Farewell Ceremony in Poland (23 June 1983)

On Thursday, 23 June 1983, the Holy Father bade goodbye to Poland from the Balice Airport in Krakow, expressing his thanks to the state authorities for their “efficient and careful organization,” and with particular mention and encouragement of the Polish labor force.  

1. Distinguished Professor President of the Council of State
Distinguished Representatives of the Authorities

I would like to thank the President for the words he spoke a short while ago, on his own behalf and on behalf of the authorities of the Polish People's Republic.

I am grateful that during the past few days I have been able to visit my homeland, carrying out pastoral service as Bishop of Rome in various places. The fact that this Bishop of Rome is a Pole gives rise to a special occasion for his presence among his compatriots , especially at such important moments as the Jubilee of Jasna Góra.

At the end of this visit, I would like to address the State Authorities and the local authorities that depend on them in Warsaw, Skiernievice (Niepokalanów), Czestochowa, Poznan, Katowice, Wroclaw, Opole (Lesnica-Gora Sz Anny) and Kraków, to express once again my gratitude for all that they have done to ensure that this visit could take place in accordance with its special nature. I am aware of the amount of effort and effort that has been expended to this end. I would like to express my gratitude to the services of all kinds that have ensured order and safety, both for myself and for the pilgrims, and to the aeronautics, health, transport, communications, media and other services. I think in particular of all these services and of all the people who have accompanied me and continue to accompany me on the itinerary of my pilgrimage. I express my gratitude to them for their efficient and careful organisation. I sincerely hope that my thanks will reach all institutions and all environments at this time , and I hope even more intensely that this "I cordially thank you" will find its place, without exception, for each person who took part in carrying out this visit.

2. Your Eminence, I thank you for the words of farewell which you have just spoken, also on behalf of the Episcopate and the Church in Poland. And I thank the Cardinal Metropolitan of Krakow and all the representatives of the Episcopate and the Church for their presence.

I consider it a special grace from God, a special sign of Providence, that I have been given the opportunity to take part in this Jubilee of Jasna Góra, a national jubilee: to have been able, after six centuries of the presence of the Mother of God in her effigy of Jasna Góra, to sing together with you the Polish "Te Deum laudamus". To have been able, together with you, to invite Christ with his Mother to this Cana of Galilee, for the years and generations to come. To be able to do so while rejoicing with my compatriots for the first Polish Saint of the second millennium, Maximilian Kolbe , and for the new Blesseds proclaimed here.

I consider it a special gift from Our Lady of Jasna Góra that I have been granted the right to go on pilgrimage to Her shrine both from Warsaw and Niepokalanow, and from Poznan, Wroclaw and St. Anne's Hill, and finally from my hometown, Kraków.

Allow me to recall, in addition, a gift from the Polish land: today I was able to see the Tatra Mountains up close and breathe the air of my youth.

3. I would like to repeat once again what I said when I arrived. Although my visit took place along the routes just mentioned, it was also intended for the entire country and for all my compatriots . Just as on the day of my arrival I greeted in a special way the cities and places which were not on the itinerary of my pilgrimage this time, so now I wish to bid them a special farewell , thanking especially those who sought to meet the Pope in other places, sometimes travelling endless kilometres.

4. During my pilgrimage in my homeland I have stressed more than once that Poland is the common good of the entire Nation and that all its sons and daughters must be open to this good, because such good requires constant and intense effort from the whole of society.

I very much hope that the accumulated difficulties will gradually be overcome, that the Poles will be able to fruitfully build their today and their tomorrow. The nation, in fact — as I said in Warsaw — must live and develop by its own strength.

As I leave, I wish once more to embrace this whole land with my eyes and my heart, I wish to turn my gaze to the great area of ​​Polish labour; to be near every labour bench, large and small, in the cultivated land and in the land of industry, near the bench of creative labour; wherever man works; I wish to find myself near every man of labour.

I hope that this work will incorporate the entire moral order proper to this sphere of human life; that all, in complete inner peace, with the safeguarding of rights and with respect for the dignity of man and his work, may find and deepen, in mutual trust, the meaning of this fundamental vocation of man, which is precisely human work. This meaning is also the deepest and most effective motive for mobilizing man from within.

I also hope that work under these conditions will be carried out in the spirit of social love that I spoke of in Katowice. That in it man will find himself and through it serve others and the good of his own country.

I wish and pray to my country that this Polish work will introduce the Gospel of work: both that which ensures man, his dignity and his rights, and that which obliges him, which is a matter of conscience and the problem of the sense of responsibility. Rights and duties are closely linked together.

I personally hope that the Authorities of our State will build the common good of the Fatherland and ensure that Poland (the Polish People's Republic) has the place it deserves among the Nations of Europe and the world.

5. Bidding farewell to my compatriots in Krakow , in the city that has seen the difficult times of my homeland, but which has also witnessed the periods of its greatest splendor, I hope that once again, under the protection of Our Lady of Jasna Góra, good will manifest itself stronger than evil in the Polish land and achieve victory.

And for this intention, I pray incessantly.

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