Chapter 6: The Church
94. I would like to switch now to topics that have to do with the Church today, beginning with Pope John Paul II. When did you first meet him? Did you know him before he took the Chair of Peter?
 The Holy Father John Paul II ordained 60 Legionary priests in Saint Peter's Basilica on January 3, 1991, when the congregation celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding. |
I had always admired the Polish people's faith. Despite persecution and history's turns of fortune, they always found inspiration and strength in the Catholic faith during the hardest times in their nation's history. I got to know His Holiness much better during his first pastoral visit to Mexico. It is common knowledge that this visit was fundamental for the direction John Paul gave his pontificate, and it filled him with enthusiasm to reach out personally to the various churches, something the Holy Father repeatedly remarked to journalist Valentina Alazraki, and as she put it in her book Juan Pablo II el viajero de Dios [John Paul II, God's traveler]: "The Pope's heart was taken with Mexico, not only because it was the first visit of his pontificate but also because our country was the discovery for John Paul II of the enormous importance for him to have contact with the faithful, and above all, the discovery of the direction that his pastoral activity was to take in the future." He marveled at the fervor and devotion that the Mexican people showed throughout those days.
I was blessed, along with other Legionaries, to be able to help organize certain aspects of his visit, and I was able to greet him several times in what was at the time the Apostolic Delegation. It was a very sensitive visit because the Holy Father was supposed to inaugurate the work of the Third Conference of Latin American Bishops in Puebla, and some proponents of liberation theology wanted to use the situation to manipulate the Church's magisterium. On the one hand the Holy Father had to affirm the ideals of Christian justice, but on the other he could not accept the Marxist analysis or its underlying doctrine behind it as the way to interpret the Church's situation. In perfect Spanish the Holy Father gave a very balanced discourse that laid down precise guidelines for the bishops who were to begin the working session, and the resulting Puebla document is now one of the most important reference points for pastoral issues on the continent.
It was in those grace-filled days for Mexico, when the country received a visit from the Successor of Saint Peter for the first time in its history, that I was in a position to appreciate, from up close the extraordinary human and spiritual stature of Karol Wojtyla, the man whom God in his providence had called to govern the Bark of Peter in the last decades of the second Christian millennium. The Pope was aware that his encounter with the Mexican people was a moment of intense spiritual experience for the country's Catholics. The country had obeyed with blind faith when the Vicar of Christ, Pope Pius XI, ordered them to end the armed hostilities between Cristeros and government forces. My uncle, General Jesús Degollado Guízar, was the one who signed the peace agreement. In 1979, though the Mexican Catholics lived under a regime that did not legally acknowledge the Church, they enjoyed relative religious freedom, at least a degree of respect, and they were able to celebrate their faith although the rights of the Church and its ministers were not completely recognized. This memory of this faith-encounter was indelible both for Mexican Catholics and John Paul II. On the one hand, John Paul II was heartened and encouraged by the warm and affectionate welcome that the Mexicans gave him. On the other, the Mexican people, "always faithful," just like the Pontiff's native Poland, was confirmed in its robust, constant faith. From that moment you could say there has been a kind of mutual attraction between the Pope and Mexico, so much so that he has visited the country five times, thus confirming the deep bonds that have developed between them both.
In the course of those days full of feverish activity at the Apostolic Delegation, and enjoying the kind welcome of Monsignor Girolamo Prigione, then Apostolic Delegate, I saw firsthand the great gift that God had given the Church in John Paul II.