Pope and Chicago’s Poles
By Mary Claire Gart
contributor
He was the beloved bishop of Rome. He was the supreme pontiff of the Universal Church, the vicar of Christ. But to local Catholics of Polish descent, Pope John Paul II was “one of their own.”
“They felt a special bond as countrymen,” said Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, “and that feeling went across the board whether they were born here or in Poland. It’s been tremendously positive for the Polish community. There was a time when Polish jokes were being told, but now we could hold our heads high.”
Camille Kopielski, who heads the Polish Women’s Civic Club, said she was “always proud of her heritage, but this pope has done so much. He has changed the image of Poles.”
Resurrection Father Francis Rog of St. Hyacinth Basilica said, “Polish people felt a great affinity for the papacy—for our brother up in Rome. It was a feather in one’s hat.”
When asked about John Paul II’s papacy, many Poles first reminisced about that day in 1978 when the white smoke rose at the Vatican and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s name was announced.
Kopielski happened to be vacationing in Poland at the time. “I saw a woman crying in church and asked her what was wrong,” she said. When she learned they were tears of joy at the election of a Polish pope, she found it “hard to believe.”
Bishop Paprocki agreed, “In a sense it was hard to believe—first that it was a non-Italian, and second that it was a Pole. There was a great sense of pride.”
Christine Zambrzycki Flaherty, former director of the archdiocesan Office for European Catholics, was still living in her hometown of Lodz on that day. “It was the feast of St. Hedwig and people were celebrating the feast when they found out about the election. Everyone was so shocked. You could hear the joyful outburst from all the homes. Everyone was crying from happiness.”
“Those were tough times in Poland and the church was suppressed,” she continued. “To hear a Pole had become pope was almost unthinkable. It gave us a lot of hope.”
And Chicago Poles soon learned that this countryman of theirs was not only a church leader but a linguist, a playwright, a poet, an athlete and a former laborer.
Not that the new pope was a stranger to everyone in the archdiocese. “He had already visited the city twice,” said Father John Rolek, who heard the news when a secretary at the archdiocesan Marriage Tribunal told him, “Father, your friend was elected pope.”
As the years went by, it wasn’t just that a fellow Pole was pope that made people proud. “It was what he did with the office,” said Society of Christ Father Gerald Grupczynski, pastor of Five Holy Martyrs Parish. “He had a lot to do with bringing down Communism not only in Poland but throughout the world.”
That facet of John Paul II’s pontificate was noted by Wladyslaw Rymsza, vice president of the Chicago Chapter of the John Paul II Foundation, who was in Warsaw for the pope’s first return visit to his homeland. “It was then,” he said, “that I first came to understand that we were not alone, that we had a purpose, and that no political system had broken us—the Polish people—down. It was during those days in June of 1979 that we first challenged the system and its oppressive ideologies; it was only after this event that the revolution and its proponent, Solidarity, started to pick up speed.”
Although he played a major role in breaking down the power of Communism, Rymsza said, the late pontiff was also quick to point out the evils inherent in a capitalist system devoted to consumerism, greed and profit and spoke out passionately against what he rightly called a culture of death. “John Paul II has been the conscience of a troubled world,” he said.
The pope’s travels—another hallmark of his papacy—were also lauded by local Poles. “It showed the international mentality and universality that Poles have,” said Rog.
Wallace Ozog, president of the Polish Roman Catholic Union, said that “wherever the pope went he was treated well, even in Communist and Muslim countries, because his enthusiasm was not only for Catholics but for all people.”
“No one will outdo him as far as traveling and reaching out to other religions,” said Kopielski, who accompanied a group of teens from Our Lady of the Wayside Parish in Arlington Heights to World Youth Day in Toronto. “He inspired our youth—they were very impressed. And he just beamed when he saw children from any country. “
One of the pope’s journeys, of course, brought him to Chicago where Father Edmund Siedlecki helped plan the outdoor Mass that drew thousands to Grant Park. “I was amazed at the way he handled himself, his sense of humor. “
Siedlecki was not surprised, then, to hear from his parishioners’ relatives that “everything else stopped in Poland when the pope visited. He brought the nation together.”
Another Chicago priest with a special bond to the Holy Father is Father Andrew P. Wypych, pastor of St. Francis Borgia Parish, who studied for the priesthood in his native Poland and was ordained to the diaconate there by then Cardinal Wojtyla. “The seminary was the center of his attention,” he said. “He met individually with each seminarian twice a year and he was a good listener. You could come to him with anything and he had the mental ability to understand.”
When he offered Mass at the seminary, the priest added, “there was no problem assisting him, even if a seminarian got lost, looking for the right page. He had the patience of Job.”
The pope’s prayer life was a source of wonder to those who knew him well.
“He regularly visited the Resurrectionist retreat center in Mentorella, Italy,” said Rog. “In fact, he stopped there soon after his election. He was a very prayerful person.”
That was especially evident at Mass, said Wypych. “He knew how to pray. The world stopped for him when he approached the altar.”
If John Paul II holds a special place in the hearts of Chicago’s Poles, they will be comforted to know that they, in turn, were cherished by the pope.
“The pope’s face lit up whenever he heard someone speak in Polish,” said Bishop Paprocki, “especially someone from Chicago because he knew there is a big Polish community here.”
Gart is former assistant editor of The Catholic New World.
