Lecturer – Ben Stancati

The Rev Robert F. Houlihan, S.J. Educators Series, 2014, number 2.0

Nowa Huta, The Birthplace of a New Evangelization

Taken from a piece written by Krzysztof Mazur, a member of Our Lady of Mercy Council 15128 in Krakow, the article appeared in the April 21014 edition of Columbia magazine

On April 27, 2014, Blessed Pope John Paul II will be declared a saint. As it turns out the date will be significant for a number of coincidental reasons. Yet as his eminence said in 1982, “In the designs of providence there are no mere coincidences.” Fifty-four years ago to the date, the residents of Nowa Huta, a steel mill town in the eastern district of the ancient city of Krakow, came together to defend their right for religious expression, when communist officials decided to build a school instead of a church in the town square. In an act of civil disobedience, the residents of the city stood against the might of atheistic communism and the power of the then Soviet Union. For a young auxiliary bishop by the name of Karol Wojtyla, and the citizens of Nowa Huta, the events of the day, now known as “the defense of the cross,” would come to symbolize the beginning of the “new evangelization.” In 1979, a year after being elected pope, Karol Wojtyla traveled to his native Poland, yet was not allowed to visit Nowa Huta. In his homily given at the nearby village of Mogila, the pope noted that the history of Nowa Huta, the birthplace of a new evangelization, had been written by the way of the Holy Cross. As John Paul II is canonized a saint, we Christians should look to both his life and the people of Nowa Huta for inspiration, as we continue down the long and difficult journey of defending the cross.