The mission was simple. You just had to put the computer in its case, rush to the calm streets of the German capital, and head in a taxi to Schönefeld, the former main airport of the extinct GDR whose flights still headed to Eastern Europe, to the countries that were part of the disappeared USSR that at that time were not even part of the EU yet.
Tears, flowers, and candles flooded the evening in Krakow, the city where Karol Jozef Wojtyla celebrated his first mass on All Souls' Day in 1946 at the cathedral on Wawel Hill. In that same corner, dozens of citizens wandered like lost souls or prayed kneeling on the cold pavement. "I never thought the day would come when we would have to say do widzenia (goodbye) to the Pope," said Katarzyna, an opera singer, lamenting like a Madame Butterfly. "John Paul II has been the best gift Poland has ever had. Without him, communism would not have fallen. We Poles are very clear about that."
"It's true. Without Karol Wojtyla, we would still be under the Iron Curtain," added Rafael Romanovski, at that time a very young Polish journalist, endorsing the national veneration towards the man they considered the inspiration behind the peaceful revolution that ended communism.
The next day, the front pages of international newspapers confirmed the Polish perception. "John Paul II dies, the Pope who changed the history of the 20th century," headlined, for example, this newspaper in full page. And indeed, at 84 years old, Karol Wojtyla was remembered as the Pontiff who fought against communism, whose influence decisively contributed to the collapse of the regimes in the Soviet sphere.
Twenty years later, reality is quite different. The same continent that in the spring of 2005 buried a Pope, under an atmosphere of peace after the recent fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the division of Europe, now prays for the health of another Pontiff surrounded by a pre-war climate and the threat once again coming from Moscow.
If only Karol Wojtyla could see this! From his native Poland, his dear Lech Walesa - who in the 1980s fought against the sickle and hammer from the shipyards of Gdansk with the Solidarity union - wrote a harsh letter this week to the President of the United States, a country that supported and was a great ally of the Europe of freedom and equality that has now shifted under the Trump Administration.
Walesa's letter was signed by himself along with 38 other former democracy activists who were imprisoned by the Polish communist regime supported by Moscow. In it, they denounced the treatment received by the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the White House by Trump and his followers: "We were terrified by the atmosphere in the Oval Office, and the conversation reminded us of the interrogations by the secret police and communist courts. They also talked to us about letters in their hands, about stopping our activities because thousands of innocents were suffering because of us, and they deprived us of freedom and civil rights because we did not cooperate with them and did not show them gratitude. We are surprised that Zelensky was treated similarly."
The pro-democracy fighting spirit of Gdansk at the end of the 20th century coexists these days in mid-March with the spiritual atmosphere of Krakow in the early 21st century. The precarious health of Pope Francis, in the midst of global turmoil, takes us back to the Polish Pope who collaborated in building a new world order (now crumbling) and in the collapse of communism like a house of cards. The present and future of Europe are more than ever at stake.
Shortly before his death, aware of the little time he had left, John Paul II used to recall that as a child he read an inscription engraved on a clock in Wadowice, his hometown, 50 kilometers from Krakow and 30 kilometers from Oswiecim, where the Auschwitz concentration camp stands. "Time goes by, eternity awaits," was the motto the Pope liked to remember out loud.
When Wojtyla was called to the House of the Father and to his eternity, the world held its breath awaiting a new Pope for a new era. The news came once again with the ring of the phone: "Don't take the flight back to Berlin, but to Munich." The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Bavarian Joseph Ratzinger, had just been elected Pope. A white smoke had marked the end of an era; and now, as eyes turn once again to the Sistine Chapel's chimney, the question is what turn History will take in these unsettling and turbulent times.