79-09-A3

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The Pope in Poland

Transcript When President Carter and Leonid Breshnev met at the summit in Vienna, Breshnev is quoted as saying that God would never forgive them if they failed in their mission. I'm sorry that I can't believe in his sincerity. Indeed I think he was hypocritical and deliberately using the Lord's name to curry favor or soften up the President who does believe in God as Breshnev does not. Atheism is as much a part of Communism as is the Gulag. Every kind of roadblock is thrown in the way of religion, up to and including imprisonment. Children in Soviet schools are indoctrinated from grade one with the falsehood that there is no God. The day after the papers carried Breshnev's quote the Los Angeles TIMES carried a front page story of another meeting -- this one in Poland. It was a report on Pope John Paul II's final appearance on his visit to his homeland. This appearance was not seen on TV and until the TIMES story I don't believe there had been any account of it in the press. It seems the Communist rulers of Poland had barred live TV, press passes were severely limited and at the last minute the agreed upon closed circuit TV had to be cancelled for "technical reasons" just before the meeting began. The meeting was the most significant of the Pope's entire visit, significant because it was with the youth of Poland. The church officials had given out 30,000 tickets but there were 60,000 there. They were a cross section of the countries young people, high school students, university students and working youth. Those without tickets had climbed over 12-foot walls, helping each other. They had begun arriving while the sun was still high and they sat through the hot hours waiting, passing bottles of water to each other so that no one was left thirsty. They spread flowers on the path by which the Pope would enter. When he finally arrived they threw thousands more flowers; there was a band and symphony orchestra. Then there was quiet and they waited for him to speak. "May I say something to you?" he asked, "I like you very much." Many times he had to hide his emotion as they came in an hour long procession bringing him gifts. And they sang all the old hymns from memory while other thousands of people watched from house tops and windows from as far as the eye could see. The Pope put aside his prepared sermon and just talked with the thousands of young people, reminiscing of when he was the arch bishop in that very city. He spoke humorously at times and at others of the need for high ideals. It was 10:30 at night when he finished speaking. The time had come for the blessing of the crosses, a 12-foot one brought by one group and the other smaller ones. When he invited the presentation there was movement among the young people and then the meaning of this night for them was revealed; they raised the thousands and thousands of crosses they had brought -- many of them home made. These young people of Poland had been born and raised and spent their entire lives under communist atheism. Try to make a polish joke out of that. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 79-09-A3 Production Date 06/29/1979 Book/Page RihoH-174 Audio Youtube? No
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