"You are people. Stop crawling on your bellies."

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that only giants are able to connect eras, the past with the future, and pull the threads of history. He called them aristocrats - of course, not on the basis of belonging to a noble family, but aristocrats of the intellect, combining the power of the mind, the scale of personality and willpower, which, in combination, allow them to pull humanity forward, always resisting, always looking back. The present is always burdened by the past; history is the fertilizer that nourishes future eras; without it they cannot grow, but it is also a viscous, addictive slurry mixed with blood and corpses. And especially the history of the 20th century (due to the progress of technology). That is why peoples and countries so often move in circles, kneading the same dirt. “Only strong personalities are able to endure history; the weak are completely crushed by it,” Nietzsche wrote. Actually, this is the philosophy of leadership. Weak leaders choose from the past, often vile, its symbols - hymns, monuments, phraseology, believing that these stilts (or help - as you like) are necessary for their subjects to advance into the bright day after tomorrow: they say, it stinks, but it stinks to its own. Result: intoxication, coma, death, in the sense of a return to the past from which they tried to get out. The strong, on the contrary, do not seek help from history, do not try to cover up the dirt (Galich: “And the dirt became dirty white under the painter’s brush”), and are not afraid to say: the past stinks. These people don’t stir up mud, but they get out of it and help others get out.

The Poles were incredibly lucky: Karol Wojtyla, also known as Pope John Paul II, was precisely the man who had the moral right, on the one hand, and the personal courage, on the other, to tell the people among whom he lived most of his life that their the past is terrible. In his speeches, books, encyclicals and apostolic letters addressed to a billion Catholics living on all continents of the planet, the Pope identified two main tragedies of the twentieth century: the first is lack of freedom, which separates a person from his essence, the second is xenophobia, religious and ethnic intolerance, which turns people into devils who destroy each other. Eight months after his enthronement as head of the Roman Catholic Church, Karol Wojtyla returned to his homeland and told the crowd of millions of Poles who greeted him in Warsaw: “You are people. You have self-esteem. Stop crawling on your bellies." And this was probably the most important thing that he tried to convey to the then dumb slaves of Eastern Europe: freedom, the right to choose are given to a person from birth, and no one except God can take this right away from a person. Freedom of choice is the only thing that distinguishes a person from an animal. Without it, there is no man as the crown of creation, therefore, there is no dignity - animals do not have it. And if so, then the authorities can treat their people not as citizens, but as serfs, whose lives are worth exactly as much as the life of a sheep in the slaughterhouse. “Aren’t you afraid that the authorities will imprison you?” - Karol Wojtyla was asked when he was a Polish cardinal. “They fear me more than I fear them,” answered the future Pope. “Stop crawling on your bellies” - this means stop being afraid, stop waiting for freedom to come to you from above: this is how first a trade union appeared in Poland, and then the Solidarity movement, which swept away the communist government ten years later. Today Poland is the most successful of the post-communist countries that embarked on the path of transformation in the late eighties.

Deciding to publicly discuss the second problem of the twentieth century - religious and ethnic intolerance - for the Pole Wojtyła was probably no easier, and perhaps even more difficult, than telling his fellow citizens that they were slaves. Nevertheless, John Paul II became the first pontiff who not only came to the synagogue in Rome, but also uttered words of repentance for the fact that the Roman Catholic Church, if not complicit, then at least became a silent and dispassionate observer of how During the war, the Nazis destroyed entire people in Europe - including in his native Poland, where the ovens of Treblinka and Auschwitz burned day and night and where more than three million Jews were killed. He wrote in 1998: “The crime that is known as the Shoah (Catastrophe - E.A.) remains an indelible stain on the history of a century that is drawing to a close. Remembrance of the Holocaust is an essential element for building the future.” The pope defined anti-Semitism as a sin shameful for a Christian and contrary to the “spirit of Christianity” because, he quoted the words of the Apostle Paul, the founder of Judaism, Abraham, “was also the father of our faith.”

Freedom and tolerance as necessary conditions for the survival of humanity - it was with this message that Pope John Paul II traveled to 115 countries of the world, preached to people of different nationalities and different religions, met with presidents and dictators, extended his hand to the head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, and one of the last communist leaders , Cuban Fidel Castro. They listened to him. They did not dare to object to him. Hundreds of millions of people all over the planet believed him.

But the Pope was never invited to Russia. In Ukraine - it was, in Russia - not. Why is clear. Back in 1978, when Cardinal Wojtyla had just been elected head of the Vatican, Yuri Andropov, then the head of the KGB, warned the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee that the new Pope threatened many troubles. Since then they have been afraid. But now it’s probably better.

On October 16, 1978, Archbishop of Krakow Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope under the title of John Paul II. He became the first non-Italian to serve as the highest representative of the Roman Catholic Church since 1522. The pontificate of John Paul II was the third longest in the centuries-old history of the Roman Catholic Church (after the reign of St. Peter and Blessed Pius IX) and one of the most eventful.

On May 13, 1981, a Turkish nationalist from the Gray Wolves terrorist organization, Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II and seriously wounded him in the abdomen and arm. Some time later, John Paul II visits the criminal in prison and forgives him.

May 28, 1982 - John Paul II visits Great Britain. For the first time in 450 years since the separation of the Anglican Church from the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope visited this country.

September 15, 1982 - Pope John Paul II receives Yasser Arafat.

April 13, 1986 - John Paul II visited the synagogue in Rome and greeted the Jews, whom he called "elder brothers." This is the first time the head of the Roman Catholic Church has visited the synagogue.

On December 1, 1989, the Pope received Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time at the Vatican.

On March 15, 1990, official relations with diplomatic status were established between the Vatican and the USSR.

January 1991 - John Paul II condemns the Gulf War.

On April 17, 1991, the Holy See appointed six bishops and apostolic administrators to Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

October 1992 - The Roman Catholic Church rehabilitates Galileo Galilei - 350 years after the scientist's death.

October 1993 – Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus is rehabilitated.

December 1993 – The Vatican and Israel sign a “fundamental agreement” (diplomatic).

May 1994 – In an apostolic letter, John Paul II rejects the service of women as priests.

December 1994 - Time magazine declares John Paul II "Person of the Year."

June 1996 - During a visit to Germany, Pope John Paul II admits that the Catholic Church bears some blame for the Reformation split, but refuses to reconsider the excommunication of Martin Luther.

On April 12, 1997, John Paul II travels to Sarajevo, where he speaks of the war as a drama and challenge for Europe. Mines were discovered along the route of the papal cortege.

August 1997 - Pope John Paul II acknowledges the church's involvement in the massacre of Huguenots in France during the Night of St. Bartholomew on August 24, 1573.

January 1998 – Pope John Paul II decides to open the archives of the Vatican Inquisition.

April 1999 - The Vatican insists on its position condemning abortion, including for women who have been victims of rape, prompting criticism from the UN.

On May 13, 2000, the Roman Pontiff reveals the “third secret” of Our Lady of Fatima, related to the prediction of the attempt on his life in 1981.

On May 4, 2001, John Paul II visits Greece. This is the first visit of the head of the Roman Catholic Church to this country since 1054, when the Christian Church split into Catholic and Orthodox.

May 6, 2001 - John Paul II prays with Muslims in a Damascus mosque in Syria.

April 23, 2002 - Following public revelations of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy, Pope John Paul II condemns pedophilia as a crime.

February 10, 2003 - John Paul II sends French Cardinal Roger Etcheguerai on a peace mission to Baghdad.

On April 17, 2003, John Paul II published the encyclical “Ecclesia de Eucharistia” (Church on Communion), in which he again prohibits representatives of different Christian denominations from sharing the sacrament of Holy Communion.

November 5, 2003, the pontiff receives Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Vatican

On August 27, 2004, the Pope donated to the Russian Orthodox Church a valuable copy of the icon of the Kazan Mother of God, which was kept in his personal chapel.

On February 1, 2005, John Paul II was rushed to the Gemelli clinic in Rome due to acute laryngotracheitis, complicated by spasmodic phenomena.

On February 23, 2005, the last book written by the Pope, Memory and Identity, appeared on the shelves of bookstores in Italy.

On February 24, 2005, the pontiff was re-hospitalized, during which he underwent a tracheotomy

On March 13, 2005, the Pope left the hospital and returned to the Vatican, but for the first time he was unable to directly participate in the Holy Week services.

On March 27, 2005, the pontiff tried to address the faithful after Easter Mass from the window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter's Square, but was unable to utter a word

On March 30, John Paul II made his last public appearance, but was unable to greet the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican.

On April 2 at 23:37 the Vatican announced the death of the pontiff.