Holiness, I know if I know what a miracle. However, I dare say I am witnessing a miracle: the man who six months ago was arrested as an enemy of the state is here today as president of the State to welcome. "
With these words President Václav Havel received the John Paul II in Prague on April 22, 1990. It was only five months had fallen Berlin Wall and the Polish Pope appeared as key architect of that historic undertaking.
"Without the Pope can not understand what happened in Europe in the late eighties," said Gorbachev. Likewise, other leaders such as former U.S. presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, or former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl say that the Polish Pope was instrumental at the end of communism and the reunification of Germany. With the first visit to his homeland in 1979 and support for the Solidarity trade union and its leader Lech Walesa, Karol Wojtyla breathed the air of freedom: "We are not slaves," cried their compatriots. John Paul II had the fundamental insight that Europe breathe with two lungs: one Eastern, Slavic, and a Western. Since that first trip to Poland stressed the unitary dimension of Europe, when the continent was strictly divided into two worlds. He could see that dream become reality with the European Union comprises 27 states.
mystic and missionary Pope is also a pragmatist. Balanced position is the general acknowledged his adversary Jaruelski: "Walk on the earth, but at the same time has his head in the clouds, that is in the positive sense." General Jaruzelski Wojtyla considered a man of great stature, "Without the Church without the Pope, I can not imagine that these changes may have occurred in Poland."
His most famous cry, "not afraid", delivered at the inauguration of his pontificate, was soon heard and followed in his country. Says former spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls that exhortation alone can make someone who has experienced the fear and overcome. Karol Wojtyla, the son of Nazi-occupied Poland and then by the Communists, knew how to infuse courage and country ended up being a spear in the Soviet empire, paving the way for the 1989 velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe. It was a nonviolent political revolution, an amazing historical achievement.
His victory "policy" of communism gave new impetus to John Paul II in preaching the Gospel in their country and around the world. The Pope wanted to avoid that these people freed from communism to fall into new forms of slavery such as unbridled capitalism. Advocate for the dignity of the person, John Paul II defended his continuous trips human rights in Third World dictatorships and fought the claims of neo-capitalism which spread after the fall of the Wall: "The defeat of communism, denounced Karol Wojtyla force does not justify the uncontrolled domination of capital over people and nations."
"Sons of God himself
Basically, all the work of John Paul II stemmed from his deep passion for the human being as a child of God, which showed from childhood. Its large Jewish friend, Jerzy Kluger, told me this significant episode: "I went a day at the church where Karol Wojtyla helped in the Mass as an altar boy with the news of good notes from school. But my presence as Jew did not please a woman. At the end of the Mass, Karol, who was ten years old, approached me and said I upset:
"But this lady does not know that all are children of the same God? ".
John Paul II was the first overall leader. Had the intuition of globalization when that term was in common use. Therefore, reinvented Wojtyla papacy, giving a global projection. The 104 international travel is a reflection of that strategy. Far from Vatican will find in the five continents to the dispossessed and the intellectuals, politicians and young people, Catholics and followers of other religions. Sometimes drew criticism, dissent and disputes, but John Paul II led the world without a strong discouragement discourse on values \u200b\u200bsuch as justice, solidarity, peace, truth ...
With Karol Wojtyla and transformation of the papacy, the Pope of Rome became a spokesperson for human rights, "the highest moral authority on earth," said Michal Gorbachev, overcoming geographical, political and cultural.
moral authority and credibility of John Paul II had a very precise result: mysticism and intense prayer. Who has been praying about, you can not forget his total devotion in God's inner search. Benedict XVI himself has confessed to historian Andrea Riccardi, the Polish pope's biographer: "What struck me from the start in Wojtyla was his character as a man of prayer. This convinced me much. " John Paul II was a pope charismatic pastor, rather than a government or political man, although some of their gestures have great political significance. Taught a generation it is inevitable to tackle the issue of God and that faith is alive and not a vestige of the past. An agnostic as Indro Montanelli, the great twentieth-century Italian journalist, told me in an interview:
"John Paul II invited me to lunch one day at the Vatican. In the end, accompanied me out to say goodbye. When we passed his private chapel, took my hands to pray an Our Father for his mother and mine, pointing out that he knew I was very attached to my mother and he to hers. I'm not a believer, but I like to believe, but I moved and left convinced that John Paul II was a saint who would have liked to die in mission lands, away from the Vatican. "
Historians and political leaders agree to consider that John Paul II is the world's most prominent leader of the second half of the twentieth century. For companies that might be launched in overtime than any other pontiff had imagined. The solemn "mea culpa", delivered at San Pedro in the Jubilee of 2000, for the errors and horrors committed by the Catholic Church over the centuries, or the great prayer meeting in Assisi in 1986 with the heads of the most various religions, were two historical landmarks of a Pope full gestures with great symbolic force.
John Paul II has been appreciated as a man of great human sympathies, of great courage, integrity and compassion. Failed to propose as a man of culture and time, and at the same time as a man of God, the greatest Christian witness of the twentieth century. Physical walls toppled, political and economic and built bridges between people, becoming the first pope to visit a synagogue and a mosque, the first to travel to predominantly Orthodox countries, also the first pope to enter Anglican, Lutheran and Calvinist, the First, in order, to visit countries at war. Everyone
paid tribute in his funeral. United States, the superpower against which he preached the need for multilateralism, was represented by President Bush Jr. and his predecessors, Bush Sr. and Clinton, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. The figure of John Paul II is recognized as a historic personality of the West.
simple mode to submit articles 
0 comments:
Post a Comment