He used to joke about being wheel-chair bound; he
said, “I am like the Coliseum, I’m a ruin, but very popular...”.
The
Polish cardinal Andrej Maria Deskur, friend of John Paul II, with whom he met at lunch once a week, died Saturday in Rome. He was 87 years old.
Deskur was born in February 1924 in Sancygniów.
Joining the clandestine seminary of Krakow during the years of Nazi
occupation met Karol Wojtyla when there and he was particularly
impressed by the way the future Pope was able to delve into prayer.
He was “very popular” during the years of the Wojtylian pontificate
exactly because of his special relationship that linked him to the
blessed Pope: many turned to him to reach the Pope.
“He lived in prayer,” Deskur said of Wojtyla, “In
the chapel you could hear him speak as if he were talking to someone.
When we, seminarists, were in the little church praying, everyone of us
sooner or later, after having prayed a bit, would get distracted a
little, you know, we would look around, glace at someone entering, like
every person would normally do. He did not. Karol seemed to be somewhere
else completely, immersed in another dimension. He was in God’s world, I
never saw him get distracted in prayer once.”
Deskur became a priest in 1950, but he remained
close to Father Wojtyla.
In 1962, he acted as a liaison to deliver to
father Pio of Pietrelcina the supplication that monsignor Wojtyla, at
the time auxiliary bishop and vicar capitular of Krakow, sent to the
friar with the stigmata pleading him to intercede to heal Wanda
Poltawska, a mother ill with cancer. At the eve of her surgery she was
healed.
At the time of the Council, Deskur was working at the Vatican in the role of undersecretary of the Motion
Pictures, Radio and Television Pontifical Commission, which later
became the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Appointed secretary of the new Ministry in 1970, he became its Chairman and Paul VI made him Bishop.
Every time Cardinal Wojtyla would travel to Rome
to attend a Synod, or to work as a member of the Congregations to which
he belonged, Deskur was his reference point.
Some of John Paul II’s
biographers highlighted the role that his Polish friend played in making
Wojtyla known to the circles.
In October 1978, at the eve of the second conclave
of that year, after John Paul I’s death, Deskur was struck by a severe
stroke and hospitalized at the Policlinico Gemelli. Wojtyla learned of
this as he entered the conclave from which two days later, on Monday
October 16, he would leave as Pope.
John Paul II’s life was marked by
personal suffering throughout (he had lost his mother, then his
brother and finally his father; as Pope he was attacked and then there
was the long ordeal of his illness), but it was also marked by the
suffering of the people closest to him, such as Wanda Poltawska
(traumatized by the Nazi violence she suffered in the concentration
camps), or that of his priest friend (later bishop and cardinal)
Marian Jaworski, who lost his hand while on his way to celebrate a Mass
in Wojtyla’s place.
The day after his election, by surprise John Paul
II left the Vatican and headed for the Policlinico Gemelli, his first
pastoral visit to Rome and Italy.
He visited some wards, he met with the
sick and, above all, he stayed at the bedside of his friend affected by the stroke. In 1985, the Pope made Deskur a Cardinal.
Wheel-chair bound since 1978, after having left
the curial offices Deskur was appointed President of the Pontifical
Academy of the Immaculate.
Its high Marian sensitivity, which linked him
to his Pope friend, became evident in 1995, when the Madonna of
Civitavecchia began to weep blood and was impounded by the court. Deskur traveled to the Lazio town, giving to the bishop a copy of the statue and he prayed for the “liberation” of the Madonna.
Deskur mentioned that something similar had happened in Poland in 1967,
when the communist authorities seized the famous image of the Black
Madonna of Czestochowa.
After John Paul II’s death, the Polish Cardinal
disclosed a few details of the mystical and spiritual life of his
friend, the Pope, stating that at the time of his ordination as priest,
Father Karol received a special gift: the gift of “infused prayer”,
which means , “let Spirit guide you ... with apparitions or inner words. From this intimacy with God everything develops.”