In this period stamp issue, we can get a great sense of how the government decided to play the 1979 visit of John Paul II. If you can put yourself into their position, I think they did a pretty good job. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe. take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
As a frequent stamp issuer, tied in to the collector market, Poland could not have let such an important event go by without an issue. The stamps that came out were oversized, included a souvenir sheet. The presentation was respectful to the man, but treated him as a man. At least it was not done as a foolish man wearing funny clothes spouting old superstitions.
Todays stamp is issue A723, an 8.4 Zloty stamp issued by Polans on June 2nd, 1979, the first day of Pope John Paul II’s eight day visit. With lead times this meant the stamp designers had to imagine what his trip would look like. Interestingly the period American news articles I read made no mention of the Pope visiting an Auschwitz Memorial as shown on the stamp, though I have no doubt he did. Both of the stories were in Jewish owned papers, so it was interesting omission. This was a two stamp and souvinir sheet issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents, cancelled to order.
The officially atheist communist regime had been in power for thirty three years in 1979. Pope John Paul had grown up in Poland experiencing the early pre war state, the wartime occupations and the early years of the then current regime. He had then spent many years based in Rome. What the Polish regime was very worried about after his rise in 1978 was that he would become a troublesome figure promoting disloyally and even insurrection toward the stagnant state.
The regime pointed to the then recent example of Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious Iranian leader who preached insurrection for years from a Paris exile. His return to Iran in 1979 was leading the successful revolution.
These type thoughts have a great deal to do with the image on the stamp. It portrays what happened at Auschwitz as a moral failure not just of the occupying perpetrators but as a moral failing of the local Catholic religious in not preventing it. This makes sense if you remember that the Polish communist regime was very heavily under the influence of secular Jews. They understood that the vast majority Catholic country needed to become more secular to be more compatible with the regime imposed on them and a major moral failing of Catholics was a good thing to remind, over and over.
A Pope is used to playing nice with a regime with which it has major disagreements He was received and appeared with communist leaders who in tern tied their respect for the Church to the respect they held for all their countrymen including believers. The Pope did get in a few mild jabs that man was not just a means of production and when venerating war losses, he mentioned Poland being abandoned by their Soviet ally when Warsaw rose up against the Nazis. This culminated at the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier where a Polish military band tried to play a military march while the crowd was moved to sing Ava Maria.
Well my drink is empty and I will get to pour two more to toast Pope John Paul II for how he handled himself and the communist regime for taking the chance and letting the visit happen. Come again on Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.