Justice Will Sellers: A funeral to end a regime

For a communist country, it was strange to have an unsanctioned gathering of a million people, but 40 years ago in Poland, the funeral of a simple parish priest brought the nation to a halt to pay their last respects.

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was not known as a great scholar or a powerful intellectual. In fact, he barely made the grades to graduate from seminary, but Popiełuszko was a man of the people, and he spoke to them in unadorned, persuasive sermons, chiseling a significant crack in Poland’s socialist foundation.

Within five years, the Polish People’s Republic would be discarded and the Republic of Poland restored; one of the key events leading to this change of government was the funeral of Father Popiełuszko.

The Polish Politburo saw the threat posed by Father Popiełuszko as evidence by their frequent arrest, detention and interrogation of him. Until his murder, his house would be ransacked, his car sabotaged, and he was constantly harassed. The security services thought this slight vicar would get the message. They wrongly assumed, if intimidated enough, he would cease to preach and support his congregants who were starved physically and spiritually.

For all the interrogations, death threats, and brutality, he never relented. It wasn’t that his messages were overtly anti-government intending to incite a riot. Rather, he spoke plainly, and with the power of his simplicity, he wove Biblical stories and admonitions to indirectly, but by obscured analogy, attack communism in general and the oppressive Polish government in particular.

Forty years ago, the politics of Poland pitted the people against Soviet puppets. What started in a shipyard in Gdansk over increased food prices became a nationwide strike focused on the plight of workers in Poland.  Exposing the dangerous working conditions of Polish laborers and their meagre salaries gave lie to the peace, prosperity and stability in a workers’ paradise.

These strikes would begat other strikes until Poland’s government was forced out of office and martial law was declared. All of this was a public relations nightmare for the Soviet Union, which in 1984 was experiencing its own tribulations and did not welcome the distractions of a satellite wobbling out of orbit. The one-two punch of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II spreading messages of hope and freedom on Radio Free Europe was simply too much for the regime. While the people might not have control over their circumstances, their minds were engaged and inspired by Father Popiełuszko.

The more he preached, the larger his followings, and the need for the totalitarians to silence his voice increased. Within the socialist republic, the choice was easy — arrest him on trumped up charges and put him in prison after a “fair” trial — but the regime’s henchmen overplayed their hand. They placed weapons and explosives in his car and home, but the magnitude, not to mention the provenance of the weaponry, was beyond anything a priest could obtain. Once the Vatican and others weighed in, he was released.

Rather than deter Father Jerzy, this only emboldened him. If it had not been clear before, it was obvious that he was a mere priest taking on all the machinery of the Polish communists. Undeterred, he continued, and his sermons would be recorded, surreptitiously dropped off at the American Consulate, and replayed on Radio Free Europe. Instead of silencing him, the government had inadvertently provided him a megaphone.

This called for more urgent measures. Perhaps the security forces had learned from watching the Godfather because first they tried tampering with his car to precipitate a fatal accident. When this did not work, they performed the ultimate actions of a thug: kidnap, torture, murder, and hide the body.

Their plan worked well for two weeks, but the weights tied to the body failed to keep him submerged, and when his body floated to the top of the water, the brutality of the Polish People’s Republic was exposed. Father Popiełuszko would be the last of nine priests murdered by the communists.

No one accepted the attempt at plausible deniability. Everyone knew that nothing happened in Poland by private initiative, much less chance. Even when three security force members were placed on trial, it was clear they were acting on orders from above. Once convicted, they were confined in a jail of sorts but would later be released. Everyone knew the government was responsible, but questions remained about the chain of command.

The funeral was a huge event. Even the official estimate had to concede that more than 250,000 mourners attended, and unofficial estimates placed the crowd at four times that number. To make sure the funeral did not become a riot, security forces were everywhere, but rather than act belligerently to the antagonizing officers, the mourners chanted versions of “We Forgive You.” This expression of passive resistance stunned the government which so wanted a pretext to justify brutal crowd control, but Father Popiełuszko’s message won out.

Even in death he had again defied the government.

For the next several years as conditions worsened in Poland and throughout the Soviet Union, various popular uprisings and strikes would challenge the authority of the government. As the tension within each uprising required the government’s acquiescence on several issues, the communist regime collapsed in Poland and elsewhere. Through the lens of the life of Jerzy Popiełuszko, the economic, moral and political bankruptcy of communism was exposed for the world to see.

In one of Father Popiełuszko’s last sermons he said, “Violence is not victorious, though it may triumph for a while. We must unite in reconciliation in the spirit of love, but also in the spirit of justice. Love is greater than justice and at the same time finds reassurance in justice.”

Sometimes the words of a simple priest are more powerful than all the might and concentrated force of a socialist regime. No wonder millions of people continue to visit his grave in Warsaw each year.

Will Sellers is a graduate of Hillsdale College and an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of Alabama. He is best reached at [email protected].