On April 2, 2005, Karol J\u00f3zef Wojty\u0142a departed for the House of the Father at the age of 84 and after 20 years of pontificate.<\/p>\n
I have to confess that I find it strange to speak of Saint John Paul II in the past tense<\/strong>, because he is a Pope who has remained very present in my life during all these years after his death. He is my favorite saint, whose intercession I ask for in times of need<\/strong> and to whom I have entrusted many dear people in the most difficult moments of life. We Christians often say that death is not the end, and Saint John Paul II is a good example of this<\/strong>, because he continued to do good works for us from heaven.<\/p>\n A Polish Pope against communism<\/big><\/p>\n Today I also want to remember one of the greatest things this Pope did during his long and fruitful pontificate. When the then Archbishop of Krakow was elected Pope, Europe was going through difficult times.<\/strong> Half of our continent was still living under the yoke of a totalitarian ideology that had oppressed the various peoples who had been subjected to the dictatorship of the Soviet Union for six decades.<\/p>\n The Soviet dictatorship greeted the election of John Paul II, a Polish Pope<\/b>, with fear, because Poland was precisely the country that had most tenaciously resisted communism. Let us remember that Poland achieved the first major military defeat of communism in 1920<\/a>, preventing its spread throughout the rest of Europe for almost two decades, a Polish victory known as the \"Miracle of the Vistula\"<\/strong>, because it was achieved on August 15 of that year, coinciding with the feast of the Assumption of Mary. Poland was a deeply Catholic people and had in its faith the deep root of its national identity.<\/strong><\/p>\n On September 17, 1980, this faith and resistance of the Polish people against oppression were embodied in the founding of the Catholic trade union Solidarno\u015b\u0107 (Solidarity), an anti-communist and non-violent movement<\/strong> that received the support of the new Pope. The protests organized in Poland by Solidarno\u015b\u0107 led the Polish communist dictatorship, a mere puppet of Moscow, to declare Martial Law on December 13, 1981<\/a>, a period of harsh communist repression that was in effect until July 22, 1983. During that time, 56 people were killed and more than 10,000 were sent to prisons and detention centers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
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