Pope John Paul II's Pilgrimage to Poland
On this day · 2 June 1979
In June 1979, the first Polish pope returned home and lit a spark that helped bring down the Iron Curtain.
On 2 June 1979, Pope John Paul II landed in Warsaw to begin the first papal pilgrimage to his communist-ruled homeland. Born Karol Wojtyła near Kraków, he had been elected the previous October as the first non-Italian pope in over four centuries, a choice that alarmed the Kremlin and Poland’s ruling party.
Standing in Victory Square, he preached to an enormous crowd and called on Poles to claim their dignity and faith. The nine-day visit drew millions across the country, helping a divided people grasp how many shared their longing for freedom.
“Let your Spirit descend and renew the face of the earth — this earth.”
The trip is widely credited with galvanising national confidence. Just over a year later, workers founded the Solidarity trade union in the Gdańsk shipyards, the first independent union in the Soviet bloc and a movement that would help unravel communism across Eastern Europe.
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