Thank you very much for the question. To be honest, it's difficult because I don't know really where to begin.
When Cardinal Wojtyla became pope in 1978, I was in my last year at university in Krakow, where he was archbishop. I met him when he was Archbishop of Krakow. I used to go to a mass that he celebrated once a month for youth. He was always very close with young people and very active. I guess that's why he eventually, as pope, created World Youth Day where young people can come and celebrate. One of those took place in Toronto in 2002.
When he was chosen pope, it created a shockwave throughout Poland. The authorities had no idea how to react because I guess they were not prepared. People on official state TV—there was no other one—didn't know what to say because they had no knowledge of how the papacy worked. I guess they had to bend and call priests to explain.
The following year, in 1979, the pope made his first visit to Poland. I already graduated. I was married. My wife was doing her master's thesis at Jagiellonian University. She was six months pregnant when the pope's visit took place, and I went to a few masses that he celebrated. One of those was in Krakow, especially for young people, in the evening in the big courtyard of the monastery next to the royal castle. We were so amazed and encouraged by what he said, and he said several times, “Have no fear, be not afraid.”
I don't think people understood at that time what it meant, but when I was walking with a crowd of people back to the main square of Krakow through the streets, I saw something that I had never seen in my life. People had Polish flags in their windows and they were waving flags, but they were not the flags that I've always seen. They were the flags that were banned, with a Polish eagle and a crown on its head. The crown was banned by the communists. The Polish eagle had no crown on its head during the communist era. Those people had these flags hidden since the end of the war. It was the first sign that I truly understood that people were not afraid. People were expressing what they felt inside.
Two years later the Solidarity movement began with a big wave of strikes in 1980. It may sound funny that in the system that was called.... Poland wasn't really called communist. It was called socialist. Even the Polish communist party was not called the communist party of Poland. It was called the Polish United Workers' Party. It was amazing that in a country that was run by the working class, the very working class had to go on strike to fight for their basic rights.
Do I still have time?