On the 110th birthday of President Reagan, Poland remembers his bond with St. John Paul II

Monument of Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan, designed by Szczepan Baum, By Panek - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25723645

Ronald Reagan and John Paul II. Both Christians. They both started out as actors. Both lost their fathers in the same 1941. 40 years later – in 1981 they experienced attacks on their lives. A few months after these events, they both lit candles in their windows as a sign of opposition to the policy of the communist authorities in Poland.

On the 110th birthday of President Ronald Reagan, Poland remembers his bond with John Paul II. The American president as a foreign leader in the number of monuments and commemorations is second only to John Paul II. Monuments, roundabouts, squares and streets of Ronald Reagan can be found in many larger and smaller Polish cities.

Ronald Reagan was called a crusader. He was. He was so in the sense that he derived his decisions and actions from faith in God. And from the belief that the "evil empire" also exists. This conviction probably became the basis of the alliance of the President of the United States with the Pope, which deprived the empire of his subjects, restoring them hope and a sense of dignity, said in 2018 Piotr Naimski, today a minister in the Polish government, and an independent opposition activist in the 1970s and 1980s. to communist Poland.

It was President Reagan who announced January 30, 1982 as the Day of Solidarity with Poland. During his Christmas speech a few weeks earlier, the American leader said to his countrymen that the fate of Poles – “a proud and ancient nation hangs in the balance”. On December 13, 1981, the communist authorities introduced martial law in Poland. This meant the suppression of the 10-million-strong “Solidarność” trade union, including the arrest of about 5,000 people in the first week, among others the resistance leader Lech Wałęsa.

Poles have been betrayed by their own government. Those who rule them and their totalitarian allies fear the freedom that Poles love so much. The rulers responded to the first manifestations of freedom with brute force, killings, mass arrests and the creation of internment camps" - the then American President emphasized. He then called on his countrymen to light candles in their windows as a testimony that the light of freedom cannot be extinguished".

Both leaders met many times – both in the Vatican and in the United States. In June 1982, the Pope received the American leader at the Apostolic Palace – just over a year after the failed assassination attempts on both of them. According to the apostolic delegate to the US at the time, Cardinal Laghi, Reagan told the Pope, “Look how evil forces were put in our way and how Providence intervened”.

The attack on John Paul II in the Vatican took place on May 13, 1981, on the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady in Fatima in 1917. John Paul II himself attributed his salvation to the intercession of Mary. “Fatima was crucial to the Pope and strongly intrigued Reagan. He was told about it, he knew about it for years “- said Paul Kengor, author of the book “Pope and a President” (full title:” A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century “). The political scientist also recalled that President Reagan mentioned Fatima and John Paul II in his speech to the Portuguese parliament in 1985.

The most famous photo of Reagan and John Paul II comes from their meeting in Miami. In that occasion the President recalled that the Pope experienced Nazism and communism in Poland. “As Pope, you survived a terrorist attack that almost took your life. Yet you proclaim that the main message of our time, the main message of all time, is not hate, but love” – underlined President Reagan.

John Paul II said then that he was coming to America once again not only as a pilgrim and shepherd, but also as a friend. “A friend of America and all Americans – Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and Jews, people of all religions, all women and men of good will,” he said.

Their subsequent meeting at the Vizcaya Museum, immortalized by Associated Press photographer Scott Stewart, became a symbol of the victory of the West’s silent diplomacy over the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. The photo was also transformed into a monument. The two-meter-high figures of John Paul II and Ronald Reagan stood in a park named after the American President in Gdańsk, the cradle of “Solidarnośc”.

Ten years ago, Lech Wałęsa, whose release from communist internment was repeatedly demanded by President Reagan, unveiled a statue of the American leader. The monument stands opposite the US Embassy in Warsaw. Today, as every year, flowers will be laid there and candles will be lit.