To the Polish Community of Canada (14 September 1984)

On Friday, 14 September 1984, the Holy Father addressed the Polish Community of Canada, in the Varsity Stadium, Toronto. The Pope spoke of their Polish roots which “maintained the awareness of their belonging to the faith, culture, tradition of their fathers, and at the same time remained in the great community of the Universal Church.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!
Dear Brothers and Sisters — my compatriots on Canadian soil!

1. Allow me , as one of you, to welcome our guests the Cardinals present here , first of all the Archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Emmett Carter, and of course our American compatriot Cardinal John Król of Philadelphia, Archbishop Edmund Szoka of Detroit, and all the friendly guests the Bishops who are among us today .

I come to today's meeting with joy and deep emotion . I carry deeply imprinted in my memory the hospitable and warm welcome I experienced in Polish parish and Polish communities fifteen years ago in 1969 , when I visited Canada for the first time as a delegate of the Primate and the Episcopate of Poland , invited by the Episcopate of Canada and by the Congress of Canadian Polish Community on the occasion of its 25th anniversary.

Our meeting today is, in a way, an extension and fulfilment of that visit. In the words of Saint Paul , "I thank God for all of you, remembering you constantly in my prayers, mindful before our God and Father of your work of faith, your labour of love and your steadfast hope in our Lord Jesus Christ"[ 1 ].

2. I wish to extend a warm welcome and greetings to all of you and to each of you individually . In you and through you, I greet and greet all my compatriots who live on Canadian soil from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific, and who for various reasons cannot be present here today . I address a word of greeting and welcome to all Polish parish communities, to Catholic, social, youth organizations , educational and welfare centers , to all Polish families in Canada. I extend a special warm welcome and greeting to priests with Bishop Szczepan Wesoły , religious families, people who work physically and mentally , people exhausted by life and burdened with the cross of suffering ; as well as young people , children – everyone. I embrace you all with my heart and offer you all the brotherly and papal kiss of peace .

My thoughts, together with you, also go out to those compatriots who once paved the way for the local Polonia and who now sleep the sleep of peace , called by the Father of Light .

3. Beloved Brothers and Sisters!

Divine Providence has made it so that you , who come from Poland, are to fulfill your human and at the same time Christian calling here in Canada . As Poles , for whom — for various reasons — Canada has become a second homeland , you are an integral part of the Church in this country and here, in a way, you are writing further chapters of this history of salvation , the earlier chapters of which were written in the Church on Polish soil.

Following the teaching of the last Council, your spiritual position could be described as a " specific gift" of the Church in Poland to Canada, to the Church and to the Canadian nation .

4. That is why , fifteen years ago , when I visited Polish centres and Churches in Canada in 1969, I left relics of Polish saints in them . I wanted them to be a visible sign and expression of the spiritual community between the Church in Poland and Canada , and also to show all compatriots the spiritual connection of the Church on the plane of the mystery of the Communion of Saints . This is an integral part of our faith, and for us Poles also an integral part of the entire spiritual heritage[ 2] .

To these roots, Christian roots , from which both you and I grow, we must continually return, we must, as it were, grow anew from them. In these roots there is the power and the life -giving juices necessary for your spiritual growth as well as mine.

Your ancestors knew this well, those who initiated the wave of emigration. As Sienkiewicz writes in the novella "Za chlebem": "They felt that although the wind carried them there, like miserable leaves , their family tree was not the side they were going to , but the one they had left."

Putting down roots in the new land, your ancestors maintained a deep connection with their homeland, maintained the awareness of their belonging to the faith, culture, tradition of their fathers, and at the same time remained in the great community of the Universal Church . They built Catholic churches - how can we not mention here the first Polish church , built in honour of Our Lady of Częstochowa in the last century by Polish settlers and still existing in the town of Wilno, and what is more interesting - Wilno in Kashubia; and in turn this church under the invocation of St. Maximilian Kolbe, which you recently built in the Archdiocese of Toronto. The emigrants also built Catholic schools , created Polish and youth organizations , such as the Polish National Union , the Canadian Polish Congress, the Polish Scouting Association , established Polish research centers , libraries, museums, published books , newspapers and magazines. These centers and institutions were established at different times and had different tasks to fulfill , but all of them grew out of a sense of spiritual bond and community with the Polish Nation and the Church .

5. In preserving this spiritual bond with the nation, in preserving the faith of the fathers, Polish tradition and culture, a great role was and still is played by the family, the Catholic family, supported by the parish and the school . The Polish family in exile deserves words of recognition for not losing the spirit of marital and parental life in the new environment , for preserving its identity and for being able to bring up entire generations in the spirit of Christian ideals and virtues .

In today's materialistic world , the family encounters many difficulties . The situation in which it finds itself often creates confusion in the understanding of the authority of parents and the position of children, as well as in the transmission of essential human and Christian values .

Dear Compatriots, may the family remain the object of your special care, the family growing out of the sacrament, out of the sacramental union of a man and a woman who have discovered in themselves a common vocation to the life of marriage and parenthood. Preserving the family from the dangers of the contemporary world is a great task of the entire Church , a great task of the pastoral care of the Polish diaspora, a great task of the entire Polonia and of each compatriot.

What the family is like , such will be the face of the entire Canadian Polonia, such will be the person growing from the "Polish tree" in Canada .

6. During today's meeting, I am thinking in a special way about the young people , about that generation of my compatriots in Canada who in a few years will take responsibility for the life of religious and Polish communities.

My dear friends, I turn to you with a deep need of my heart.

A dozen or so years ago, at the end of my visit to this country, I addressed a special letter to those who then constituted Polish youth in Canada . I believe that the fundamental ideas of that letter have not lost their relevance . Accept them anew today as the thoughts of the Pope . They focus on the question : who are you ?

To be yourself ! How important this is for man, for contemporary man , especially for contemporary youth , who sometimes with great difficulty seek how to authentically express and confirm themselves . I therefore wish you , today 's youth , that you may remain above all yourselves , in that you too may be able to discover and express that special heritage of belonging to the nation which your parents have passed on to you. I also wish you to seek God ardently , to commune with Him in prayer , discovering the true beauty of the world and the ultimate meaning of your humanity . Know how to read the life calling that God has written in your hearts and through this contribute as much as possible to the life of the country that so hospitably welcomed your parents or grandparents. Try not to impoverish this heritage that older generations have labored to preserve . May you , young people , not disappoint the hopes placed in you.

You, who have recently arrived in Canada with the intention of staying permanently or temporarily , are entering the life of a community that can impress with its material development, organization of life , scope, wealth, civilization . It is often the case that the newcomer faces all these achievements as " weaker " , dependent on others, poorer . This situation can easily lead to frustration .

Dear Compatriots, know how to correctly assess what is in you and around you ! Know how to value , distinguish , choose ! Know how to respect also the good that is in yourselves and do not erase the paths that lead to your homeland. Know how to use the rich experience of others. Know how to join in a creative, constructive way in the life of this new society with which your fates have been linked . Above all , preserve the gift of faith and a living bond with the great community of the People of God , which is the Church of Christ throughout the earth : both in Poland and in Canada.

8. When I was here fifteen years ago, I had much more time for the Canadian Polish community. If I remember correctly, there were two weeks or even a little more . We could meet , talk , travel from place to place, meet new Polish community centers . Today we have to reduce all this to one meeting in Toronto. I refer to those meetings fifteen years ago because they gave me a lot. I encountered first of all that — then new — wave of Polish emigration , which came here after World War II , finding , not without difficulty, but effectively, increasingly serious positions in Canadian society .

The Second World War is a great chapter in the history of Europe and humanity . It is a great chapter in the history of our Homeland. We know how many victims this Second World War cost us , how heavily we paid for the independence that Poland regained after the First World War in 1918. Six million victims. This is a great testimony , this is a great contribution : a contribution - at the same time - to the work of some kind of regeneration of the world, of the renewal of the human family.

When World War II was ending , the nations , especially those who had experienced the most cruelty , violence , concentration camps, hatred of man for man , contempt for man , considered their first task to be to adopt a joint Declaration of Human Rights . And that was a great event. Everyone understood that if humanity and nations were to protect themselves in the future from such cataclysms as World War II , they must place the question of man , human dignity , human rights at the center . We talked a lot about this subject fifteen years ago with the hosts of my visit to the Polish community in Canada.

When today, for several days now, I am driving through various cities in this country, I very often come across banners with the inscription "Solidarity " . So I think that , especially after what the President of the Canadian Polish Congress said at the beginning , it is necessary for me to express what these inscriptions, these banners in various cities in Canada, on various routes of the Pope's visits , mean .

My dear Brothers and Sisters, my dear Compatriots, they mean that over the course of 40 years, and especially in the eighties , the Polish nation has tried to add content to that Declaration of Human Rights that is homogeneous with the Declaration of Human Rights . The inscription "Solidarity " is a symbol of precisely such an order in which man is at the center. Human dignity and human rights are the criteria for creating organizations of work and culture, social life , the life of the national community. And that is why we treat with reverence this word , this symbol, this reality . I think that on the historical path that our nation is following, which is not an easy path , especially in recent generations , this word adds some uniform content , constitutes a stage resulting from the same premises , serving the same aspirations that animate our history . For we want to be ourselves and live our own lives .

9. Dear Compatriots, our meeting today falls on the day when the Church celebrates the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross . In the Cross , which was once a sign of man's shame , it is man who has been "exalted" most of all . Man of all times and generations . Of all nations, languages , cultures and races. Every man . Each one of us .

I therefore pray to God that the Cross may be for you and your future generations a sign of salvation and the elevation of man . The point is that man should not perish , absorbed entirely in the " world " , but have eternal life in God. That is, the Cross . That is why it is a sign of salvation. The eternal love of the Father, expressed in the history of humanity through the Cross , through the Cross Sacrifice of the Son, has come closer to each one of us through Mary , the Mother of Christ, who persevered to the end under the Cross . And that is why she is able to introduce us most fully into the divine and at the same time human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption accomplished by the Cross . For no one has been led into the depths of this mystery by God himself as Mary has .

Today, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord , and at the same time on the eve of Our Lady of Sorrows , our thoughts and hearts, like the poet's words , hasten to the One who defends Bright Częstochowa and the Ostra Brama . Before Her we stand in spirit, before Her we repeat the words that we learned from the great Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński , during the Millennium of the Baptism: Mary, Queen of Poland, I am with you, I remember you , I watch!

Dear Brothers and Sisters, the Cross is a sign of our faith, our hope, our love . At the foot of the Cross let us place our heartfelt prayers, trusting that they will be heard .

[ 1 ] Cfr. 1 Thess . 1, 2-4.

[ 2 ] Cfr. Letter to priests , September 15, 1969.

© Copyright 1984 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana