Pro-Solidarity Protests Broken Up After Pope’s Appearance

Two pro-Solidarity demonstrations were broken up by Polish police Wednesday night after appearances here by Pope John Paul II, and the official Polish news agency said that one policeman was injured in clashes between groups of predominantly young people and the police.

The confrontations were the first that have occurred on the Pope’s third visit to his native Poland, which began Monday.

A crowd of a few thousand, composed mostly of students, later gathered outside the residence of the Bishop of Krakow, where John Paul was spending the night, and chanted for the pontiff to appear before them.

He answered their pleas, speaking to them briefly from a second-story balcony overlooking a park where the students were gathered behind a barricade.

Chanting for Pope

The youths remained at the park into the early hours of today, chanting for a reappearance by the Pope despite urgings by priests to disperse and allow the pontiff to retire for the evening.

Earlier Wednesday, John Paul chose southern Poland’s rural center of Tarnow, in the heart of one of the nation’s leading agricultural areas, to chide the Polish government for failing to carry out agreements reached in 1981 with farmers of the Solidarity movement.

The Pope, on the third day of his present pilgrimage, addressed a throng of perhaps 800,000 in a field outside of Tarnow and drew prolonged applause when he spoke of the farmers’ “struggle for existence” and their “second-class status.”

Later in the day, at a prayer meeting in a sun-drenched meadow here in Krakow, the pontiff again took up his theme of encouragement for Poland’s oft-discouraged people.

“We must not succumb to depression. We must not be dominated by frustration--spiritual or social,” he said in a speech that was interrupted 17 times by the people of Krakow, where he once served as archbishop.

The now-outlawed Solidarity movement has been suppressed since December, 1981, but many Solidarity banners were waved Wednesday by the crowd at Krakow, estimated at between 1 and 2 million. One banner bore the message “Catholicism Yes, Communism No.”

In Tarnow, the Pope referred to the agreements reached between farmers and the government in February, 1981, that would have given farmers a greater voice in running their affairs.

“It would seem that in the present time these agreements should not only not be passed over in silence but should find their full realization,” John Paul declared.

As the applause spread across the rolling fields, he departed from his prepared text to add, “The Pope cannot ignore this, much less because he is a Polish Pope.”

A handful of banners for Rural Solidarity, the independent trade union established by farmers, were scattered through the vast crowd, but the pontiff did not mention the organization by name. Similarly, he did not attack the government directly but referred to the difficult relations between farmers and those “who are responsible for the socioeconomic life of the Polish countryside.”

He said that rural Poland is undergoing a complex economic and moral crisis.

“How easy it would be,” he said, “to list errors committed in the past and those which continue, bearing witness to the underrating of agriculture, which has become an area of ill-considered experiments and even of discrimination. And yet farmers are not only those who nourish but also those who constitute an element of stability and permanence.”

The Pope cited the writings of Polish statesman and writer Wincenty Witos, who said that Polish peasants represent the strength of the nation and “the integrity of the native land.”

“May Polish agriculture emerge from the many threats and cease to be condemned merely to the struggle for existence,” he concluded. “May it experience the manifold help of the state. Many deformations of country life find their source in the second-class status of the farmer, as worker and as citizen. . . . The model of the farmer, or rather of the peasant worker who labors with little results and well beyond his own strength, should be replaced by the model of a profitable, independent producer. . . . “

It was the third straight day that John Paul had voiced carefully modulated criticism of the Polish government. On his arrival Monday in Warsaw, he reminded the Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, of the importance of human rights. On Tuesday, he referred to the martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who was slain by secret policemen in 1984.

The Pope made another reference Wednesday to the murdered priest, whose churchyard grave in Warsaw has become a shrine to the followers of Solidarity.

Speaking at vespers in Tarnow, to an assembly of Polish clerics, he paid tribute to “the pastoral tradition of Polish priests, whether in the country itself or in the midst of those deported to Siberia during the times when the country was enslaved.”

“It is the priest,” he went on, “who shares the lot of his own country, the priest who is close to all its experiences, the priest who always remains nearby.” One such priest, he said, was “Father Jerzy of the parish of Saint Stanislaw Kostka in Warsaw.”

The pontiff encouraged priestly work done on behalf of the poor, the weak and the persecuted, and went on to say: “New times, new conditions demand new forms of this service.”

The Pope’s words, seeming to encourage social action on the part of priests in Poland, were not likely to please the government, which has often been at odds with the church, for it was closely aligned with the Solidarity movement. His comments prompted speculation among Poles that more forceful statements might be expected today when the pontiff reaches the seaport of Gdansk and meets with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.

Solidarity Banners Removed

Police concentrations around the cities on the Pope’s tour have been heavy, and officers have forcibly removed some Solidarity banners from crowds waiting to greet him. Until Wednesday night, however, there had been no real demonstrations. Observers believe that any potential future confrontations between demonstrators and the police are most likely in Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity, and at the Popieluszko church in Warsaw, where the Pope is expected to make a brief stop Sunday.

Strong political expressions had not been expected in the Tarnow area, a region of Poland that has a priest for every 1,000 inhabitants and is described by Poles as being particularly devout in its character.

John Paul arrived in Tarnow on Tuesday night an hour behind schedule after low clouds delayed his helicopter flight from Lublin. The people of Tarnow, as well as hundreds of thousands from surrounding towns and villages, waited without complaint in the intermittent rain for a 10-second glimpse of the Pope’s passage.

Throughout the night, a constant stream of pilgrims passed through the city on foot, on the way to the fields at the edge of town where the pontiff officiated at Mass on Wednesday morning. Most of them were soaking wet and ankle deep in mud when the foggy dawn came and the rain finally stopped.

For many of the area’s residents, the day’s proudest moment came with the Pope’s beatification of a young girl of the region, Carolina Kozka, who is said to have died defending herself against the advances of a Czarist Russian soldier.

John Paul said she was an example of “a mortal test of faith, of purity and of strength,” and added, “Let us follow the tracks of this girl, who tried to resist the armed aggressor, who sought ways of saving her life and dignity in the woods near her native village.”