WORLD: MATIAS E. RUIZ

Destruction: John Paul II, the Communism, Pope Francis and the Bolivarian Axis

¨Coincidence is the word we use when we can´t see the levers and pulleys¨ (Emma Bull, American writer)

25 de Marzo de 2013

Commotion. This concept summarizes –for lack of a better word– the mood perceived within the Government of Argentina (GOA), just as the news of Jorge Mario Bergoglio elected as the new head of the Catholic Church was heard.

When analyzing major international events, limited minds –President Cristina Fernández Wilhelm included– conspired to rail against an alleged Twitter, Matías E. Ruizanonymously mounted plot aimed at promoting a cardinal sometimes qualified as a bitter enemy of Kirchnerism and its postulates. Other ruling party representatives –far more cautious– paid attention to soften their concern before the general public, since the problem arising from Francis' election refers to already inevitable comparisons between the current regional context and the role observed by Pope John Paul II during atheistic Communism combat embodied by former Soviet Union and its satellites.

A parallelism between the well-oiled global engineering opportunely designed by the former USSR and the current Bolivarian ideology of Latin American The Cold Warorbit including Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua may be regarded as an exaggeration. But sometimes, comparisons –though odious, as the saying goes– are inevitable.

So, now many will be able to bring back the supposed double intention exhibited by the 1978 Vatican conclave which enthroned Karol Wojtyla, then, John Paul II. Former Iron Curtain Poland did not represent a buffer zone itself –since it was bounded on the east by the also communist East Germany. In that sense, there were several arguments inviting to wonder about the actual reason leading to the election of a Polish pope: the free world was sowing the seeds of destruction within the Soviet bloc actual nucleus. Wojtyla was barely nineteen years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939; the Berlin’s National Socialist regime forced him, along with many others, into the uncomfortable world of hard labor, first as a quarryman and later as a factory worker in a chemical plant. But Wojtyla was famous for his fierce resistance to Nazi propaganda. He joined UNIA, the armed wing of a resistance movement which aimed at saving jews from becoming future victims of the Holocaust. Later on, he participated in secret seminaries that advocated of human dignity and freedom; in this underground environment he would encounter his new mentor, Adam Sapieha, Archbishop of Krakow. In 1963, Karol Wojtyla inherited such archdiocese, and from within he started to instruct Polish people about the arrival of Communist ideology, but always by promoting Christian humanism virtues, in contrast to the hearts and minds capture performed by the Communist apparatus. Future Pope’s activities were closely monitored by the UB, the Polish secret police; but Wojtyla’s virtues were by far underestimated: a 1967 secret report made public only in the late 80s, reads: 'It can be said that Wojtyla is one of the few intellectuals in the Polish Episcopate. He deftly reconciles popular religiosity and intellectual Catholicism (...) he has not been, so far, engaged in open anti-state activities. It seems that politics is not his strong suit; he is over-intellectualized (...) and he lacks organizational and leadership skills'.

Shortly after being appointed as head of the Catholic Church, Wojtyla –taking the papal name John Paul II– visited Poland in 1979. As a result of that journey, Lech Walesa, then an unemployed electrician received the necessary inspiration to form and constitute the trade-union movement of national scope, Solidarność (Solidarity). This trade union popularity caused such concerned in Moscow that a military intervention of the Warsaw Pact was planned to arrest its leaders. But John Paul II intervened: while supporting Walesa and his movement, he warned the Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev on the implications such an initiative would entail. An effective precedent was set by the papal warning; repression in Poland was no longer an option.

The state would be forced into negotiations with the trade union. Simultaneously, John Paul II influence would spread like wildfire over all Communist orbit John Paul II and Lech Walesacountries. Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek took over Wojtyla’s task, and became a fierce opponent of Moscow regime in former Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). The domino effect backed by John Paul II and the Vatican was essential for the first steps towards the Iron Curtain and, eventually, for the Communism collapse. With all its energy and enthusiasm in the arms race with the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ended up falling victim to what it had been ignoring, that is, consequences shared by spiritual emptiness and individual destruction which represented its own propaganda backbone. Of course, this factor was conjugated with economic misery which Moscow had already been using to dominate millions of citizens of the bloc.

In the eyes of history, the fact that nowadays many analysts devote time to find similarities between John Paul II and Francis does not imply exceptional features of originality. It is proven that both have fought against the oppression of individual freedom, injustice and discrimination (the new Argentine Pope also holds carefully nourished contacts with the Jewish community in Argentina, which is now stigmatized by Cristina Fernández Wilhelm de Kirchner impunity agreement with Tehran). At the beginning of his ministry, John Paul II was considered a revolutionary and, now, the same adjective is attributed to Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Except for the aggiornamento and the agenda adjustments to keep up with the times: Bergoglio has defined his position in a loud dissenting way in the face of currently fashionable populism in Latin America. A tool which –as it is well known– Argentina’s leadership, for example, takes hold of in order to control their base voters by means of drug trafficking, crime and the always lucrative perpetuation of marginalization purely for electoral purposes.

The geopolitical context –as the reader is already aware of– also displays uncomfortable coincidences for many of those presently in power. Just as in the last stages of Cold War in Eastern Europe, Moscow was forced to observe the coexistence of its economic and financial breakdown and the growing popularity of a pope. Currently, the recent passing of Hugo Chávez Frías in Venezuela (or Cuba, time will tell) is leading to a rapid implosion of the Bolivarian Axis accounting system, implicating its regional projection and shattering the future of its emblems ALBA and UNASUR.

The Bolivarian ideology of the Americas –for worse– is quite far from exhibiting the Communist machinery perfection that, then, accompanied its control climax with a strong system of transnational espionage and money laundering, a brilliant industrialization, an outlined ideological penetration implemented for decades and a very skillful diplomacy. Too early, the ALBA enclave goes through the worst moment of its life cycle, largely because of excessive centralization of its propaganda in a few individual figures and the failure of being unable to give their hostages a better lifestyle. Now, it must cope with its own economic survival and regarding its agenda, with a potentially dangerous papacy which regains power and has encouraged hundreds of millions of its followers in the region overnight. In 1989, Soviet Communism bore the brunt of what the planet foreshadowed as a battle between Good and Evil. Today, Latin American neo-socialist axis runs the same risk. And it shall confront an institution with thousands of years of prominence.

To conclude, it will be imperative to rest in coincidences that can hardly be defined as such. Consideration where there should be noted Archbishop of New York, Tim Dolan’s reverberating jubilation, as soon as the election of Jorge Bergoglio was announced –American cardinals conglomerate voted him–; the colorful congratulation from Barack Hussein Obama to the Argentine Pope and the curious moment chosen by the government of the People’s Republic of China to promote the assumption of their new president, Xi Jinping ... while the globe’s attention was on the Vatican television.


* Translated into English by Debora Gravano Jordán | e-Mail: debora.gravano @ gmail.com

 

Matías E. Ruiz | Editor