2005 film ‘Pope John Paul II’ shows love has power

The story of how Cardinal Karol Wojtyla came to be elected the first pope from then-communist Poland, and how he changed history is, of course, epic — as artfully portrayed in the film Pope John Paul II (2005), produced by CBS in cooperation with the Vatican, starring Cary Elwes (young Karol Wojtyla) and Jon Voight (Pope John Paul II). 

The film opens up on May 13, 1981, as the pontiff quickly shuffles along — as usual, on “standard Wojtyla time” — stopping to talk with visitors on his way out to greet the assembled faithful in St. Peter’s Square — where an assassin’s bullet awaits.

As they walk down the iconic marble stairs, the Scala Regia (Royal Staircase), inside the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, Fr. Stanisław Dziwisz, the Pope’s principal private secretary, notes, “I’ve proofed your meditation on the ‘Theology of the Body.’ It’s a very fine piece.”

It’s the work that will set the stage for restoring a “culture of life," the other epic challenge confronting the Pope, twinned with restoring the human rights and freedom that Soviet totalitarianism had ripped -- but not uprooted — from Iron Curtain countries, including Poland, under the illusion that God can be dethroned.  

Secular materialism was an equally daunting task, St. John Paul II came to realize as his papacy entered its sunset, intimated in the scene just before he receives news of the September 11 attack, when a visitor from Poland notes it’s not the same country anymore, attributing that to the influence of “materialism” on the youth.

The first challenge — atheistic communism — the pontiff tackles brilliantly, as the film vividly portrays.  For instance, at “Nowa Huta” — the utopian socialist project, built without a church to house workers at massive Lenin Steelworks, incorporated into Kraków in 1951 — Archbishop Wojtyla simply erected a cross and said Mass outdoors, starting Christmas 1959.

Then, during his papacy, he made historic visits to communist Poland, starting with his maiden visit in June of 1979 — and two successive Junes, 1983 and 1987 -- catalyzing communism’s defeat.

Always June, the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Fittingly so.

“At any longitude or latitude of geography, the exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man,” St. John Paul II said on the vigil of Pentecost during the first historic Mass at Warsaw’s Victory Square.

He had seen that exclusion up close after the Nazis began their reign of terror when they invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, intent on obliterating Polish faith and culture.

Young Wojtyla becomes so angry that he pours his heart out to Archbishop Adam Sapieha (James Cromwell) in confession.

“Anger is not a sin,” says Sapieha. “To feel outrage in the face of evil is only normal. The more important question is how do you express it.”

Later, as they walk across the courtyard, Wojtyla talks with the archbishop about his plans. He had wanted to become an actor.

“And, now?”

Wojtyla unloads on the horrors he’s witnessing.

“Do not fear the man who can kill your body,” Sapieha says. “Fear him who can destroy your soul. This is what Our Lord tells us.” Furthermore, “Wisdom is a grace we must seek from God.”

When Wojtyla asks how to fight the Nazis, Sapieha says violence is a vicious cycle. “If you must use a weapon, choose the one they fear the most.”

“Our faith?”

“Yes, our faith, and our intelligence. Our fine minds.”

Prince Adam Stefan Stanisław Bonifacy Józef Sapieha, who served as Archbishop of Kraków from 1911 to 1951, was elevated to Cardinal — a Prince of the Church — in 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

Thus he was doubly a prince, known as “the light of Poland,” who would continue to nurture Wojtyla’s vocation.

Wojtyla reveals to his theatre group at the University of Jagiellonian, oldest in the world, that he is following his heart, becoming a priest, telling them, “Faced with this abyss of evil, I can only respond with an abyss of love.”

Archbishop Sapieha surreptitiously trains the seminarians, including Kristoff, assuring them: “This is the highest form of resistance — to give hope to those who have none. And with God’s grace, we shall succeed.”

He had carefully parried Nazi totalitarian designs.

Now, the vise has tightened.  

Nazis are emptying a palatial estate and aristocratic home of its fine artwork, as was being done throughout Poland, overseen by Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of occupied Poland who made his private residence Wawel Castle in Kraków, instructing underlings: “Cart off every able man — every baby boy able to hold a gun — even priests.”

Archbishop Sapieha asks Wojtyla to take a package to a parish where it will help guide their escape and instructs him not to let the Germans obtain the contents under any circumstance — that the underground will guide you. Wojtyla says he knows the way and Sapieha says “To be a good leader, you must first learn to follow.”

Soon Kristoff is machine-gunned and Wojtyla goes back to comfort him as he lays mortally wounded. His other friend Tomasz Zaleski stabs the murderous Nazi, whom Wojtyla blesses, praying that God will welcome him into Heaven and forgive his sins even as the Nazi aims his gun at Wojtyla in his last dying moments. Tomasz protests he did not deserve to live, to which Wojtyla says, “God decides that, not you. Evil only begets evil. It can only be overcome by love,” prompting Tomasz to mock the Church as “opium for the masses.”

Wojtyla, walking away from Tomasz, is hit by a German military truck, suffering a head wound, concussion, and shoulder injury.

This is an example of the film’s creative license; the accident occurred on February 29, 1944, when in fact he was walking home from the stone quarry where he worked — a job he took at the direction of his father, Karol, Sr., who had died three years earlier in February 1941.  His brother Edmund had died as a young doctor in 1932 when he contracted scarlet fever from a patient, his mother Emilia, in 1929.

At the hospital Wojtyla turns over in his mind how God chose him to live and others to die.

It’s the story of his life.

After the Nazis were defeated in May 1945 by the Allies, he completed his studies for the priesthood under the new repressive communist regime and was ordained a priest by Cardinal Sapieha on November 1, 1946, then assigned to the Church of St. Florian.

As Cardinal Sapieha lay dying on July 23, 1951, he tells Woytyla, as portrayed in the film. “Karol, trust God. He has a plan for each. In you He has placed a gift. Honor it and do whatever God asks.”

Seven years later Wojtyla is elevated to the role of Auxiliary Archbishop of Kraków at the young age of 38 in 1958 because, as humorously portrayed in the film, the communists thought he was just a poet and a dreamer.

Think again. Six years later, he was appointed Archbishop of Kraków then Cardinal on June 28, 1967 by Pope Paul VI.

Then Pope.

His first visit to Poland in June 1979 was finally granted with the help of his new Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who had served Pope Paul VI in the same capacity, even as the communists plot to neutralize the Polish pope.

As Pope John Paul II readies for the trip, he pens his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, crystalizing Christ’s love, signed in Rome on March 4, 1979, articulating this key insight:

Three months later, the moment the Polish pope kisses the Polish ground on June 2, 1979, communism begins crumbling.  

The Holy Mass Pope John Paul II celebrated that day at Victory Square in Warsaw is considered perhaps the most important inflection point in modern history. Voight, as Pope John Paul II, dramatically commands the audience as he proclaims:

Communist authorities had consoled themselves that violent riots would ensue. Hardly.

Later Pope John Paul II, realizing the young people were waiting outside his window, gets up on a chair and steps up on the windowsill, touchingly conversing with them, saying, “Always remember you are Polish and music is in your soul. Let me tell you one or two things. First, I love you all. Allow Christ to find you. Third, I wish I could stay with you and climb the Tatras.” 

Leonid Brezhnev (Michele Gammino) holds up Time Magazine’s Pope John Paul II cover — “SUPERSTAR” in big letters — saying, “The fundamental problem with this superstar is he does not accept the Yalta Agreement… For him, the new borders of the Soviet Union are temporary. He must be stopped.”

After Pope John Paul II publicly declares his support for Solidarity, at the suggestion of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Archbishop of Warsaw, catalyzing its incorporation on August 31, 1980, Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops are soon amassing close to the Polish border with NATO “on highest alert.”  It’s a moment of crisis.  The Pope goes to confession to Cardinal Casaroli, and then writes, as articulated in a voiceover:

As the film portrays beautifully throughout, St. John Paul II was dedicated “To You, Mary, Totus Tuus—Ego Sum”— Mary who guided him every step of the way, perhaps no more dramatically than on May 13, 1981, the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima, as the film portrays, the Pope concluding she had guided the bullet.

“One millimeter. That is all there was between life and death,” he says.

“What must I do?”

He realizes God is now asking him to guide us into the new Millennium.

Two and half years later, Pope John Paul II visits his would-be assassin, Ali Agca, in prison, forgiving him and telling him Our Lady of Fátima would help him, too — foreshadowing another key challenge of the new Millennium. (In time, he would convert to Catholicism.)

In the film, after he is shot, Emilia is shown telling a young Karol, “The world is complicated, God is simple” and showing her son “a simple way” as she makes the sign of the cross “one, two, three — in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Conditions in the late 1970s that birthed Solidarity were such that, given unjustly low wages, mothers needed to work outside the home — which, had such conditions existed when Wojtyla’s mother was raising him, would have limited her ability to form him in the faith.

After the Berlin wall fell in 1989 and communism ended in Poland, materialism began crowding out that love.

Pope John Paul II’s mission in setting forth a culture of life was clear.

An epic story, indeed — a story of the power of Love — that continues to this day.