“Our Pope” en route to becoming “Our Saint”: Polish Catholics reflect

Anna Sokolowski remembers the news like it was yesterday.

On Oct. 16, 1978, the Downers Grove woman was working at a Park Ridge insurance agency, when her boss charged in, shouting that a new pope had been named.

After just 33 days at the helm of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul I died suddenly — prompting the College of Cardinals to begin a new election process for the second time in as many months.

Bucking 450 years of Catholic tradition, the new pontiff was not an Italian, but a Pole.

Sokolowski, who had just a few years before emigrated from Warsaw, scrambled to turn on the radio and quickly confirmed the news.

Karol Jozef Wojtyla, the 59-year-old Archbishop of Krakow, was standing on the Vatican balcony in Rome, delivering his first apostolic blessing.

“I couldn’t believe it. I called my mom in Poland, and she was just screaming,” Sokolowski said. “I remember, my mom said, ‘A Polish person is the pope, how far can you go?’”

Wojtyla, a charismatic former ethics professor with twinkling blue eyes who would take the name Pope John Paul II, will, in fact, go one step further today.

Just five years after John Paul II’s death, Pope Benedict XVI will beatify his predecessor during a Mass at St. Peter’s Square, in the next to last step toward sainthood.

Sokolowski, now the vice president of Chicago’s Polish Roman Catholic Union, will be among the millions in attendance.

“When they announced (his beatification), I called up my girlfriend and said ‘Let’s go.’ It was very expensive airfare, but it’s a part of history probably not going to happen ever again in my lifetime. I said, ‘I’m just going.’ And my family was very supportive.”

Beatification, or the conferring of the title “blessed” on a holy man or woman, is the penultimate step to sainthood.

A relatively long list of things have to happen before someone can be beatified, the Rev. Michael Fuller, a theology professor at Mundelein Seminary, explains.

There’s normally a five-year waiting period between a candidate’s death and when the process begins, but Pope Benedict XVI waived that for his predecessor.

The road to sainthood, Fuller said, begins with a call from the people, one which in Pope John Paul II’s case began while he was still alive. An investigation ensues and after approval by a panel, a person is declared “venerable” by the church if it has been proved they lived an ordinary life in an extraordinarily holy way.

Then “they start looking for heavenly confirmation,” he said. “They start investigating miracles, using all kinds of experts.”

In order to be beatified, it must be proved that the candidate has performed at least one miracle, something that there is no other explanation for — in John Paul’s case, a French nun being cured of Parkinson’s after praying to him.

John Paul II won’t become a saint unless he’s canonized, which requires proof of one more miracle.

“There are some people that have been beatified that have waited a long time, for others it’s happened quickly,” Fuller said. “That next step could take years, decades, centuries, even.”

Today’s ceremony is expected be the biggest event the Vatican has seen since John Paul II’s funeral Mass in April 2005, where the three-hour ceremony was punctuated with chants of “Santo subito!” (Make him a saint!) from the throngs.

John Paul II is largely considered to be one of the most influential world leaders in the 20th century, a symbol for peace who worked tirelessly even while afflicted with Parkinson’s.

To many Chicago and suburban Polish Catholics, he will always be considered “our Pope” or John Paul the Great, bringing a great source of national pride to a culture that could at times be the butt of cruel jokes.

In the 1970s in Chicago, Sokolowski remembers, “Polish jokes” were common on television sitcoms and late night comedy shows.

“At the time, there were so many Polish jokes,” she said. “And here we had a Pole on the front pages of the newspaper and the TV who is head of the Catholic Church. That was uplifting. And you saw people who didn’t admit before that they had some Polish roots stand up and say, ‘Yes, I am Polish.’”

In October 1979, just a year into his papacy, John Paul II visited Chicago, which is said to have the second most Poles in the world next to Poland’s capital of Warsaw.

Then 8-year-old Adam Andrzejewski, now a Hinsdale resident who ran for the Republican governor nomination in 2010, remembers taking the Amtrak with his family from Kankakee and walking from Union Station to Grant Park, where John Paul II conducted an outdoor Mass attended by an estimated 200,000 people.

Many schools across the region were closed that day to allow as many families as possible to see the pope.

Andrzejewski, who sat atop his father’s shoulders, still remembers the crowds and the many plumed hats of the Knights of Columbus members present.

Sokolowski also was at Grant Park to see Pope John Paul II. “I remember the streets were closed. What a moment,” she said. “We didn’t care how we were going to get to Chicago. I just wanted to make sure that he saw the crowd.”

Today’s beatification ceremony is similar for many.

The Rev. Robert Barron, a faith and culture professor at Mundelein Seminary and an author, is among the suburban residents who have traveled to Rome, where he says the atmosphere is vibrant and exciting.

“People are beginning to arrive in great numbers here,” he said in an email. “There is something of the feel of World Youth Days: lots of singing groups, young people carrying banners, etc.”

Barron plans to meet Monday with Chicago-area residents who have come to Rome, along with Cardinal Francis George.

For those unable to make the journey to Rome, several Masses around the Chicago area commemorating the beatification will take place, including a 2 p.m. service at Divine Mercy Polish Mission in Lombard and a viewing of the beatification ceremony in Rome at St. Hyacinth Basilica on Chicago’s Northwest side.

St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Antioch on Wednesday hosted a beatification breakfast, attended by about 120 parishioners and local officials, the Rev. John Jamnicky said.

“I really do think he’s watching over all of all of us,” Sokolowski said.

Reflect: ‘I really do think he’s watching over all of all of us’