Archbishop of Sydney

Cracow

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
15 July 2001

a first visited in 1990 soon after the fall of Communism and the city was drab and polluted. Poland has done better than any other ex-communist State, and it is wonderful to see brightly dressed children, restored buildings, and the debates, bustle and colour of a free society. However, unemployment remains at 15% and the challenge of agrarian reform still lies ahead.

The old city is built around the main square and dominated by Wawel Castle. Main Square, dating from the 13th century, is one of the largest and most beautiful in Europe. A bugler sounds the hour, recalling an incident in 1242 when the guard warning the town of an attack by the Tartans was shot in the throat. Today the melody is abandoned mid-note. Set on the plains of central Europe, Poland has suffered repeatedly from powerful neighbours to East and West, such as Russia and Germany.

The Wawel Castle hill also contains the royal cathedral, a burial place for patriots and poets, kings and archbishops. Like the English, the Poles revere their writers. It is like Westminster Abbey, an embodiment of national history except that the centrepiece is not a royal tomb, but the burial place of St. Stanislaus, archbishop, murdered by King Borislav the Bold in 1079, a perpetual reminder to rulers, good or bad, of a higher power.

Neither the Nazis nor the Communists dared remove this provocation.

Incidentally it was in Main Square that Kosciuszko, remembered by the name of our highest mountain, staged an unsuccessful rising against the Russians in 1794.

Poland, like Ireland, has the strongest Catholic life in the Western world. Contrary to some fears, in the 12 years since liberation there has been no pattern of radical secularisation. A stayed in the monastery of the Dominican priests, founded about 1224, which is now a vibrant centre for students from the Jagiellonian University. The Sunday evening Mass a attended was packed with youngsters. It was not always like this; in the 1970s only 5% of students from some faculties worshipped regularly.

a went to Cracow to visit a three week seminar on Christians in a free society, organised each year for 10 years by a Polish Dominican priest. One quarter of the students were from U.S.A. And all the others from Russia and the ex-communist world, mostly lawyers or political philosophers.

In Australia we take democracy for granted. These young Europeans recognise the absence of democratic traditions and instincts in their society and were keen to learn of Western political life, the pluses and minuses of the market, the importance of natural institutions such as the family and neighbourhood and Catholic social teaching.

They face many challenges, economic and political. The democratic forces are factionalised and undisciplined, with the main focus of political stability coming from the ex-communists.

No one fears the return of Communist dictatorship or a planned economy, but the victory of ex-Communists at the ballot box is an interesting example of democracy at work.