; or La Repubblica in Italy, are now silent about the demonstrations and proofs against the media campaign directed against the Polish Pope.
Poland’s Catholic roots are bad propaganda for the secularized vision of atheist Europe, which would like to weaken the country’s Christian basis and national identity.
The Archbishop of Lodz, Monsignor Grzegorz Rys arrived at 7::00 am in front of the monument, which was stained with red paint and with the inscription “Maxima Culpa,” title of the book written by Dutch Ekke Overbeek, research on the archives of the Communist Government and of witnesses without names or surnames. The Archbishop prayed for an hour — he prayed the Rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet. “When you look at this monument, you can see it wasn’t an emotional, spontaneous action, thoughtlessness. No. It’s clearly a planned action. Someone had to make a template to clarify the inscriptions on this monument. The painting’s stains mark a ‘program’: blood on the hands, yellow mask on the face,” he said.
Monsignor Rys wondered what John Paul II would do in his place. He thought he would pray and recall the words he pronounced on May 178, 1981, after the attack on his life: “I pray for the brother who struck me, whom I forgave sincerely. United in Christ, Priest and Victim, I offer my sufferings for the Church and for the world.”
The liberal-libertine circles thought that the attack on Saint John Paul II was well prepared and Catholics would be overwhelmed, defeated by the statue of the Pope in Stalowa Wolla stained with paint. The opposite happened: People of right conscience and sensible reasoning demonstrated in Polish cities and villages on the anniversary of the Pope’s death, Palm Sunday. Because aggressors are guided by hatred, whereas serene hearts look from love. This silent majority has revealed itself as a social and national movement.
Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s Prime Minister, expressed a more profound position than the insults levelled against Saint John Paul II, beginning with a phrase of the Pope:
“Sometimes we are faced with truths for which there are no words.” Eighteen years have passed since that evening in which our dear and most beloved John Paul II left for the House of the Father. Tonight we pray in the churches, in homes and also in our thoughts for him.
He was an indisputable model for us. The most outstanding figure of our national history. He was support and hope in difficult moments. And, when he visited our Homeland, he gave courage to us Poles, he strengthened our hearts. He focused the eyes of the whole world, gave joy, was able to establish contact with both the greats of this world as well as with those rejected by others at the margins of social life. “We are all children of God,” he said, and gave example of it with his life. He left humanity a testament not to close the door to God, because that is the only way that leads to salvation, to truth and to happiness.
And today we are passing the test of the values he taught us. We passed the test of taking the truth, which must be opposed to the falsehoods, calumnies and insults.”
Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the demonstrations despite the bad weather, the cold and the rain. In Warsaw, tens of thousands of people went to the city center; in Krakow 20,000, in Szczecin 10,000; in Rzeszow and Gdansk 4,000. Their testimony sought the defense of John Paul II’s holiness and the call not to silence the Polish Pope’s merits in face of those that try to damage his image with accusations based on debatable evidence.
The attacks were orchestrated given the proximity of the anniversary of Pope Wojtyla’s death. The reaction of Polish society shows that the attacks against Saint John Paul II are a sign of bitterness given his charism and surrender to the Church. John Paul II continues being a sign of contradiction for anti-Christian modernity, closed in resentment and anti-values, whereas the life of the holy Pope shed charity and mercy.
