Pope makes sentimental return trip to Poland

HIS body frail, but spirit strong, Pope John Paul II is making a sentimental journey this week to the land he knew as a young priest that many fear could be his last to his native Poland.

A visit from the Pope, born Karol Wojtyla, is an affair of the heart for Poles and a unifying event of national proportions. In the overwhelmingly Catholic country, 86% of the people consider a papal visit an important personal event, according to a survey by the private CBOS polling agency.

Up to four million pilgrims are expected to greet the Holy Father during his visit from tomorrow to Monday, including retired dressmaker Janina Krzeluk, 61, who plans to travel from Warsaw to Krakow.

“I’m really afraid it’s the last chance,” she said, voicing fears shared by many.

At 82, the Pope has been struggling with symptoms of Parkinson’s disease - heavily slurred speech and trembling hands - and is slowed by knee and hip aliments that make it difficult for him to walk or even stand.

The religious focus of his trip will be the consecration of the Basilica of God’s Mercy, dedicated to the mystic nun Faustine, born Helena Kowalska, whom he canonised in 2000, along with an open air Mass for some two million people near Krakow and a visit to the Klawaria Zebrzydowska shrine where the boy Karol Wojtyla prayed with his father.

Organisers have also made a special effort to make sure the pontiff visits the places he lived and worked as a student, cleric, priest and eventually archbishop, giving what Krakow Bishop Kazimierz Nycz called “a sentimental dimension” to the pilgrimage.

“We would like to show him all those places which are close to him, especially linked to his youth. The Holy Father, perhaps like every elderly man, experiences most vividly all the meetings and elements which concern the old days,” Nycz said.

In Krakow, the Pope will stay in the residence he inhabited as archbishop from 1964-’78, make a personal visit to the Rakowicki cemetery where his parents and elder brother are buried and pray privately at the historic Wawel Cathedral, burial place of Poland’s kings.