In an interview with L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Jozef
Tomko discussed his decades of friendship with Pope John Paul II.
The
two met in 1969, when the future Pontiff was Archbishop of Krakow and
Cardinal Tomko was a Slovak priest.
The 86-year-old cardinal told the Vatican newspaper that Archbishop
Wojtyla secretly ordained Slovak seminarians whom Czechoslovakia’s
Communist regime refused to allow their ordination.
Cardinal Tomko, who went on to serve as secretary general of the Synod
of Bishops (1979-85), prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization
of Peoples (1985-2001), and president of the Pontifical Committee for
International Eucharistic Congresses (2001-07), also said that when he
was ordained a bishop in Rome in 1979, the Communist regime would permit
only four citizens of Czechoslovakia to travel to the ordination.
(Nonetheless, 200 of his compatriots, who had told the government they
were going on vacation in Italy, were able to attend the ceremony.)
Pope
John Paul ordered Vatican Radio to broadcast the ordination live in
Slovak throughout central Europe.
Upon hearing of the Pontiff’s death on April 2, 2005, “I went
immediately to visit the remains of this giant of history, still lying
in his bed of pain, with majestic peace on his dead face,” Cardinal
Tomko recalled.
“I knelt down, prayed briefly, and took his hand. That
hand was still on my head, and I kissed it devotedly. It was the hand of
my father in the Spirit.”
SIC: CC/INT'L