117 STAT. 2960
CONCURRENT RESOLUTIONS—NOV. 19, 2003
wake up during the night and find my father on his knees
- * * his example was in a way my first seminary’’;
Whereas Pope John Paul II was enrolled in Jagiellonian University in Cracow in 1939, which was closed by the Nazis during their occupation of Poland; Whereas Pope John Paul II experienced the brutishness of a godless totalitarian regime, which sought to eradicate the history and culture of a proud people and sent many of his professors, friends, and millions of Polish Jews to camps where they were systematically murdered; Whereas Pope John Paul II was himself arrested by Nazi occupation forces in 1942, but his life was spared because of his employment at a limestone quarry, work deemed essential to the war effort; Whereas Pope John Paul II courageously defied the Nazi occupation forces, risking his own life to protect Polish Jews from persecution, helping to organize the underground ‘‘Rhapsodic Theatre’’, which he intended to be ‘‘a theatre * * * where the national spirit will burn’’, writing two religious plays considered subversive to the Nazi regime, and enrolling in the clandestine seminary of Archbishop Sapieha of Cracow, where he studied religion, theology, and philosophy; Whereas the Nazi occupation of Poland was ended only by the imposition of a communist era of occupation that sought to subjugate Polish citizens, extinguish Polish nationalism, and subjected the exercise of individual religious liberty to the control of godless Stalinist rulers; Whereas Pope John Paul II was ordained in 1946, later becoming a Professor of Ethics and Chaplain at the Catholic University of Lublin, the only Catholic university behind the Iron Curtain, where he, again at great personal risk, initiated activities that helped to preserve the intellectual, cultural, and historical richness of his homeland and protected the integrity and independence of the Catholic Church in Poland; Whereas Pope John Paul II was an articulate and outspoken advocate for religious freedom and Christian humanism at Vatican Council II, asserting that the Church could not claim religious liberty for itself unless it was willing to concede it to others; Whereas Pope John Paul II, upon returning to his homeland, frequently cited the Council’s declaration that religious freedom was ‘‘the first of human rights’’, a phrase embraced by Polish Catholics in their struggle against the hegemony of the communist regime; Whereas Pope John Paul II, on October 16, 1978, was elected the 264th Pope, making history by becoming the first-ever Slavic Pope and the first non-Italian Pope in more than 400 years; Whereas October 22, 2003, marked the Silver Jubilee of His Holiness’ inauguration of his ministry as Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pastor of the Catholic Church, signifying Pope John Paul II’s completion of 25 years as the spiritual leader of more than 1,000,000,000 Catholic Christians around the world, including more than 66,000,000 Catholic Christians in the United States; Whereas Pope John Paul II was a unique, substantial, and historic catalyst in the demise of Soviet communism and the emancipation of hundreds of millions of people from totalitarian rule;
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