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In his sermon in the mountains he spoke out against alcohol abuse and immorality that threaten family life. The lament on alcoholism supported a theme that the regime is also pressing, but another of the Pope's moral concerns this day, abortion, put him in direct opposition to official Polish policy. The Pope's Saturday schedule was relaxed, with a midday visit to the Cistercian shrine at Mogila, and a poignant meeting with the sick and disabled at a Cracow basilica.
" 'What will we do with this Slav Pope?' they will say," John Paul joked to fellow Poles, describing the nervousness of his Italian aides. But the question will more likely be asked by Communist Party leaders all over Eastern Europe, most crucially perhaps by the Soviets. It is in the Kremlin, more than anywhere else, that the conditions under which the East bloc churches live could be quickly changed, for better or worse. Just as the real area of agreement between the Polish party and the Polish church was a fear of domestic disorder that might activate the Red Army divisions stationed in Poland, so John Paul's statements were notably diplomatic only in his deft omission of any mention of his prime targets. When the Pope spoke with patriotic fervor of the way in which the church had helped preserve the Polish nation in the past century, he had no need of reminding Polish audiences of the well-remembered horrors of the czarist-era partition.
More pointed restraint was necessary when the Pope recalled that in 1944 the city of Warsaw rose up to wage "an unequal battle against the aggressor . . . in which it was buried under its own ruins." During that battle, he noted, the city was "abandoned by the Allied powers." He spoke of Allies in the plural, but only one was involved. Stalin halted his troops a few miles outside the city and left the Polish underground army to be massacred. But the Pope also made a poignant statement about the wartime sufferings of the Soviet people.
A great part of the tension is due to Polish nationalism and to the traditional enmity between Poles and Russians, which complicate any prediction of the future and any estimate of what John Paul's visit may achieve. What will happen now? Will the visit stir even more nationalistic fervor in Poland and elsewhere and eventually help weaken the hold of the Soviet Union? Will the Soviets pressure Gierek because he indulged the Pope in his desire to visit? Will the Warsaw government feel the need to reassert itself by cracking down on Catholicism?
Though analysts have worried about such a post-visit backlash and Moscow remained ominously silent about the Polish spectacle, TIME Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Barry Kalb reports that the Pope's visit is unlikely to produce any dramatic result. The Kremlin reluctantly recognizes that the Polish government needs Catholic support and that it could not indefinitely avoid a visit by the most celebrated Pole since Copernicus. Gierek has gradually improved relations with the church and, since that policy has strengthened his regime and his nation, he is