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The former union leader, who is now merely a "private citizen" in the government's eyes, was among the millions of Poles riveted to their television sets as the Pope arrived in Poland. Walesa spent most of the week in his home town of Gdansk, where he had returned to his job at the Lenin shipyards two months ago after spending nearly a year in detention. When Walesa asked permission from the shipyard management to take a day off to meet the Pope, the request was denied. Instead, a group of policemen turned up at his apartment; in an apparent effort to intimidate him, they followed him everywhere—to work, to Mass, and even, Walesa quipped, "to the lavatory."
Walesa had expected to meet the Pope on Sunday in Czestochowa, where John Paul celebrated the 600th anniversary of the Black Madonna, Poland's holiest religious painting. But Walesa stood by his telephone in Gdansk all day waiting for the summons that did not come.
It was no surprise that the same Pope who had visited Argentina and Britain during the Falklands war would want to try his brand of diplomacy in Poland. After five years in the Vatican—and 17 foreign pilgrimages—John Paul's longing for his homeland has, if anything, only deepened. When reporters accompanying him on the Alitalia 727 jet from Rome last week asked him what he felt like now that he was going home, John Paul responded with a single English word: "Myself."
Ordinary Poles, too, began to act like themselves, as if reinvigorated by the Pope's presence. At curbsides or huddled together in windows or on balconies, their faces reflected sullen amazement, fearful wonder and, finally, bittersweet joy. In an extraordinary pageant of the spirit, they gathered a million strong for Mass in a Warsaw stadium. When John Paul went to Czestochowa a million more covered the grassy slopes around the Jasna Gora monastery. Some Poles held banners in red and white, indiscriminately mixing religion and politics in messages such as HOPE-SOLIDARITY and YOU ARE THE REAL FATHER OF SOLIDARITY. Others laid flowers along the papal path or held up plain wooden crosses as tokens of what their nation had suffered.
During his journey across Poland, John Paul was trying to measure the great historical and psychological divide that separates this pilgrimage from his triumphal return in June 1979. His first homecoming had been spontaneously jubilant, as Poles in the millions turned out to greet a favorite son who had left for Rome eight months before as a Cardinal and come back as the first Polish Pope in history. The experience of standing shoulder to shoulder in quiet defiance of the country's Communist rulers had helped prepare the way for Solidarity's rise.
But today, under military rule, Poland has grown sullen and weary. By returning to his homeland in its hour of need, John Paul wanted to revive the spirit of his compatriots. Said a Vatican confidant of the Pope: "Some people in Poland expect the Pope to perform a miraculous change in the situation. But the Pope has only one wish—to bring a degree of unity and a measure of hope to a divided nation in which the people see no hope."
From the start the trip was fraught with risk. Jaruzelski's motive in allowing it was to give legitimacy to his regime, which the U.S. and many West European governments