Friday, January 21, 2011

In Wadowice, a friend recalls a future saint

The Vatican’s announcement that Pope John Paul II is to be beatified at a ceremony in May has revived memories for an old Polish school classmate of the young Karol Wojtyla.

“Today, I thank God for giving me the opportunity to have lived alongside a saint,” said 90-year-old Eugeniusz Mroz, one of three surviving students who went to school with the future Pope in Wadowice, his home town in southern Poland.

Pope Benedict XVI, who succeeded the highly-popular Pope John Paul II after his death in 2005, will beatify him on May 1 in a ceremony that will formally place him one step from sainthood.

Mr Mroz, keen-eyed and with a voice full of energy, recalled the young Wojtyla’s resourcefulness and quick wit in a recent interview.

“Karol had a noble heart, something that distinguished him.

“Of course, no one thought he would wear a cassock one day, but we weren’t really surprised when he did.”

“He was without a doubt one of the best students in our class, but he never bragged,” says Mr Mroz from behind a desk covered with photographs from his schooldays well over half a century ago.

“He was very supportive of others. When he was the first to finish a test, he waited to hand it in until everyone had finished so that no one would feel bad,” adds Mr Mroz, who graduated high school with the future pope in 1938.

“We called him ‘Martyna’, the name of a defender at the Pogonia Lviv football club. Karol looked like him,” said Mr Mroz.

“He loved football, but the theatre was his greatest passion,” he added, recalling Kazia, Danka and Halina, three girls who attended the girls college and acted in plays with him.

“One day, we pointed out that his sock had a hole in it. At the intermission he painted his heel with ink to hide the hole.”

His love of the stage, something which later stood the media-savvy pope in good stead, blinded the local priest to his future vocation, according to Mr Mroz.

“When the Bishop of Krakow, Archbishop Sapieha, visited our school one day, he liked Karol’s welcoming speech and asked our priest if the young Wojtyla wanted to enter the seminary. No, because he will no doubt become an actor, the priest replied.”

“Some years later, this same Cardinal Sapieha welcomed him to the seminary in Krakow,” Mr Mroz recounts of Karol Wojtyla’s first steps towards a life in the Church.

“One day, the school janitor, Mr Tercjan, was hit by a car. It was Karol who ran for a priest to give him the last rites. The janitor died from his injuries, and it was Karol who had the idea to organise a collection of money for his widow and six children.

“He learned his piety from his father. There was holy water on the right at the door of their house, they always made the sign of the cross when leaving home. Before going to school, Karol always dropped in at church to pray,” says Mr Mroz, who at the time was one of the Wojtylas’ closest neighbours.

“Often, we did homework together, Karol was usually the first to finish. Then we both would run out to play soccer next to the church. The priest used to shoo us away for fear we would break a window.”

SIC: TOM/INT'L