My second comment following the article Benefits boom pushes Polish populists to victory by Oliver Moody in The Times, 14 October 2019.
Cardinal Wojtyla wouldn’t have advanced to the top of the church hierarchy without Communist support. The church in Poland quickly lost its independence after WWII. The Communist control was total.
In October 2004, the Red Army Choir gave a special performance in the Vatican during the celebration of the 26th anniversary of his pontificate. The last song performed that evening was “Oka”, the anthem of the Polish Communist army units formed in the Soviet Union under the Soviet control. There is nothing accidental about it. The performance was televised to Italy and Russia. Press correspondents noted that the pope was ‘visibly moved’. Ha ha. Visibly moved, sure.
He did come to the Vatican from a ‘faraway place’ indeed as he declared in his speech right after becoming the pope.
He did not want to pray for the Polish officers murdered by the Soviet NKVD in Katyn in 1940.
‘Very instrumental in the downfall of the Iron Curtain’. These are just empty slogans.