Solidarność and Saint John Paul II (1978-1989)

A closely intertwined historic encounter

The American historian George Weigel, the major biographer of John Paul II, places the Polish Catholic factor at the centre of his interpretation of the communist collapse: in The Final Revolution, he reads the 1979-1989 crisis as a revolution of conscience before it was a change of power^[6]. It is neither an exclusive role (the collapse of communism had strong economic, military, demographic and geopolitical causes) nor a subordinate one. It is an objective historic encounter: between the Polish pilgrimage of June 1979 and Solidarność's victory in the elections of 4 June 1989, exactly ten years elapsed, and it was in Poland — not Hungary, not Czechoslovakia, not East Germany — that the Soviet bloc began to crack peacefully^[7].

The Polish sociologist Adam Michnik, an agnostic opponent, a secular intellectual, several times a political prisoner, had already defended before 1978 the need for a strategic dialogue between the dissident left and the Catholic Church: his book The Church and the Left (1977) shows that the Polish anti-totalitarian resistance could only become popular by leaving behind the intelligentsia's old reflex of anticlericalism^[8].

A theological and political reading

This encounter admits several readings. On the Catholic side, it is first read as a victory of evangelical non-violence over State violence, in the line of Fr. Popiełuszko's "Evil is conquered only by good"^[9] and of the social doctrine set out by John Paul II in Centesimus Annus (1991). On the political-realist side, it is read as a convergence between the 1979 pilgrimage, the 1980 strike, the 1981 martial law, the 1984 martyrdom, the 1987 pilgrimage, the 1989 Round Table and the fall of the Wall. On the cautious-historiographical side, it is stressed that the 1989 victory would not have been possible without the Soviet economic collapse, perestroika, glasnost and Gorbachev's decision not to intervene militarily as in Budapest 1956 or Prague 1968^[10].

These three readings do not exclude one another. The position defended in this article is that they add up: without the Polish-Catholic factor, Solidarność would not have had its popular depth and its non-violent discipline; but without the geopolitical and economic context of an exhausted Soviet bloc, the Polish-Catholic factor would probably not have sufficed. The Polish uniqueness lies in the fact that no other country of the bloc simultaneously combined: a strong national Catholic Church, a pope from that very country, a secular intelligentsia converted to dialogue with the Church (cf. Michnik), a cardinal-primate of historic stature (Wyszyński), and a workers' movement capable of uniting intellectuals and labourers.

Why 1989 was no accident

One set of figures sums up the stakes: between 1945 and 1989, Poland was the only country of the Soviet bloc whose Sunday religious practice never durably fell below 40% of the population — while it collapsed to under 10% in Czechoslovakia, 5% in East Germany, and comparable levels elsewhere^[11]. This silent resistance of popular faith, maintained against 44 years of compulsory Marxist education, against the permanent administrative pressure of the Office for Religious Affairs (Urząd do Spraw Wyznań), and against the atheist campaigns of the official media, is the bedrock on which John Paul II came to lay, in June 1979, his famous "Be not afraid"^[12].

A Catholic nation under atheist tutelage

At the liberation of 1944-1945, Poland emerged from the Second World War as one of the most martyred countries in Europe. Out of a population of 35 million in 1939, nearly 6 million Poles were killed — half of them Jews murdered in the Shoah, the other half non-Jews victims of the double Nazi and Soviet occupation. The Catholic clergy suffered particularly: 1,932 priests, nearly 20% of the Polish secular clergy, were murdered; 2,720 priests in total (all nationalities combined) passed through Dachau alone, and more than a thousand died there^[13].

The country emerged from the war ethnically homogeneous as never before: with the extermination of the Jewish community (3.3 million dead) and the deportation of the Silesian Germans, Poland was now more than 90% Catholic. This religious homogeneity, paradoxically reinforced by tragedy, would become a political asset under communism: unlike in Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, there was no large confessional minority on which the regime could play to divide the country.

Communist power settled in Warsaw in 1944-1945 under Soviet protection. On 22 July 1944, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) proclaimed its manifesto; the name People's Republic of Poland (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was fixed by the Constitution of 22 July 1952. After the flight of the peasant Deputy Prime Minister Mikołajczyk in October 1947, and from 1948 to 1989, the Polish United Workers' Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) exercised a de facto monopoly over the country's political, economic and cultural life.

Cardinal Wyszyński, primate of the millennium

Facing this apparatus, the Polish Catholic Church was entrusted for thirty-three years (1948-1981) to an exceptional primate: Stefan Wyszyński (1901-1981), appointed Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw by Pius XII on 12 November 1948, created cardinal on 12 January 1953, and whom John Paul II would call "the primate of the millennium"^[14].

Wyszyński implemented a pastoral strategy unique in Central Europe: resist without triggering frontal confrontation, multiply pilgrimages, processions, novenas and popular acts of consecration, refuse any national schism while accepting tactical compromises (the agreement of 14 April 1950 between the State and the Polish episcopate, signed without express authorisation from the Vatican, which judged Wyszyński too conciliatory), and make the Church the repository of Polish national memory. This strategy had its cost: arrested on 25 September 1953 and interned successively in the monastery of Rywałd, then Stoczek Klasztorny, Prudnik and Komańcza, Wyszyński spent three years in ecclesiastical captivity before being freed in October 1956 in the wake of the Polish "thaw".

During his internment, he drafted the famous "Jasna Góra Vows" (Śluby Jasnogórskie) — an act of national consecration of Poland to the Virgin of Częstochowa, publicly read by a million faithful at Częstochowa on 26 August 1956, in the absence of the imprisoned primate^[15]. This consecration served as the framework for the famous "Great Novena" (Wielka Nowenna) of 1957-1966: nine years of pilgrimages, meditations and spiritual renewal across all Polish parishes, preparing the millennium of Poland's baptism celebrated on 3 May 1966 on the ramparts of Jasna Góra before a million pilgrims, in the presence of a young Archbishop of Kraków named Karol Wojtyła.

"We are here the Polish nation, faithful, Mary, to you. We wish to remain faithful to Christ and to his Church, to the cross on the peaks of our mountains, on our bell towers and on our roofs. Our freedom was given to us only so that we may better serve Christ." — Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Jasna Góra Vows, Częstochowa, 26 August 1956^[16]

The KUL, the only Catholic university in the Soviet bloc

The Catholic University of Lublin (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, KUL), founded in 1918, was the only private university and the only Catholic university in the entire Soviet bloc during the forty-four years of communist domination^[17]. The regime, which successively abolished several of its faculties (notably law in 1949, social sciences in 1952), never managed to close it or Marxify it. It was there that Karol Wojtyła taught ethics from 1954 to 1978 — his course, preserved under the title Lubliner Vorlesungen, set out the philosophical basis of his future moral encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993).

The KUL also functioned as an intellectual refuge for students expelled from State universities for political reasons, and as an international bridge: it was through the KUL that Western theological journals circulated, the writings of Maritain, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, and the documentation of the Second Vatican Council.

Karol Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków (1964-1978)

Karol Józef Wojtyła was born on 18 May 1920 in Wadowice, a small town 50 km southwest of Kraków. His mother Emilia died in 1929, his brother Edmund in 1932, his father in 1941. During the Nazi occupation, he worked as a labourer in the Zakrzówek stone quarry and then at the Solvay chemical plant, while attending a clandestine seminary organised by the Archbishop of Kraków Adam Sapieha^[18]. Ordained a priest on 1 November 1946, he then studied at the Angelicum in Rome (doctoral thesis on faith in Saint John of the Cross, supervised by Garrigou-Lagrange).

Auxiliary Bishop of Kraków in 1958, Archbishop of Kraków in 1964, cardinal in 1967: Wojtyła was, under Wyszyński, the second pillar of the Polish episcopate. He took an active part in all four sessions of Vatican II (1962-1965), delivering noted interventions on Gaudium et Spes^[19], and published in 1969 Osoba i czyn (Person and Act), his great philosophical work.

But the point that deserves emphasis, and which became known to the general public only after his election to the Holy See, is that Wojtyła personally supported, as Archbishop of Kraków, the persecuted Churches of neighbouring countries. Between 1965 and 1978, he is said to have secretly ordained priests destined for Czechoslovakia, western Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus^[20]. This pastoral experience on the front line of the struggle against communist regimes would prove decisive for the strategy he deployed as pope.

The October 1978 conclave

On 6 August 1978, Pope Paul VI died at Castel Gandolfo. The conclave of 25-26 August elected the Patriarch of Venice Albino Luciani, who took the name of John Paul I — but he died suddenly on the night of 28-29 September 1978, after only thirty-three days of pontificate. A second conclave opened on 14 October 1978, bringing together 111 cardinal electors.

The ballot set two Italians against each other in the front rank — Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, a conservative, and Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, Archbishop of Florence, a moderate — who neutralised each other. From the sixth ballot on, the German Cardinal Franz König (Vienna) and Primate Wyszyński openly carried the candidacy of Karol Wojtyła, still unknown to the world press. On 16 October 1978, at the eighth ballot, Wojtyła obtained 99 votes out of 111 voters^[21]. He accepted the election, chose in homage to his predecessor the name of John Paul II, and appeared on the balcony of Saint Peter's at 6:44 p.m.

First non-Italian pope in 455 years

At 58, Karol Wojtyła became:

• the first Polish pope in history;
• the first non-Italian pope since the Dutchman Hadrian VI (1522-1523), that is 455 years;
• the first Slavic pope;
• the youngest pope elected since Pius IX (1846).

The symbolic shock was considerable. Within hours, Kraków emerged from the Soviet shadow into world media light. Stefan Wyszyński knelt before him in the Sistine Chapel and tried to kiss his ring; John Paul II held him back, knelt in turn and embraced him, a filmed gesture that travelled round the world. The words attributed to Wyszyński during their last Polish meeting before the conclave — "If Christ chooses you, accept" — are reported by several sources^[22].

"Be not afraid!" — the inauguration Mass of 22 October 1978

On 22 October 1978, Sunday, the inaugural Mass of the pontificate was celebrated on the parvis of Saint Peter's before 250,000 faithful. The homily would remain one of the great political and spiritual texts of the 20th century:

"Be not afraid! Open wide, open all the doors to Christ! Open to his saving power the borders of States, economic and political systems, the vast domains of culture, civilisation and development. Be not afraid! Christ knows 'what is in man'. He alone knows it." — Saint John Paul II, homily for the inauguration of the pontificate, 22 October 1978^[23]

The formula "Be not afraid" (Non abbiate paura, Nie lękajcie się) was immediately understood in Warsaw, Prague, East Berlin and Moscow. According to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB sent Leonid Brezhnev a note of concern: the election of a Pole to the See of Peter would create a major geopolitical risk in the Soviet zone of influence in Central Europe^[24].

Stupor in Moscow

The stupor was shared by the entire communist elite. According to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Yuri Andropov, then KGB chairman and future General Secretary, reportedly had a note dated 13 November 1978 delivered to Brezhnev presenting the election of a Polish cardinal as a pro-American operation directed against the USSR, to be answered by all means^[25].

The political stakes and the wrested authorisation

As early as 17 October 1978, Primate Wyszyński officially requested authorisation for John Paul II to return to Poland for the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Stanislaus, set for 8 May 1979. The Polish Politburo hesitated for four months. Refusing the visit would be an international humiliation; accepting it meant letting ten million Poles gather around a pope foreign to the communist system. Edward Gierek compromised with Moscow: the visit would take place, but in June 1979 (not in May, which would have coincided with the historic celebrations), with a severely negotiated itinerary and deliberately minimised State media coverage^[26].

The compromise was concluded on 2 March 1979. The visit would run from 2 to 10 June 1979 — nine days — and cover eight stages: Warsaw, Gniezno, Częstochowa, Kraków, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Wadowice, Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and Nowy Targ. The authorities tried to limit urban gatherings as much as possible, but the outcome completely overwhelmed them.

2 June 1979 — Victory Square, Warsaw

On 2 June 1979 at around 4 p.m., John Paul II celebrated the inaugural Mass of the pilgrimage on Victory Square (Plac Zwycięstwa) in Warsaw, formerly Saxon Square. The square had borne this name since 1944: "victory" in communist propaganda meant victory over fascism by Soviet arms. The estimated crowd varied by source between 250,000 and 500,000 people on the square alone, and between one and two million faithful in the surrounding streets — the ORMO (workers' militia) and the Służba Bezpieczeństwa were totally overwhelmed^[27].

The pope's homily touched the very heart of what the State media had not been allowed to say publicly for thirty-five years: that Poland's history is a Christian history, that Warsaw is a Christian city, and that Poland cannot be understood without Christ.

"Man cannot be fully understood without Christ. Or rather: man cannot understand himself without Christ. He cannot understand who he is, nor what his true dignity is, nor what his vocation and final destiny are. That is why Christ cannot be excluded from the history of man anywhere on the globe. (...) The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act turned against man." — Saint John Paul II, homily on Victory Square, Warsaw, 2 June 1979^[28]

And further on, before a crowd in tears:

"I cry out with all of you: let your Spirit descend. Let your Spirit descend, and renew the face of the earth. Of this earth!" — Saint John Paul II, homily on Victory Square, Warsaw, 2 June 1979^[29]

The formula takes up word for word the verse of Psalm 104 (Emitte Spiritum tuum, et creabuntur; et renovabis faciem terrae). The addition of the three words "Of this earth!" (Tej ziemi!) — not found in the psalm text — turns the universal prayer into a precise supplication for Poland under communist domination. The crowd took up singing Boże, coś Polskę (God, who raised Poland), the 19th-century patriotic hymn banned from public gatherings since 1945.

Gniezno, Częstochowa, Kraków, Auschwitz

The following days unfolded in an atmosphere of spiritual unanimity that no one, not even the Polish organisers, had anticipated. At Gniezno (3 June), the historic cradle of Christian Poland, John Paul II spoke of the "Slavic roots" of Europe and invoked Saints Cyril and Methodius. At Częstochowa (4-6 June), he entrusted the Polish episcopate to the Black Madonna of Jasna Góra and took up the Marian formula that would become his pontifical motto, Totus Tuus. At Kraków (6-10 June), he celebrated Mass for the 900th anniversary of Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów, the bishop murdered by King Bolesław in 1079 — a figure of prophetic opposition to secular power that could not escape contemporary political observers.

On 7 June 1979, the pope celebrated Mass at Oświęcim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau), before the barracks of the Jewish and Catholic extermination. He knelt before the starvation cell where Saint Maximilian Kolbe had offered to die in place of the family father Franciszek Gajowniczek on 14 August 1941. His homily was sober:

"That is why I come to kneel on this Golgotha of contemporary times, on these tombs, for the most part nameless, like the great Tomb of the Unknown Soldier." — Saint John Paul II, homily at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 7 June 1979^[30]

The outcome: a people rediscovering itself

According to George Weigel, some thirteen million Poles — one Pole in three — were physically present at one of the pontifical gatherings of the nine days, including the crowds in the streets of Warsaw, Kraków and Częstochowa, and along the routes in between^[31][32]. This cumulative total remains an estimate: authors differ on the figures and no official count exists. No political movement could then have mobilised, in Central Europe, a thousandth of such a crowd.

The immediate outcome of the pilgrimage was threefold:

1. Poland saw its own strength. For nine days, millions of Poles had the practical experience of the fact that they were, despite the propaganda, mostly Catholic, mostly patriotic, and not communist. Fear receded. The sociologist Jadwiga Staniszkis, who would later advise the Mazowiecki government, analysed Solidarność as a self-limiting revolution: a movement vast enough to delegitimise the regime, yet disciplined enough to refuse civil war^[33].
2. The State saw its powerlessness. Propaganda, the official media, the Party, could not prevent a colossal crowd from gathering around a foreign pope for nine days. The fiction of the "united people-Party" was disproved live.
3. The lock of fear was broken. It was this analysis that would be taken up, thirteen months later, by the Gdańsk strikers — many of whom had physically taken part in the 1979 pilgrimage.

Anna Walentynowicz and the 14 August strike

The strike that gave birth to Solidarność started from a precise event: on 7 August 1980, Anna Walentynowicz (1929-2010), a crane operator at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk for thirty years and a recognised opposition activist, was dismissed five months before her retirement. The official reason was an alleged misappropriation of candles in the Gdańsk cemetery; the real reason was her active participation in the Free Trade Unions of the Coast (Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża) since 1978^[34].

On the morning of 14 August 1980, 12,000 workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard to demand her reinstatement. Another recently dismissed man, the electrician Lech Wałęsa (born 29 September 1943, a former workers' activist fired in 1976), climbed over the shipyard fence to join the strike. At 9:30 a.m., he spoke from shovel excavator no. 4 — an image that travelled round the world — and proclaimed himself head of the strike committee.

The demands of the Lenin Shipyard

Very quickly, the strike committee widened its demands. On 17 August 1980, after an internal debate, twenty-one demands (21 postulatów) were written in large letters on two plywood boards fixed to gate no. 2 of the shipyard. They would be listed by UNESCO in the Memory of the World register in 2003^[35]. The main ones:

1. Acceptance of trade unions free and independent of the Party.
2. Guarantee of the right to strike.
3. Freedom of expression and publication.
4. Reinstatement of the strikers of 1970 and 1976.
5. Television broadcast of the Sunday Mass.
6. Democratic election of workers' representatives.
7. Wage rises compensating for inflation.
8. Abolition of the privileges of Party officials.

The inclusion of cultural and religious demands (point 5: broadcast of the Sunday Mass; point 3: freedom of expression) alongside purely material demands is one of the distinctive marks of the movement. It reflects the theological-workers' synthesis that John Paul II would develop the following year in Laborem Exercens. The union did not only want higher wages; it wanted public truth — the end of the official lie.

The role of the clergy during the strike

The role of the clergy during the seventeen days of strike (14-31 August) was decisive and often underestimated. On the night of 16-17 August, as Wałęsa hesitated to extend the strike beyond the shipyard, Fr. Henryk Jankowski, parish priest of Saint Bridget's in Gdańsk, was among those who urged the workers not to close the strike around the Lenin Shipyard's interests alone, but to carry the demands of the other supporting companies^[36].

On 17 August 1980, Sunday, the first Mass on the striking shipyard was celebrated by Fr. Jankowski before gate no. 2, relayed to the 12,000 strikers by loudspeakers. It was the first public Mass on a workplace in Poland since 1945. On 26 August 1980, gathered at Jasna Góra for the feast of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the Polish episcopate published a declaration which, without naming Solidarność, recognised the natural right of workers to organise — a direct reference to Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII, 1891) and Mater et Magistra (John XXIII, 1961)^[37].

A famous photograph shows Wałęsa, on the morning of 31 August, signing the agreements with a huge souvenir pen bearing the portrait of John Paul II (a souvenir of the June 1979 pilgrimage). The gesture was calculated: Wałęsa meant to signify that the union was born under the moral protection of the Polish pope^[38].

The Gdańsk Agreement (31 August 1980)

On the evening of 30 August 1980, Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Jagielski accepted the twenty-one demands after fifteen days of negotiations. The next day, Sunday 31 August 1980 at 5 p.m., in the operations hall of the Lenin Shipyard, Lech Wałęsa and Mieczysław Jagielski signed the Gdańsk Agreement (Porozumienie Gdańskie) in the presence of Polish and foreign television cameras. The text explicitly guaranteed the right to trade unions independent of the Party — a first in the history of the Soviet bloc^[39].

Similar agreements were signed on 30 August at Szczecin and on 3 September at Jastrzębie-Zdrój (Silesian miners). The resulting national federation officially took the name of NSZZ "Solidarność" (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy "Solidarność") on 17 September 1980 at a meeting in Gdańsk. Wałęsa was elected chairman. The legal status was disputed by the Party, which demanded a formula recognising the "leading role of the PZPR"; after a further trial of strength, on 10 November 1980, the Polish Supreme Court registered Solidarność with a compromise formula. The union was legal.

Ten million members

Within months, Solidarność became the largest social movement in the Soviet bloc. In spring 1981, its national secretariat in Gdańsk counted 9.5 to 10 million members — one-third of Poland's adult population and 80% of the workers in large State companies. By comparison, the PZPR then counted about 3 million members^[40]. Poland became the only country in the Soviet bloc where an autonomous union rivalled the single Party in membership.

This network was doubled by a Rural Solidarność network (Solidarność Wiejska, legalised in May 1981, 3.5 million members), a students' Solidarność (NZS, 80,000 members), and a union press which at its peak reached nearly 2,000 publications, including the weekly Tygodnik Solidarność (500,000 copies).

The assassination attempt on John Paul II (13 May 1981)

On 13 May 1981 at 5:19 p.m., in Saint Peter's Square, as he made his usual drive in the popemobile before the Wednesday general audience, John Paul II was hit by four gunshots fired by the Turk Mehmet Ali Ağca (born 1958) with a 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistol. Two bullets struck the pope: one in the side, one in the elbow. The blood loss was massive; the pope was carried unconscious to the Gemelli clinic where he was operated on for 5½ hours by Professor Francesco Crucitti. His life was not out of danger until the early morning of 14 May^[41].

John Paul II publicly attributed his survival to the protection of the Virgin of Fatima: the date of 13 May coincides exactly with the anniversary of the Virgin's first apparition to the three shepherds of Fátima in 1917. The bullet is today set in the crown of the statue of the Virgin of Fátima at the Portuguese shrine. The pope publicly expressed forgiveness of his attacker as early as 17 May 1981, and personally visited him in prison at Rebibbia on 27 December 1983, in a filmed meeting that remains one of the emblematic images of the pontificate.

The Italian investigation (Rome trial 1982-1986) and several later inquiries, notably the Italian Mitrokhin Commission (2002-2006) and the research of Sterling, Andrew and Mitrokhin on the Soviet archives, designated as probable instigators the Bulgarian intelligence services (DS) acting on behalf of the Soviet GRU. The motive: neutralising the Polish pope who threatened, through his popularity, the stability of the bloc^[42]. This thesis remains disputed by some historians (notably the Italian academic Andrea Riccardi), but it is the most solidly documented.

The death of Cardinal Wyszyński (28 May 1981)

On 28 May 1981 at 4:40 a.m., two weeks after the assassination attempt, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński died in Warsaw of abdominal cancer diagnosed too late. He was 79. His funeral on 31 May 1981 brought together nearly 400,000 faithful in the streets of Warsaw; the ceremony was presided over by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Vatican Secretary of State, special envoy of the still convalescent John Paul II^[43].

The loss of the "primate of the millennium" at the very moment the pope himself hovered near death created a strategic void for Solidarność. His successor, Józef Glemp, Archbishop of Warsaw since 7 July 1981, was a prudent canonist who favoured the path of conciliation. Several historians, including Weigel, Bernstein-Politi and Paczkowski, stress that Wyszyński's absence at the hour of trial of martial law, six months later, deprived Solidarność of a moral wall that could have made military repression costlier for the regime^[44].

Laborem Exercens (14 September 1981)

On 14 September 1981, feast of the Glorious Cross, John Paul II published the encyclical Laborem Exercens ("On Human Work"), the third encyclical of his pontificate and the first social encyclical since Paul VI's Octogesima Adveniens (1971). The encyclical had been announced for 15 May 1981 — the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum — but was delayed by four months because of the pope's convalescence after the attack.

The Polish context is explicit. The encyclical defends three central theses which are so many doctrinal supports for Solidarność:

1. Labour takes precedence over capital (§ 12-13) — a formula directly borrowed from the Catholic social tradition, turned against the absolute priority of collective State ownership in Marxism.
2. Labour is the expression of the dignity of the person (§ 6) — a philosophical refutation of the Marxist conception of labour as a mere productive force.
3. The right to independent trade unions (§ 20) — the affirmation that unions are not a liberal luxury but a moral requirement of the common good.

"Historical experience teaches that organisations of this type [trade unions] are an indispensable element of social life, particularly in modern industrialised societies. This certainly does not mean that only industrial workers can found associations of this kind." — Saint John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, § 20^[45]

The Soviet press reacted immediately. Pravda of 20 September 1981 published a long critique signed Yuri Krasin against the encyclical, perceived as a religious legitimation of independent trade unionism in the Soviet bloc^[46]. In Warsaw, Fr. Józef Tischner, the philosopher close to Wojtyła, immediately published a series of articles in Tygodnik Powszechny and Znak explaining why Laborem Exercens was, in the Polish context, a full theological justification of the independent union^[47].

The martial law of 13 December 1981

On 13 December 1981 at 6 a.m., General Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923-2014), First Secretary of the PZPR since 18 October 1981 and Prime Minister since February 1981, announced on national radio the proclamation of martial law (stan wojenny) over the whole of Polish territory. A new Military Council of National Salvation (Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego, WRON) took effective power. Solidarność was suspended, its leaders arrested or interned, its offices occupied, its communications cut^[48][49].

Toll of the first night:

• 6,000 activists arrested and interned in the first days; the IPN records a total of 10,131 internees linked to Solidarność during martial law^[50].
• Curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
• Telephones and telex cut; passports invalid; borders closed.
• Lech Wałęsa interned on 13 December at Arłamów then Otwock.
• Total censorship; army in the streets.

The repression of the strike of the Wujek miners (Silesia) on 16 December 1981 by the ZOMO militia caused 9 dead and 23 wounded according to the toll of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance^[51][52]; it was the bloodiest bath of the decade. Martial law was officially suspended on 31 December 1982 and lifted on 22 July 1983, but its administrative extensions lasted until 1989.

John Paul II's reaction

John Paul II was informed of the military coup by telephone at 6 a.m. by the Apostolic Nuncio in Warsaw Luigi Poggi. His first reaction, dictated to the I.MEDIA agency that morning, was: "Polish blood must never be shed again."^[53] The pope then sent a solemn letter to General Jaruzelski on 18 December asking for martial law to be lifted and prisoners freed; the letter, published by the Vatican but ignored by Warsaw, is today regarded as one of the strongest diplomatic acts of the pontificate towards a communist regime.

Six million Poles under Jaruzelski's eyes

The second Polish pilgrimage took place from 16 to 23 June 1983, with martial law still officially in force. Jaruzelski authorised the visit in the hope of normalising his regime in the eyes of the world, but on condition that the pope meet the general at the Belweder (presidential residence) — a meeting John Paul II accepted with a precise strategy: to accept it publicly, while reaffirming at the same time the moral right of Polish workers to independent unions^[54].

More than six million Poles were physically present at the gatherings in Warsaw, Niepokalanów, Częstochowa, Poznań, Katowice, Wrocław and Kraków. At each Mass, the word "solidarity" recurred; at Częstochowa, before a million faithful, the pope urged in substance not to resign themselves and to keep solidarity alive among Poles: this word spoken on Polish soil, even in its geographical sense linked to the Gdańsk shipyard, must keep its spiritual meaning and remain the word by which one human being recognises another^[55].

Private meeting with Wałęsa

On 23 June 1983, the last day of the pilgrimage, John Paul II met Lech Wałęsa in the Chochołów valley, near Zakopane, in the Tatras. The content of the conversation, with no other witness, is known only through Wałęsa's own memoirs (A Way of Hope, 1987). According to this sole testimony, the pope reportedly told him in substance: "Hold on. Truth will prevail in the end. But do not trigger the bloodbath."^[56]

The spiritual testament left to the nation

The 1983 pilgrimage also served to root non-violent resistance theologically. John Paul II explicitly refused two symmetrical temptations: fatalistic passivity ("waiting for the Soviets to collapse") and revolutionary violence ("taking up arms against Jaruzelski"). His line was constant since 1979: prayer, truth, solidarity, refusal of the lie, active non-violence.

The young chaplain of the steelworkers

Jerzy Aleksander Popiełuszko, born on 14 September 1947 in Okopy (Podlasie, northeastern Poland), was ordained a priest by Cardinal Wyszyński on 28 May 1972. Frail in health (he suffered from a myocarditis contracted during his military service in Bartoszyce in a disciplinary unit for seminarians), he was appointed in 1980 to the parish of Saint Stanislaus Kostka in the working-class district of Żoliborz in Warsaw.

In summer 1980, as the Warsaw steelworks (Huta Warszawa site) went on strike, Fr. Popiełuszko went to the site and celebrated Mass there for the workers. From September 1980, he became the unofficial chaplain of the steelworkers linked to Solidarność, then, after martial law, chaplain of the entire non-violent workers' resistance in Warsaw^[57].

The Masses for the Homeland

From 28 February 1982, two and a half months after the military coup, Fr. Popiełuszko began celebrating "Masses for the Homeland" (Msze za Ojczyznę) every last Sunday of the month at Saint Stanislaus Kostka. Within months the gathering attracted more than 10,000 faithful, far overflowing the church; in 1983-1984, 30,000 to 50,000 people pressed around the shrine every last Sunday of the month. The homilies were relayed clandestinely on audio cassettes throughout Poland and picked up by Radio Free Europe^[58].

The doctrinal content of the homilies was constant: active non-violence, refusal of the lie, refusal of hatred, primacy of human dignity over the State, truth as a weapon. Popiełuszko abundantly quoted John Paul II, Cardinal Wyszyński, the Catechism and Saint Maximilian Kolbe, whose statue was carried in procession during the Masses for the Homeland.

"To remain inwardly free, man must live in the truth. To live in the truth means to bear witness to the truth outwardly, in whatever situation. Truth is always truth. A lie never becomes true because it is repeated a thousand times." — Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, Mass for the Homeland, Warsaw, 28 February 1982^[59]

The martyrdom of 19 October 1984

On 19 October 1984, Fr. Popiełuszko preached a final homily at Bydgoszcz, at the invitation of the parish of the Holy Polish Martyr Brothers. The theme was taken from Saint Paul's epistle to the Romans 12:21: "Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good." The return to Warsaw took place by car with his driver Waldemar Chrostowski. At 10:25 p.m., on the road between Bydgoszcz and Toruń, their Volkswagen Golf was stopped at a fake road check by three officers of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa:

• Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski (head of the commando);
• Lieutenant Leszek Pękala;
• Lieutenant Waldemar Chmielewski.

The driver Chrostowski managed to jump from the moving vehicle, at 60 km/h, and survived. Fr. Popiełuszko, bound and gagged, was driven in the boot to an isolated spot and beaten to death with truncheons. The body, tied to bags of stones, was thrown into the Vistula near the Włocławek dam around midnight. The body was recovered on 30 October 1984 during an investigative dive^[60].

The trial of the murderers, held at Toruń from 27 December 1984 to 7 February 1985, was one of the very rare public trials of Służba Bezpieczeństwa officers under the communist regime. The four defendants (the three perpetrators plus their superior Colonel Adam Pietruszka) were sentenced to terms ranging from 14 to 25 years in prison; the effective instigator within the Interior Ministry (General Czesław Kiszczak?) was never formally established^[61].

The funeral of 3 November 1984

The funeral was held on 3 November 1984 at Saint Stanislaus Kostka church. According to the cross-checked estimates of the clandestine Solidarność, foreign observers and the Polish police itself (files declassified in 1993), between 600,000 and a million people were present — the largest funeral in Poland since that of Marshal Piłsudski in 1935^[62].

"Evil is conquered only by good. (...) To defend the truth, one must not attack. One must be ready to suffer and to die." — Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, homily at Bydgoszcz, 19 October 1984, final preaching^[63]

Fr. Popiełuszko was buried before the very church of Saint Stanislaus Kostka, in a mausoleum that would become one of the greatest pilgrimage sites of contemporary Poland: the shrine reports more than 20 million cumulative visitors since 1984, with no published count date^[64]. Fr. Popiełuszko was beatified on 6 June 2010 in Warsaw by Cardinal Angelo Amato, legate of Benedict XVI, before 150,000 faithful, on Piłsudski Square (formerly Victory Square — the same square where John Paul II had prayed in 1979).

Gdańsk, June 1987

The third Polish pilgrimage of John Paul II ran from 8 to 14 June 1987. Martial law had been officially lifted since 1983, but the Służba Bezpieczeństwa maintained continuous pressure on Solidarność circles, now underground. The pope asked for, and obtained with difficulty from Jaruzelski, authorisation to celebrate a Mass at Gdańsk — the symbolic city — before the Lenin Shipyard.

On 12 June 1987, before 750,000 faithful gathered on the Zaspa meadow in Gdańsk, the pope delivered a homily made famous by its theological formula:

"Bear one another's burdens": this concise phrase of the Apostle is the programme of human and social solidarity. Solidarity means: one and the other, and if there is a burden, that burden is borne together, in community. (...) There can be no struggle more effective than solidarity. There can be no better programme of struggle than that of solidarity." — Saint John Paul II, homily at Gdańsk-Zaspa, 12 June 1987^[65]

At Gdańsk, before the workers of the shipyard where the union was born, John Paul II publicly pronounced, in the presence of the PZPR authorities, the word "solidarity" in a way that cannot be detached from the Solidarność union — as he had already done at Częstochowa in 1983. The pope dwelt at length on the biblical root of the word (cf. Galatians 6:2: "Bear one another's burdens") and on its Catholic social translation (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931; Mater et Magistra, 1961; Laborem Exercens, 1981).

A visit to Wałęsa at Gdańsk (Zaspa)

On 11 June 1987, John Paul II visited Lech Wałęsa and his family in their flat in Gdańsk (Zaspa), Pilotów Street. Wałęsa was then officially unemployed (dismissed from the shipyard since 1980), under permanent SB surveillance. The pontifical gesture was of major political significance: it publicly restored Wałęsa to international respectability and signalled to the regime that the pope regarded the former Solidarność chairman as the legitimate representative of Polish society. No official image of the visit was authorised by the regime; a few photos taken by Wałęsa's relatives circulate today in the family archive^[66].

The union rises again

The 1987 pilgrimage marked the public restart of Solidarność. In autumn 1987, a new wave of strikes broke out in the Gdańsk shipyard, Stalowa Wola and Nowa Huta (Kraków). On 31 August 1988, on the eighth anniversary of the Gdańsk Agreement, Wałęsa was invited by Interior Minister Czesław Kiszczak to preliminary negotiations — the first official sign of the end of the freeze.

The Round Table (6 February – 5 April 1989)

From 6 February to 5 April 1989, in a room known as the Round Table (Okrągły Stół) in the Namiestnikowski Palace in Warsaw, unprecedented negotiations brought together the communist government (Kiszczak, Reykowski) and the opposition (Wałęsa, Mazowiecki, Geremek, Michnik, Kuroń) under the discreet eye of the Polish episcopate (Bishop Jerzy Dąbrowski, Bishop Bronisław Dembowski, secretary for public affairs of the episcopate)^[67]. The ecclesial presence, willed by Cardinal Józef Glemp and supported by John Paul II, guaranteed the moderation of the negotiations.

The Agreements of 5 April 1989 provided for:

• Legal re-registration of Solidarność (effected on 17 April 1989).
• Semi-free elections to the Sejm on 4 June: 65% of seats reserved for the PZPR and its allies, 35% open to free competition.
• Free elections to the Senate (newly created chamber): 100% of the 100 seats in free competition.
• Creation of the office of President of the Republic.

The elections of 4 June 1989

On 4 June 1989, by a macabre historic coincidence, the day on which the tanks of the Chinese People's Liberation Army crushed the demonstrators of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Poles voted in the first semi-free elections of the Soviet bloc since 1945. The result was a landslide:

The PZPR lost every seat on its single national list for the Sejm; its humiliation was total^[68].

Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Catholic Prime Minister (24 August 1989)

On 24 August 1989, the Sejm elected Tadeusz Mazowiecki (1927-2013) as Prime Minister by 378 votes out of 423. He was the first non-communist head of government of a Soviet-bloc country since 1948. Mazowiecki, a secular Catholic intellectual, former editor-in-chief of the monthly Więź, adviser to Wałęsa at Gdańsk in August 1980, was also close to John Paul II: he had met him in Kraków as early as the 1960s.

The image of Mazowiecki collapsing exhausted over the rostrum during his investiture speech on 12 September 1989, just after listing the country's catastrophic public debt, remains one of the emblematic photographs of the transition.

The fall of the Wall (9 November 1989)

On the evening of 9 November 1989, in East Berlin, the approximate press conference of the East German Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski triggered, through a misunderstanding broadcast live, the fall of the Berlin Wall. What would have been unimaginable five years earlier — under Andropov, under Chernenko — became possible because Gorbachev had renounced intervening, because Poland had already broken the taboo, and because Solidarność had demonstrated that a peaceful transition was possible.

The collapse spread within weeks: Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia (17 November – 29 December 1989), execution of Ceaușescu in Romania (25 December 1989), effective German reunification on 3 October 1990, independence of the Baltic States (1990-1991), dissolution of the USSR on 25 December 1991.

Centesimus Annus (1 May 1991) — the magisterial assessment

On 1 May 1991, feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, John Paul II published the encyclical Centesimus Annus ("the hundredth year"), commemorating the centenary of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891). The document is at once a theological assessment of the collapse of communism and a systematic exposition of Catholic social doctrine.

The central paragraph, § 23, is the moment when John Paul II explicitly names the actors of the victory — without citing Solidarność by name, but clearly designating the Polish strategy:

"It seems that the fall of such a 'bloc' or empire was achieved through a peaceful struggle which used only the weapons of truth and justice. (...) Such was the struggle that led to the changes of 1989. This struggle required clarity of vision, moderation, suffering and sacrifice. In a certain sense, it was born of prayer, and it would certainly not have been possible to succeed in it without unbounded trust in God, the Lord of history, who carries in his heart the destinies of men." — Saint John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, § 23 (1 May 1991)^[69]

Three essential doctrinal elements:

1. "The weapons of truth and justice" — John Paul II refuses both fatalism ("nothing can be done") and militarism ("weapons would be needed"). His thesis: public truth, the refusal of the lie, social organisation around human dignity, are real political weapons.
2. "It was born of prayer" — the encyclical inscribes the 1989 victory in a supernatural reading of history. Without denying economic and geopolitical factors, John Paul II maintains that prayer, and notably Polish Marian prayer (Częstochowa, Jasna Góra, the 1956 millennium Vows, Wyszyński's novena, Fatima), objectively contributed to the event.
3. "Unbounded trust in God, Lord of history" — the formula takes up an expression dear to Wyszyński which haunts all Polish pastoral work.

The encyclical then condemns (§ 42) the return to an unbridled capitalism as an equally unacceptable alternative, anticipating the debate of the following thirty years on globalisation, ultraliberalism and the social doctrine of the Church.

The decisive role of prayer and liturgy

To understand why John Paul II insists so strongly on prayer, one must take the measure of the liturgical network maintained under Polish communism: nine great Jasna Góra processions a year, more than 20 million communions distributed each year, the rosary recited publicly in parishes, walking pilgrimages to Częstochowa bringing together 200,000 to 500,000 walkers a year (the 250-km Warsaw-Częstochowa pilgrimage), the Masses for the Homeland of Fr. Popiełuszko. This permanent liturgical mesh constituted, in Wyszyński's phrase, "the invisible nervous tissue of the nation"^[70].

Gorbachev's verdict

On 1 March 1992, in an interview given to Domenico del Rio for the Italian daily La Stampa published on 3 March 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev publicly acknowledged:

"What happened in Eastern Europe in recent years would not have been possible without the presence of this pope, without the immense political role he was able to play on the world stage." — Mikhail Gorbachev, interview given to La Stampa on 1 March 1992 (published 3 March)^[71]

The words, coming from the former Soviet number one, to a secular Italian newspaper, in a non-religious context, weigh historiographically more than all Catholic praise. Gorbachev repeated this assessment several times, notably in his book On My Country and the World (Columbia University Press, 2000), and at John Paul II's funeral ceremony in April 2005, where he was one of the only non-Western leaders to travel personally to Rome.

The "pope as sole actor" thesis

An Anglophone apologetic tradition, formed around George Weigel, Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, and popularised by their major books (Witness to Hope, 1999; His Holiness, 1996; The End and the Beginning, 2010), tends to present John Paul II as the central or even decisive actor of the fall of communism. Bernstein-Politi go so far as to reconstruct in detail a secret "holy alliance" between the Vatican and the Reagan administration, whose existence remains partly debated — notably the famous 7 June 1982 meeting between Reagan and the pope at the Vatican library^[72].

This thesis, taken in its strong form, is disputed. Andrea Riccardi, Andrzej Paczkowski and John Lewis Gaddis stress that:

• The economic collapse of the Soviet bloc (fall of oil prices 1986, structural industrial bankruptcy, technological race lost with the West) would probably have led to a major crisis even without John Paul II.
• Gorbachev's decision not to intervene in 1989 (unlike Brezhnev in 1968 or Khrushchev in 1956) was a geopolitical choice of its own, linked to the Sinatra doctrine, the Soviet budgetary constraint and the refusal to bear the cost of a military intervention.
• The role of Reagan, of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and of the Czech dissidents (Havel, Patočka) must be recognised in full.

Answers to objections

The main objections to the strong thesis are as follows, with their answers:

Three competing readings

Three readings coexist today in serious historiography:

1. Strong Catholic reading (Weigel): John Paul II was the decisive factor, without whom nothing would have happened. A comfortable but simplifying reading.
2. Marxist-revisionist reading (late versions of Trybuna Ludu): communism collapsed for economic reasons; the Catholic factor was overestimated for Western ideological reasons. A reading that does not survive bloc-by-bloc comparative analysis.
3. Convergence historiographical reading (Paczkowski, Gaddis, Garton Ash): several distinct causal factors (Soviet economy, arms race, Solidarność, Polish pope, East European dissidence, Gorbachev) converged in a narrow time window (1979-1989). None would have sufficed alone; all were necessary. The most solid reading.

The position defended by this article is the third, stressing that within the convergence of factors, the Polish-Catholic factor was neither the only one nor accessory, but structurally central: it provided the movement with its non-violent discipline, its popular depth, its moral legitimacy and its organisational network.

Fr. Popiełuszko, blessed martyr (6 June 2010)

The beatification cause of Fr. Popiełuszko was opened as early as 3 February 1997 in Warsaw. On 19 December 2009, Pope Benedict XVI recognised martyrdom in hatred of the faith (in odium fidei). The beatification was celebrated on 6 June 2010, on Piłsudski Square, by Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, before 150,000 faithful. His feast is set on 19 October, the day of his martyrdom. The canonization cause is currently under examination^[73].

Wyszyński, blessed primate (12 September 2021)

The cause of Cardinal Wyszyński opened in 1989; his heroic virtues were recognised by Pope Francis on 18 December 2017; the attributed miracle (healing of a nun in 1988) was approved by Francis on 3 October 2019. The beatification was celebrated on 12 September 2021 in Warsaw, jointly with Blessed Elżbieta Czacka (1876-1961), foundress of the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross^[74]. It was the first beatification of a Polish cardinal-primate.

John Paul II, saint (27 April 2014)

The Holy See's cause for Karol Wojtyła was officially opened on 13 May 2005 by Benedict XVI, five weeks after his death on 2 April 2005. The beatification took place on 1 May 2011; the canonization was celebrated by Francis and Benedict XVI together on 27 April 2014, feast of Divine Mercy, in Rome, before 800,000 faithful^[75]. His feast is set on 22 October, the day of the inauguration of his pontificate in 1978.

• Read The Church Confronted with Totalitarianisms (1917-1989) for the full picture of Catholic resistance to the three great ideologies of the 20th century, of which the 1989 fall is the epilogue.
• Read The Clandestine Catholic Church under Communism for the hidden dimension of the ecclesial struggle in neighbouring countries (USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania).
• Read The New Evangelization for the pastoral programme launched by John Paul II in response to the post-1989 spiritual void.
• Retain the heart of the matter: a nine-day pilgrimage in 1979; a non-violent workers' union of 10 million members; a martial law, an assassination attempt and a martyr priest; a peaceful collapse of the bloc in 1989; and the theological reading given of it by Centesimus Annus in 1991.