Pope Bids Farewell to His Native Poland

Concluding a nostalgic journey home, Pope John Paul II prayed Monday at a mountain monastery for the strength to carry on with his work, then bid his nation an emotional farewell.

“At the end, I must say, it’s so sad to leave,” John Paul, 82, said in his final words at Krakow’s John Paul II Airport before flying back to Rome.

The crowd responded with chants of “Stay with us” and “Come back.”

The stooped and ailing pontiff, who suffers the trembling hands and sometimes slurred speech of Parkinson’s disease, expressed hope that he will indeed visit again. “Many have wished to meet me, although not all were able to do so,” he said in a departure speech. “Maybe next time....

“In my spirit, I embrace the whole of my beloved homeland,” he said, before climbing the stairs of his airplane on his own strength, an aide at one arm.

Earlier, while celebrating Mass at a mountain sanctuary that he often visited as a boy, John Paul prayed to the Virgin Mary for his nation and himself:

“Open the hearts of the prosperous to the needs of the poor and the suffering. Enable the unemployed to find an employer. Help those who are poverty-stricken to find a home.... Obtain also for me strength in body and spirit, that I may carry out to the end the mission given me.”

The pontiff’s failing health has prompted speculation that he might resign, but he has repeatedly expressed his desire and intention to carry on.

The Kalwaria Zebrzydowska monastery was one of many stops in this pilgrimage that brought the pontiff to places dear to him from his youth and early career. Monks said that during one childhood visit there by the future pope after the death of his mother, his father pointed to a painting of the Virgin Mary and told the boy: “This is your mother now.”

During his visit Monday, John Paul repeated a request he made Sunday at a Krakow church, asking his listeners to pray for him “when I am alive and after I die.”

John Paul spoke repeatedly during his trip of the impact on ordinary people of Poland’s difficult transition from communism to a market economy. Unemployment is at 18%, and economic growth is running at only about 1% after a period of much better performance in the 1990s.

“It’s a very difficult period in Poland now, but you can see there are more and more people gathering around the pope,” said Ludmila Gzowski, 50, an engineer who attended the morning Mass. “I think people are searching for guidance, for something normal in their lives, some security.”

With the fall of communism a decade ago, Poles “are a people who are kind of thrown into deep water,” added her husband, Tadeusz, 50. “We have a lot of possibilities. But somehow we don’t always know how to choose the right road. The pope is a guiding light. From his words, we can know how to act.”

The biggest event of this pilgrimage, which began Friday, was an open-air Sunday Mass that John Paul conducted for more than 2 million people, the largest crowd ever assembled in Poland to hear him.

On Monday, the pontiff also flew by helicopter over his hometown of Wadowice, circling three times over the main square and a crowd estimated at 12,000, with many people waving white-and-yellow Vatican flags. The papal helicopter also flew above the Tatra Mountains, where he loved to hike and ski in his younger days. People in the mountains lighted bonfires Monday to greet him.

In his departure speech, John Paul expressed the hope that Poland will not simply become more like Western Europe but will transmit spiritual values to its neighbors.

“I do hope that by cherishing those values, the Polish nation ... will find its due place in the structures of the European Union and not only will not lose its own identity but will enrich this continent and the whole world,” he said.

That comment could be seen as a political gift to the Polish government, which is seeking more active Vatican support for the country’s EU membership bid. Although a clear majority of Poles favor EU entry, backers of the effort fear an erosion of public support due to frustration over some of the likely terms, including rights of foreigners to buy land, temporary limits on the free movement of labor and lower-than-hoped-for farm subsidies.

After becoming pope in 1978, John Paul played a key role in undermining communism here, largely by inspiring Poles to seek change. But he has not hesitated to criticize shortcomings in the country’s new democratic and capitalist system.

In bidding John Paul farewell, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the Polish primate, noted that it is often said Poles “will hear and applaud but not listen to the pope.” Such comments refer to practices such as widespread consumerism and corruption in a country that is nominally 90% Catholic.

But John Paul “has made an immeasurable contribution to this nation,” Glemp said.

He then told the story of how once, while teaching a religious class, he noticed a boy who “was not paying attention.”

“However, when asked, he was able to tell me precisely what I was talking about,” Glemp continued. “It seems to me that we resemble this boy a little. He was listening in another way. We, too, more often than not, leaf through albums about the Holy Father rather than read texts by him. This may be true, but we know what the Holy Father means.”

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Ela Kasprzycka of The Times’ Warsaw Bureau contributed to this report.