Return of the Native

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continue to view with suspicion. Some Vatican officials were worried that the Pope would be jeopardizing his prestige and that of the church by encouraging the hope that Poland's military government could be persuaded to loosen its grip. If John Paul's visit produced no concrete results, they argued, it could leave Poles in a deeper state of gloom than when he arrived. Ever present was the danger that the trip would release so much frustration and rage that neither the state nor the church would be able to contain it. Still, John Paul has gambled for high stakes before—and won.

Poles caught their first glimpse of the man whose portrait hangs in countless homes across the country as he stepped from the plane at Warsaw's Okecie Airport. Clutching his white skullcap against a sudden breeze, John Paul made his way down to the tarmac and, in his traditional gesture of respect, knelt to kiss the asphalt. While Polish President Henryk Jablonski looked on, the Pope explained with emotion that he had kissed the ground, "as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly mother." Said John Paul: "I consider it my duty to be with my compatriots in this sublime and difficult moment."

Looking at the small but somewhat restrained crowd that was being kept behind a rope, the Pope could see a large white banner that read, WELCOME HOLY FATHER. It was signed ACTORS in the familiar flowing red lettering that Poles have come to identify with the Solidarity logo. If that bit of subterfuge had conveyed a poignant message without violating official prohibitions on the display of the banned union's emblems, John Paul showed that he could be equally deft in making a point without resorting to inflammatory rhetoric.

As he continued to read his brief airport address in the clear, strong voice of a onetime actor, John Paul evoked Christ's words in Matthew 25:36 ("I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me") to express his personal concern for those detained under martial law. "I myself am not able to visit all the sick, the imprisoned, the suffering, but I ask them to be close to me in spirit," he said. Later, in what struck many listeners as a reference to the fact that he had been asked not to include in his itinerary the port of Gdansk, where the independent Solidarity union was founded in August 1980, the Pontiff called on Poles who could not see him "to welcome my presence in those places where my pilgrim path does not go."

Many residents of Gdansk and other cities the Pope would not visit came to Warsaw to see him. Jammed ten deep along the route of John Paul's motorcade, they raised homemade signs naming the cities from which they had come. Like the heroine of a Delacroix painting, one robust woman boldly thrust a banner reading GDANSK WELCOMES YOU toward a column of police as the procession filed past. The crowd roared its approval.

Trying to make the best of tightened security measures, Poles placed bouquets of flowers into the upright metal pipes of street barricades. In an equally incongruous display of church-state cooperation, young priests in black cassocks shared the responsibility for security along the Pope's route with young police officers carrying pistols in their holsters.

Most of the crowd massed in the cobblestone