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Uloneme I
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U OF T10,01
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PERTH, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1978
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POPE WAS FOUND WHERE THE WAY WAS HARDEST The Spirit of God blows where It will . . . Twice the popular prophets have been wrong in their search for a Pope and God has achieved His purpose in His own way.
But we can search the ways of God and already the signs may be beginning to appear. For all their apparent tragedy, the 35 days of Pope Paul I have turned out to be a stage on which the Church has been tested in its resolve to look beyond the mainstream of government for a new Pope. An easy first election of such a winning personality only put off the task of debating to its full consequences the course the cardinals had
taken.
It was not easy. There were eight ballots and it suggests that at least six times alternative candidates to Cardinal Wojtyla were measured for the task. Their choice of direction was complex: pastoral resurgence in Italy, the vigorous Church of Africa or the precarious Church of Asia, the mind boggling struggle of the Church in South America. They looked to where the Church's struggle has been longest and hardest. They looked to Wojtyla.
Pope Paul's years If the choice of a non-Italian was one day inevitable, then it is the least significant issue now that it has happened. Pope John XXIII briefly showed that the Papacy was likely to take a new turn. Few noticed that in 1958 the year he became Pope, two men. Karol Wojtyla and Albino Luciani prophetically were ordained bishops. There is no need to dismiss so casually the 15 years of Pope Paul VI. Only he, the last of the Roman school, had the skill to gently dismantle the Church's structures, sets its new horizons of evangelisation and concern and appoint the cardinals who have now made today's dramatic decisions. From heaven he must be gently smiling. Pope John Paul is first and foremost the fulfillment of Jesus' prayer that Peter would strengthen and confirm his brothers, the Church of Silence, that for half a century of communist oppression has carried the torch for all of us. Pope John Paul II will need no academic lessons in how to make the Christian gospel survive. And he is the bridge to the Slavic East, the millions of Orthodox who have remained separated from Rome only because they saw in the Pope of Rome a man who was not of themselves. He will be the bond between bishops and dioceses as Vatican II has surely spelt out. For both bishops and laity the full significance of this unity in faith is yet to be worked out. Pope John Paul II shines out as an ever fresh view of what the Holy Father means to the People of God.
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Tested in a nation's %s student, priest, bishop and cardinal, Pope John Paul II, who was Cardinal
Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Cracow. lived, studied
tinned
struggle
right through the Protestant Reformation until 300 years ago when the
Russian menace from the East threatened not only the
and ministered to his people nation but the Church, and htrough four decades of has done so right up till Poland's struggle against po- being appointed a bishop at the present day. litical repression and for 38. His career as prelate and religious freedom. Pope John Paul II who cardinal in his native coun-
suffered persecution try has been marked by his from both Nazis and Rus- defence of the Faith against sians comes from a Church totalitarian Russian policy that over 1000 years has co- and his activities as publiexisted with struggle. cist and author. The arrival of the ChrisWith Poland's Primate, tian faith in Poland dates Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, from the year 966. For the he took part in confrontanext 200 years the infant tions of and discussion with Church found itself in the the Marxist regime on crossfire of political strug- Church -State relations, as a gle with the Germans, from result of which a workable whom the Poles first re- compromise in some areas ceived the faith. was reached. (See also The same struggle con- Pages 2, 3 and 4.) has
His secondary studies interrupted by World War Two, he worked as a labourer in a chemical factory, when his country was occupied by the Nazis, later studying in secret.
Then and on and after ordination he was a brilliant student (he is now an accomplished linguist), he studied further in Rome and on return to Poland became a professor before
it
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