Polish life ‘has undergone a transformation’

Gulf Time ^ | Sunday, 10 April, 2005,

[lizol]

Polish life ‘has undergone a transformation’Published: Sunday, 10 April, 2005, 11:56 AM Doha Time

WARSAW: After a week spent in the glare of global spotlights following the death of John Paul II, the Pope’s Polish compatriots stepped out of the limelight yesterday and back into normalcy, but not without the feeling that life has changed indelibly.

Since the death of John Paul II - born Karol Wojtyla in the southern Polish town of Wadowice in 1920 - life in Poland has been moving at slow motion, punctuated by tributes at the hour of the Pope’s death, 9.37pm, by the closure of schools, businesses and shops, by dark theatres.

Around the world in the week since the death of the Pope on April 2, media from Kerala in India to Baku, Azerbaijan and Doha in Qatar have focussed on Poland and its people - in mourning, remembering, celebrating the life of John Paul II.

The country shut down completely on Friday as people watched live broadcasts of the funeral in Rome, beamed into their living rooms or onto giant screens in town and city centres.

In a statement made after his return from the ceremonies, President Aleksander Kwasniewski said: “The world will remember forever these pictures from Saint Peter’s Square as it will probably never see it again, in red and white,” the national colours of Poland.

But amid loss, life has to go on, and yesterday it began to.

Poles returned to work, theatres re-opened, radio stations switched from classical music back to pop and rock, newspapers were published after a day of still presses for the funeral.

But many in the land of the Pope’s birth had the distinct feeling that things had changed, some intangibly, others more concretely.

“In recent days Poland has undergone an exceptional renewal, a transformation which surprised us all,” said Kwasniewski on his return from Rome.

“It turns out that Poles have huge, untapped deposits of sensitivity and trust,” the president, an avowed agnostic, said.

“He (the Pope) planted them in us and he turned us into better people, for ourselves and the world.”

Even before the end of the six days of national mourning decreed by Kwasniewski after the pope’s death, people had noticed the change.

“People are more friendly. Warsaw has a new vitality,” said Katarzyna, a student, on Thursday at one of countless candlelit vigils for the Pope.

Sociologist Janusz Czapinski was worried the positive change would not last.

“Up until now we had a moral bastion in Rome, a man who could always tell us how to behave,” Czapinski was quoted by Poland’s PAP news agency as saying.

“Today, that bastion no longer exists and our future seems uncertain in this world of conflict and danger,” he said.

Poles have “a huge potential for social unity, but the collective cordiality we saw during the Pope’s illness and after his death might not last, just as it fizzled out after Solidarity and the fall of communism,” he said.

While most of the international media maintained a respectful tone yesterday for Poland and its loss, official Russian newspaper Rossiiskaia Gazeta smugly wrote: “John Paul II’s Polish entourage is packing its bags” and leaving the Vatican.

“Polish translators were the first to go, as after the death of John Paul II, the Polish language is of no use at the Vatican,” wrote the paper, betraying the long-running animosity between not only the Russian Orthodox church and John Paul II, but also the authorities in Moscow and the late pope.

In his lifetime, John Paul II was widely credited with helping to bring down the Iron Curtain and aiding Poland to cast off communism through his backing for the Solidarity trade union movement.

The most tangible change in Polish life since the death of the pope was the elevation of 9.37pm to the status of holy hour.

The day after the pope died, Poles began marking the precise time of his death, raising candles to the sky, sounding car horns, reciting the rosary over a train loudspeaker as they made their way to Rome for the pope’s funeral.

The “holy hour” has been marked every day since his death and has reached mythical proportions.

At 9.37pm Friday, a siren that had wailed on the evening of Saturday, April 2, after the pope’s death, blared again as lights around Poland were switched off in another tribute.

A young boy playing in a Warsaw park yesterday turned to his mother when he heard an ambulance siren in the capital, and said: “They’re getting ready for 9.37 tonight.”

[oldcomputerguy]

I imagine the size of the world's response to the death of the Pope has altered their own feelings of who they are and what they can accomplish. They have been downtrodden for too long.