John Paul II’s defining political moment as pope, or so it seemed at the time, occurred on 2 June 1979 when he faced a million-strong crowd in Victory Square in Warsaw. “Come, Holy Spirit,” he intoned, “fill the hearts of the faithful and renew the face the earth.” And he added: “Of this earth,” indicating Poland and the world beyond. Here was Karol Wojtyła, less than a year in to his papacy, liberator of his oppressed nation and evangelist of “solidarity” – the recognition that freedom is to be found in the political and spiritual interdependence of all peoples on the planet.
Two years later there emerged the Polish trade union Solidarity, funded by John Paul’s Vatican bank. Solidarity’s principal grievance was the collapse of living standards in Poland under communism; its strategy, serial strikes. Ten years after Victory Square, the Berlin Wall fell and the fate of the Soviet Union was sealed. “The tree was rotten,” John Paul would say. “I just gave it a good shake.”
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