Pope St. John Paul II Seen Through the Eyes of Polish Poet Laureate Czesław Miłosz

National Catholic Register, 18 May 2020

Before he was a priest — a man of the Word made flesh — Karol Wojtyła was a playwright and poet.

The most fitting words for the centennial of St. John Paul II’s birth are poetry, not prose. And they were written 20 years ago by Poland’s most celebrated poet.

The opening scene of George Weigel’s definitive biography of St. John Paul II, Witness to Hope, takes place in Nazi-occupied Kraków. A 22-year-old Karol Wojtyła is, together with his young friends, engaged in a brave act of resistance under the cover of darkness. A troupe committed to a “theater of the living word” was staging a classic of the Polish tradition of epic poetry, Pan Tadeusz.

Karol Wojtyła, born May 18, 1920, was a man of the word — the spoken word of the theater, the poetic word, the scholarly word, the literary word. He studied philology at university. Before he was a priest — a man of the Word made flesh — he was a playwright and poet.

So it was most fitting that, for his 80th birthday, celebrated as the festive day for priests during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, an ode was composed by Poland’s most renowned poet of the 20th century. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980, Czesław Miłosz was nearly a decade older than John Paul and shared many of the same experiences. He survived the Nazi occupation and then was exiled from communist Poland to the United States.

He died less than a year before John Paul and was buried at Skałka, the Cracovian shrine at the martyrdom site of St. Stanisłaus, murdered by the king in 1079. In the crypt of the church are buried the giants of Polish culture and literature. There was controversy over whether Miłosz deserved to be buried in that hallowed spot; John Paul resolved it in his favor.

An Ode for the Eightieth Birthday of Pope John Paul II is addressed by the poet to John Paul himself and marvelously summarizes his life.

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