One of the distinctive achievements of the Pontificate of John Paul II was the change it brought to the international order. When Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Poland was elected Pope on October 16, 1978, a large part of the world was locked politically into two ideological camps.

The Soviet bloc led by the USSR sought to convert the world's peoples to the doctrine of Communism as a regime of faith and human salvation. The USA was the leader of the capitalist bloc that laboured to contain the international spread of Communism.

The Cold War between the world's two super powers was actively waged through diplomatic, political, economic, cultural, and military weapons.

One feature of that scenario was the huge expenditure on arms and armaments devoted to defence and national security by the rich as well as the poor nations of the world.

The pontificate of John Paul II brought about a change in this international situation because of his direct influence in the dismantling of the Communist bloc in Eastern and Central Europe.

It would seem that, by Divine Providence, his formation and life experiences as a Polish priest and prelate in the universal Roman Catholic Church uniquely equipped him to accomplish the monumental task which, as pope, he had set out to do.

John Paul II was a Polish nationalist. Prior to becoming Pope, he spent almost his entire life in Poland . He was born in Poland on May 18, 1920 . For one century before his birth, Poland had ceased to exist as a sovereign and independent State.

About three centuries before Karol's birth, that is, in 1648, Poland was re-constituted as a sovereign State by the Peace of Westphalia. Within the century and a half that followed, the territory of Poland was annexed by its three powerful neighbours: Austria , Prussia , and Russia .

From the Peace Settlement after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 up until the end of the First World War in 1918 there was no Polish State in Europe. It was only in 1919 that Poland was re-established as a free and sovereign State by the Treaty of Versailles.

The absence of a State for a century (1815-1919) did not obliterate the soul and culture of the Polish people. It probably enhanced it. The Polish spirit survived and grew through and within the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church provided a foundation of faith and a homogeneous religion. But it did more than that. In and through the Church, the Polish people found, confirmed, and celebrated their national unity, which gave them hope and strength.

Children in Polish national dress at the National Stadium on February 5, 1985. Photo: Souvenir brochure, Norton Studios

Roman Catholicism came to Poland as early as the tenth century when the first king was baptised into the Church. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation did not affect the tenacity of the Polish people to the Catholic faith. But the influence of the Renaissance was particularly remarkable in Poland.

As early as the fourteenth century, Poland boasted of renowned universities in the disciplines of philosophy, the humanities, and the social and natural sciences. The University of Krakow had among its alumni the celebrated mathematician and astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, who died in 1543.

Father Karol Wojtyla, ordained on November 1, 1946 , was nurtured in this spiritual and intellectual tradition as providence prepared him to mount the Vatican stage, as pope, in 1978. As a true disciple of Christ, he first had to experience “the wilderness” in Poland in the course of his journey to Rome.

As a nationalist, Karol was specially blessed. For the first time in a century, as a Pole he was able to enjoy national life in a free Polish State . This was however short-lived. It lasted only two decades.

It was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September of 1939, when Wojtyla was nineteen years old, that started the Second World War. Hitler's armies remained in occupation of Poland until January 1945 when the Red Army of the USSR replaced the German presence.

der the Nazi occupation, the casualties to the Polish Church were immense: three bishops, 1,263 priests in concentration camps, with 584 other priests shot or executed. It is estimated that six million Poles perished during the Second World War.

Through occupation by the Red Army, the Soviet Union established Communist reign over Eastern and Central Europe. The Soviet zone of dominium embraced Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

The Soviet Union had already annexed, before the outbreak of the War, the three Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia . It was this formidable Communist Empire that John Paul II succeeded in dismantling after fifteen of his twenty-six years' reign as pope.

This re-ordering of the European political system involved re-drawing the map of Europe and re-defining international relations globally. The remarkable thing about this event was that it was bloodless and non-violent. It was the first time in modern history that such a fundamental change in the international order was achieved without a world war.

No military war was fought to bring this about. But a war was indeed fought in a figurative sense. The war waged by John Paul II was a moral war against the international order of the abuse of power and the use of force, of the political, economic and cultural domination by the strong over the weak, the disrespect for human life and human dignity, the marginalisation of minorities, the destruction of the natural environment, the exploitation of children and women, the proliferation of poverty, intolerance and bigotry in religious belief.

The moral war waged by John Paul II was not only against godless Communism. It was waged against all godless systems irrespective of their genesis. These included materialism, consumerism, and all forms of modernism that result in the “pulverization” of the human spirit.

The chief weapons of the moral war of John Paul II were those which were triggered by the truth emanating from the doctrine of the Incarnation that out of Love, God sent His Son into the world to live in “solidarity” with His Creation.

Let us pray that the ensuing Conclave will produce a Shepherd to lead the Church and the world along the global paths already blazed by John Paul II.