Pope meets Walesa as pilgrimage ends

Press, 24 June 1983, Page 6

Pope meets Walesa as pilgrimage ends

NZPA-Reuter Krakow Pope John Paul II is meeting the Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, on the final day of an eight-day pilgrimage to his homeland, after unscheduled talks yesterday with the Polish military ruler, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The official news agencj' P.A.P. summed up the Pope’s second meeting with the Communist Party chief—the first was last Friday—in a statement saying that the two men hoped for “peaceful and favourable development of social life in Poland.” But it gave little real idea of the substance of their talks.

General Jaruzelski may well be called to give a fuller account when he meets his fellow Soviet Bloc

leaders at a summit meeting of the Warsaw Pact allies which will be held in Moscow next week. Mystery surrounded Mr Walesa’s exact location although it was known that he had left his home in the Baltic port of Gdansk on his way to Krakow in the far south of the country. Some 5600 demonstrators chanted Mr Walesa’s name as they tried to march into the town centre from the industrial suburb of Nowa Huta yesterday after the Pope consecrated a church there in a ceremony that turned into one of the most emotional public events of his visit.

Security precautions, otherwise strict, collapsed as the relatively small crowd of 200,000 broke

through into press and guest sections, and after the Pope left they swarmed on to the steps of the altar. The police, arrayed in a mammoth convoy of almost 200 vehicles, warned the demonstrators that force would be used unless they dispersed. The demonstration ended peacefully, although reluctantly, with jeers at the police. But big crowds gathered later at the Archbishop’s palace, the Pope’s residence during his stay, and chanted: “What happened at the Wawel,” the former Royal palace where the Pope and General Jaruzelski had met.

The Pope declined comment, telling them only that they should go to sleep.