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JOHN PAUL II
Who could've guessed over 50 years ago that Lolek, a humble Wadowice high-school student, would become pope? Some are still uncertain how they should address their schoolmate who has ascended to the highest church office-"Dear Karol" or "Your Holiness."
It's not easy to track down the early history of Pope John Paul II. Some old friends won't give interviews. The circle of sources shrinks rapidly. "From the group of 40 graduates of the Boys' High School in Wadowice, only 13 have stayed behind," says economist Stanisław Jura, a pilot in the Polish Air Force in Great Britain during the war. "One lives in Canada and one in Rome, and many were killed during the war."
Jura pulls out old an photograph of laughing boys, taken after a school soccer tournament in 1937. Karol Wojtyła is on the left. "He liked to play goalie," says Jura. "He was an excellent student but not a bookworm. He had an incredible memory. In the classroom, I sat behind him and he sat behind Antek Bohdanowicz.
"He was modest and didn't stand out much from the other boys. He liked sports and tourism and enjoyed skiing and hiking." Any sweethearts? "No way!" objects Jura. "He was too involved in academics and sports to think of girls. We were 18 but we belonged to a different generation, brought up to respect the national uprisings and Marshal Józef Piłsudski. Our homeland was our greatest love."
Jura remembers when Cardinal Adam Sapieha visited their school to conduct the boys' confirmation. He was greeted by Karol Wojtyła. The young man delivered a touching and wise speech like a distinguished orator, which wasn't at all the style of his peers. The cardinal was impressed.
"His report cards were so monotonous-'excellent' from top to bottom. He owed his academic excellence not only to his talents but also to hard work," remembers classmate Antoni Bohdanowicz, today a retired ship industry worker. He remembers the Wojtyłas' modest, three-room apartment. They used to do their homework in the kitchen. Bohdanowicz learned a lot by studying with his diligent and systematic friend.
"After finishing each subject, Lolek would disappear for a moment into the next room," says Bohdanowicz. "One day he left the door ajar, and I saw him praying on a kneeling chair. He would never come to class unprepared and he never cheated."
"Was I his closest friend?" ponders Bohdanowicz. "I think I was just a good acquaintance. While in high school, Lolek's only true friend was his father, an army bookkeeper." After his wife's death, when Lolek was 9, he ran the house and did the shopping, cooking and cleaning. Every night after dinner, father and son would go for a walk.
"His incredible devotion to God was hard to find in people his age," says Bohdanowicz. "It's not only that he started each day with God in the church, that he prayed in the course of the day before and after each meal, when doing homework, that he went to Mass not only on the first Friday of the month and that he was a secretary in the Marian Sodality. His attitude toward religion was out of the ordinary. I thought he would go on to become a priest, but he seemed to change his plans in the last years of school. Theater became Lolek's undying passion."
"We staged difficult plays of a high standard," says Halina Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska, a friend from the Girls' High School in Wadowice who has gone on to become an actress in Cracow's Stary Theater. "Nearly all the main roles went to Lolek Wojtyła, the most talented of all the school actors. I will always remember his performances in Antigone, [Słowacki's] Balladyna and [Fredro's] Śluby panieńskie (Maiden Vows). I was his partner in those plays."
They would ride in a truck to Andrychowo and Kęty and felt like they were on the top of the world. Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska sometimes gazes at a picture taken 60 years ago. Everyone is glaring stiffly at the camera, wearing period hairdos and costumes, and Lolek has a glued-on mustache.
"We admired his phenomenal memory," says Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska. "My father, who was the high-school principal, took my friend out of the play for threatening a professor with a fake gun. Lolek declared calmly that he could handle both parts without rehearsal and without error. He didn't change a single word in the script.
"It all looked like he would become an actor. He was well built, handsome and sensitive and had a beautiful voice. The plays he starred in were very demanding for a teenager," recalls Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska, tossing out a list of heavy Polish classics. "Cardinal Sapieha, captivated by this beautiful voice, asked our religion teacher whether the boy planned to study theology. The man only smiled and replied, 'Highly unlikely-all he thinks of is theater.'
"Wadowice was a small town, but it had a well developed cultural scene," says Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska. "It had a courthouse, the 12th infantry unit and our beloved theater. We would read Wiadomości Literackie-a literary di-gest-and then start heated debates on literature and art. We used to visit Cracow, where Juliusz Osterwa ran a school theater. A few years later, having seen Karol perform in Słowacki's Król Duch (Ghost King), Osterwa made only one curt remark: 'A great actor is in the making.'
"In those times, Kazimiera Rychterówna, our inspiration and the chief judge of the inter-scholastic recitation contest in Wadowice, was the unquestioned star of monodramas. The 17-year-old Karol premiered in Norwid's Promethidion. I can still picture him reciting this extremely difficult, philosophical piece with his head slightly bowed, wearing a modest school uniform. He interpreted the poem in his own, very innovative way, making it sound simple, manly, wise and understandable. But Rychterówna decided to award me the main prize instead for Staff's Deszcz jesienny (Autumn Rain). I gave a very showy performance, and the pope still likes to joke about it. At that time, cinema and theater performances were pervaded with a trend for exaltation. Karol didn't give in to that; he spoke in a very stern, intellectual manner."
"We met again in Cracow's Jagiellonian University," says Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska, "where we studied together in the Polish language department. He was different from his friends, without being an oddity. It's hard to explain. He was cheerful and friendly, the first to help in a crisis. But at the same time, he lived in a separate world, lost in his thoughts. He read abstruse philosophical books that would bore us by the end of the first page. He wrote plays and poems that he would read at our student poetry nights, without sounding grandiloquent like most young poets." When other students headed to Cracow's market square to indulge in mead, Wojtyła would disappear. His friends could never convince him that he should make the most of his life while still young. He had more pressing concerns.
"He wasn't the sullen type," says Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska. "His eyes would always glisten with humor, irony or understanding when he listened to other people talk. And he knew how to listen carefully without reproaching or condemning his interlocutor. He emanated charisma. Everyone felt it."
In the first year of the pope's university studies, nobody suspected that a war would break out. At the beginning of the second year, somebody hung out the class schedule in the university building at 20 Gołębia St. Wojtyła ran his finger across the schedule and said as if to himself "No, this is not it." At that time, nobody could've guessed the real significance of those words.
When the Nazis occupied Cracow, Wojtyła started working in the Solvay factory quarry in Borek Fałęcki. The job protected him from a compulsory trip to Germany. In the coldest winters during the war, when the temperature dropped to -30źC, he would crush and shovel limestone from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. He never complained. After two years, he was moved to a soda-purifying plant. The work was much lighter and the weather not as fierce.
Juliusz Kydryński, who became a well-known journalist after the war, also worked in the Solvay factory. "I don't know how it happened that Karol became my closest friend," Kydryński writes in his memoirs. "It could've been because opposites attract. Even though he had a great sense of humor and was an attractive social figure, Karol was much more serious than us, a little inhibited-as if trying to solve problems which overwhelmed us. I took life much more lightly. I couldn't always manage to stay serious during our discussions, and I always had an urge to play the fool.
"I think that there was one thing which made us close. Karol's mother had died when he was a boy and shortly afterward, he lost his older brother. [His brother, Edmund, a doctor, died before the war of scarlet fever. Wojtyła also lost his younger sister.] He came to Cracow with his father and they lived in a modest house in Dębniki on Tyniecka Street. I lost my father, but the atmosphere in our house was created by my mother, a very wise and compassionate woman. I think that she gave Karol the type of motherly goodness and kindness that he missed at home despite his great attachment to and love for his father," writes Kydryński.
Kydryński remembers Karol as a tall, well-built boy with an oval face and a dark brown mop of hair cut at the back in a rather unprofessional manner. He never parted with his black jacket, gray trousers, worn but well-shined shoes and a shirt with the collar button always undone. He never wore a tie.
His father, who often visited the Kydryńskis' household, was regarded as a very cultured man with almost angelic patience. This small, stooped, gray-haired man always had a smile on his face and seemed older than he really was. Whenever Kydryński tried to imagine how a saint might look like, Wojtyła's father came to mind.
On Feb. 18, 1941, Karol's father died unexpectedly. "I will never forget the night when Karol kept vigil by his father's body. I think it was a major breakthrough in his life. His father's death and his reflections on it prompted him to become a priest," writes Kydryński.
Kydryński and Karol once found themselves in the eye of the war cyclone, hidden inside a small house. Bombs fell from the sky; the house trembled and seemed ready to collapse at any moment. The young men would have been reduced to pulp. Wojtyła remained absolutely calm and didn't show the slightest sign of fear. He didn't say anything. He was probably praying quietly but didn't even make the sign of the cross.
"In November 1941, we began rehearsals at the Rhapsody Theater," says Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska. "They were held in the 'catacombs,' as we called Karol's small basement apartment at 10 Tyniecka St. Mieczysław Kotlarczyk, the theater's co-founder, also lived there with his wife and two children. Needless to say, our work was strictly non-profit. Mietek and Lolek played the main roles and three women-Danusia Michałowska, Krysia Ostaszewska and myself-formed a sort of chorus."
The thought of how dangerous it was never crossed their minds. They were young; they wanted to fight and study. They gave performances in the homes of their friends, who were not afraid to open their doors to young actors reciting patriotic verse. The spectacles were held with the Kydryńskis and "Granny" Irena Szkocka, their pre-war teacher. They would arrive and leave stealthily, one by one. This took place in the most dangerous years of frequent deportations to concentration camps, when lists of Poles to be executed were posted on store windows.
"They were very small-scale productions," says Królikiewicz-Kwiatkowska, and the decorations were simple. "Sometimes we had a piano and then we would most often play Chopin. In a very special way, they were wonderful times for us. We felt we were on a grand mission."
"I met him in 1940," remembers Rev. Mieczysław Maliński of Cracow. "At that time, none of us suspected that he might go on to become a priest. He wanted to be an actor; I, a mechanical engineer. We met through Jan Tyranowski, a tailor who devoted all of his free time to creating the Living Rosary. He supervised a group of 15, each of whom would recite a segment of the rosary every day. Karol came to the meeting in his work overalls. He introduced himself and stretched out his hand. His simplicity really took me in.
"Karol helped me in my Latin studies. We were practically neighbors. He would visit me twice a week. I would walk him home, then he would walk me back again, talking. That's how our friendship started," recalls Maliński. "Tyranowski imposed on us a world of discipline, self-control and the search for order in our inner selves. It was a strict regimen and there was a notebook where everyone entered the prayers and homework he had completed and the Bible chapters he had read. It irritated me a little, but if it weren't for Tyranowski, perhaps neither Wojtyła nor I would've become a priest," adds Maliński.
Nonetheless, his friends were shocked when Karol announced in 1942 that he would take up theological studies-with the barefoot Carmelite brothers, no less. Writer Tadeusz Kudliński, the group's literary chaperone, tried to dissuade Wojtyła from giving up the theater. He cited the Parable of the Talents-all in vain. But Wojtyła did give up the rigorous monastery in favor of an underground seminary. He continued his theater work and kept his job in the quarry.
"We mustn't forget Wojtyła the revolutionary," Maliński says, brightening. "We started hiking in sports clothes. When a parish priest saw us wearing rucksacks and hiking shorts instead of cassocks, he didn't ask us in for the night but gave us a place in his barn. As a vicar, Wojtyła once conducted a series of conferences for girls. One of them suggested that they go to Zakopane to see the crocuses bloom. A priest with girls! It came as a great shock to the entire Cracow diocese. They were later joined by university students, forming coed hiking groups. They traveled across the country, sleeping in barns.
"Young people also talked him into canoeing. They went on trips down the Brda River-in their bathing suits, singing beside the bonfire at night. They called him 'Uncle.' Despite the casual atmosphere, they had a great respect for Wojtyła. Can you believe that all of them participated in the Mass he conducted every day and said the rosary? Those young people were great and he was great, too," says Maliński.
"When he became a bishop in 1958, we used to visit him in his tiny Cracow apartment on Kanoniczna Street," says Jura. "We would always meet on the second day of Christmas. We would sit on the floor just like when we were young boys in Wadowice. We talked about the old times and sang, beginning with the famous highlander song 'Góralu, czy ci nie żal' and ending with 'Lulajże Jezuniu,' a beautiful Christmas carol. Our meetings moved to Floriańska Street after Wojtyła was appointed Archbishop and Metropolitan of Cracow in 1969."
Father Maliński often ponders on John Paul II. "He's got great powers of concentration and takes advantage of every opportunity to work. As a bishop and cardinal, he attended all symposia and meetings. During lectures and debates, he would write, read or catch up on his correspondence," recalls Maliński. "I must admit that I was a little put off by that at the beginning. It turned out however, that he was more aware of what was going on than any of us. He could unexpectedly jump into the debate and accurately summarize the situation. Now, he looks older than his age and stoops-a habit he had already acquired in his youth. Still, his reasoning and memory are as clear as ever."
"This is our group with the pope at Castel Gandolfo," Jura says, pulling out a snapshot. "He would often invite us to Rome. He hasn't forgotten anyone. Sometimes I just can't believe that even though he holds such a high office, he can still concentrate on the individual. He has always been so close to the people."
Elżbieta Pawełek
Photo from the book Jan Paweł II, by Tad Szulc, published by Świat Książki
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