A Triumphal Return

(6 of 10)

you live 100 years), a traditional song that resembles the refrain, "For he's a jolly good fellow," then kept yelling for more songs. Replied the Pope: "I was the Metropolitan of Cracow too long not to know that the Silesians never get enough." After he arrived at Cracow, his former see, in historic Wawel Cathedral white-clad priests jostled and shoved each other to reach their former superior and kiss his ring.

Thursday morning brought the Pope back to Wadowice (pop. 15,000), where he was born and grew up. The village's central plaza was officially renamed Red Army Square, but the townspeople still call it Market Square. The Pope had a quick snack as he chatted with Monsignor Edward Zacher, the aging priest who was the Pope's first religious instructor. He also went to see the font where he was baptized.

The Pope startled his former neighbors with another new nugget of family information. Said he: "My prayer is for so many people who have died, beginning with my parents, my brother and my sister, whom I never knew because she died before I was born." Papal aides later explained that the girl, born three years before the Pope, lived only one day. His mother Emilia died years after that while giving birth to a second daughter, who was stillborn.

Only 25 miles away lay Auschwitz and the adjoining concentration camp, Birkenau. The Pope visited the cell of a beatified Franciscan priest, Martyr Maximilian Kolbe, who offered his own life to save a fellow prisoner. The prisoner, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was there, along with other survivors of the camp (including some 200 priests), eager to roll up their sleeves and show the tattooed serial numbers on their arms. Said one of the first inmates, an old man who had been injected with typhoid in a Nazi medical experiment: "Our religion helped us survive the greatest hell on earth." Said another: "One miracle is that I did not die in this camp. The second is that we have a Polish Pope."

John Paul spoke with obvious emotion, sometimes seeming short of breath, often lowering his voice for emphasis. Six hundred thousand people listened in rapt attention, surrounded by the grim watchtowers and barbed wire. "It is impossible merely to visit [Auschwitz]," said the Pope, who served in the anti-Nazi underground and hid Jewish refugees. "It is necessary to think with fear of how far hatred can go, how far man's destruction of man can go, how far cruelty can go."

By now John Paul was tiring. That Thursday evening, after he had retired in the house of the Archbishop of Cracow, the Pope was called out onto the balcony by a crowd of serenaders. When he appeared in his shirtsleeves, the crowd shouted the usual, "May you live 100 years." Asked the Pope: "Do you really want your Pope to live 100 years?" Shout ed the crowd: "Yes!" Replied the Pope with a smile: "Then let me get some sleep."

When the Pope spoke on Friday, his voice was noticeably hoarse. The occasion was a helicopter trip to Nowy Targ, home of the gorale (mountain people). The Pontiff pointed out that he was a goral himself, as was one of the prelates who accompanied him: Polish-American John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia. The Pope, when an archbishop, enjoyed visiting friends and skiing in the area and the turnout surpassed