302 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
shared Mitterrand’s priority for avoiding friction with Moscow. He took
time to put his faith in Reagan.
Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II had been the President’s
foremost supporters since he first entered the White House. America
and the Vatican joined together in opposition to communism in the
USSR and Eastern Europe, but their coordination was of a loose kind.
John Paul II communicated his thinking through the Papal Nuncio in
Washington.^6 The Pope, a Pole by birth, justifiably assumed that he
knew the east of Europe better than any politician across the Atlantic,
and took his own initiatives whenever he thought he could undermine
atheism and dictatorship. His plan in 1987 was to make a summer
visit to his homeland. This would obviously require permission from
Poland’s communist authorities. Jaruzelski consented so as to avoid
opprobrium for denying a visa to the Polish Pope and gain credit
among Poles for strengthening a workable relationship with the
national Church. The remaining question for John Paul II was whether
to fly on from Poland to Vilnius to celebrate the 600th anniversary of
Christianity in Lithuania.^7 Such a possibility alarmed the KGB, which
feared that religious celebrations could lead to nationalist disturbances
- with baleful consequences across the USSR. In the end, the Pope con-
fined his trip to Poland. He seems to have thought it prudent to avoid
destabilizing a Soviet leadership that was handling Eastern Europe with
unprecedented gentleness.
He began his trip on 8 June 1987 after intense negotiations between
Warsaw and the Vatican. Jaruzelski knew that if he prevented the Pope
from coming, the ban would have annoyed millions of citizens. He also
calculated that he himself might gain a degree of respectability with
fellow Poles by sanctioning a pastoral visit. The communist authorities
were aware of John Paul II’s capacity to stir up strong antipathy towards
them even while speaking with diplomatic correctness. He gauged his
statements with a wily sense of political undercurrents. Jaruzelski and
his ministers felt that he behaved ‘more aggressively than we expected’.^8
The Pope went to Gdańsk, one of the centres of the protest movement,
as well as Warsaw. His homilies about human rights, dignity and justice
raised people’s spirits; and by holding a private meeting with Lech
Wałęsa, he gave ecclesiastical benediction to Solidarity. His appeal to
Poles to live their live in accordance with their Christian beliefs was a
challenge to atheistic communism’s claims to political legitimacy. The
enthusiastic crowds left no doubt about national pride in his dignified,
principled words of defiance.^9