Stanisław Dziwisz - A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year Friendship with the Man Who Became Pope

Contents

Part One
The Polish Years

Part Two
The Papal Years

Foreword

Farewell to a Beloved Face

It was the last time I would see him.

Oh, of course I was going to see him again a thousand other times after thatevery hour of every day, in fact. I was going to see him again with the eyes of faith. And, of course, with the eyes of my heart and my memory. I was going to keep feeling his presence, too, though it would take a different form from the one I had been used to.

But this was the last time I would see his facehow shall I put it?physically. Humanly. It was the last time I would see the man who had been a father and a teacher to me. The last time I would see his body, his hands, and, most important, his face. And his face reminded me of how he would look at you. In fact, that was always the first thing that struck you about him: his gaze.

And so I didnt want this moment to end. I did everything slowly, trying to stretch it into an eternity.

Until, all of a sudden, I felt a pair of eyes staring at me. And then I realized what I had to do.

I took the white veil and laid it gently over his face. I was almost afraid of hurting him, as if that piece of silk could actually bother or annoy him.

I found strength in the prayer of the veiling ceremony: Lord and Father, may he now behold You face-to-face; having departed this life, may his face contemplate Your beauty.

He was at home with the Father now and could finally see Him face-to-face. His earthly adventure was over, and he had put in at port.

So I started attending to the words of the prayer myself. And as I was praying, I began to remember. I began to relive the forty years that Ian insignificant man almost accidentally touched by the mysteryhad spent at Karol Wojtylas side.

Narrators Preface

The Mystery of John Paul II

Of all images of Karol Wojtyla, the one that has stuck most vividly in my minds eye and in my heart comes from his first papal visit to Poland, in June 1979, and, in particular, from his now-famous meeting with the university students.

It was morning. The Vistula was in the background and the sun was just barely up. Warsaw was bathed in an extraordinary atmosphere of calm. As soon as the Pope started speaking, the whole crowd was seized with excitement. And at the end of Wojtylas speech, his thousands of young listeners, as if on cue, simultaneously raised their little wooden crosses toward him.

At the time, I grasped only the political implications of what was happening. I realized that things had changed, that the rising generations of Poles were by now inoculated against communism, and that before long Poland would be rocked by an earthquake.

But that sea of wooden crosses contained the seeds of something much greater than a popular revolution. They held a mystery, which I wasnt completely aware of at the time. I saw this mystery again twenty-six years later in the endless throngs that came to say their last farewell to John Paul II. This second time, I knew what I was seeing.

These crowds revealed, I think, the profound meaning of Karol Wojtylas legacy. He showed the face of God, Gods human visage, if you will. He displayed the features of God incarnate. He thus became an interpreter and instrument of Gods Fatherhood, a man who narrowed the gap between heaven and earth, transcendence and immanence. And in so doing, he laid the groundwork for a new spirituality and a new way of living the faith in modern society.

So in the midst of that crowd in Warsaw, there was a mysterya mystery at whose side Father Stanislaw Dziwisz spent forty years of his life. In what follows, wehe as witness and I as narratorwill attempt, if not to unveil the mystery, then at least to tell its story.

The First Meeting

It all began on an October day in 1966, which was the start of something like a new life for Stanislaw Dziwisz. Because it was on that day that he was asked by the archbishop of Krakw to become his personal secretary. Wojtyla had decided that the young priest would make an outstanding assistant, one whom he could entrust not only with the management of his appointment calendar but also with his confidences, his thoughts, and evenwhy not?with a bit of his heart.

He looked right at me and said, Id like you to come live hereand give me a hand.

Stanislaw was born in 1939 in Raba Wzna, a village in the foothills of the Tatras, Polands principal mountain chain. So it was logical that he would learn to ski as a child and would become a connoisseur of snow and ski slopes. He was the fifth of seven children, five boys and two girls.

His father, Stanislaw Dziwisz, Sr., worked for the railroad. His mother, Zofia, took care of the household and the upbringing of the kids. It was she who taught them what it means to live out Gospel charity. The doors of the Dziwisz home were always open to the poor and the needy. If you visited them in the evening, you could always be sure of a hot meal and a place to spend the night.

But World War II was raging. The Germans had invaded Poland from the west and the Soviets had marched in from the east.

Those were terrible years for everybody, and we were no exception. There were so many mouths to feed, but it wasnt easy to find food. And on top of that, my family was hiding a Jewish man. That was dangerous, given the risk of detection. Who knows where we might all have ended up if the Nazis had found out.

Not too far away from us, in Rokiciny Podhalnskie, the Gestapo had arrested the superior of the Ursulines, Sister Maria Clemensa Staszewska, because she had given sanctuary to some Jewish women in the convent. Sadly, she ended up in Auschwitz.

The only thing we knew about the man hiding in our house was his name, Wilhelm. Actually, we kids called him Wilus. He was from Wadowice. He had escaped from the Nazis, though how he ended up at our house was something of a mystery. He was a likable man. He stayed with us until the end of the war, and would do little odd jobs around the house to help out. He bid us all a tearful good-bye before he left. But we completely lost track of him after that.

After the end of the war, Poland began to breathe a little more easily, although storm clouds were glowering threateningly on the horizon. The liberators from the east did not seem particu larly interested in leaving. And at the Dziwisz home, there was a terrible tragedy.

It happened on a typical morning while my father was on his way to work. He was struck by a train as he was crossing the tracks. He was only thirty-nine. When they came to break the news to us, I immediately went totally cold, realizing I would never feel his hand on my shoulder again. My mother was a woman of great faith and courage. Despite the huge grief she was carrying in her heart, she showered us with love. And she managed to raise the seven of us, magically multiplying her modest pension.

Stanislaw was going on nine when his father died. He had to grow up in a hurry, but he did his part. After finishing elementary school, he started attending high school in Nowy Targ. Meanwhile, though, another vocation was budding inside him: He wanted to become a priest, a minister of God. So after graduation, he entered the seminary. It was 1957. And it was then that he first met Father Karol Wojtyla, who at that time was a professor of moral theology at the seminary.