Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Folha de S. Paulo, January 27th 1981

It can be difficult for a man ‑ or rather, for a group of men ‑ to change the course of a river. It would be even more difficult for them to reroute a river as large as the Amazon. "Difficult, no! Impossible!", someone will object. Impossible? Relatively. This very impossibility has its nuances, since it is theoretically conditioned by the number of men, the quality and quantity of their equipment, the time factor, and so on. It would be impossible in the strongest sense of the adjective to pour a glass of water into a thimble. I say this to point out how at times certain tiny operations are farther beyond man's capacity than others, even though they be gigantic. Thus, to make a matter which is very broad in itself fit into one newspaper article can be more difficult than writing ten long articles.

So, condensing certain aspects of the publicity given to Lech Walesa's visit to John Paul II into only two articles struck me as being almost as unfeasible as pouring a glass of water into a thimble. Nevertheless, I shall begin by describing a complicated background of the matter.

Everybody knows that the Polish people are simmering in a growing discontent with the communist regime controlling their country. Now this could lead to an overthrow of the regime. If that happened, according to an opinion that is considered indisputable (for my part, I find it altogether improbable), Russia would occupy Poland and subject it to in even more egalitarian and dictatorial burden. According to the story that is going around, the Kremlin would keep its claws on Poland even if it had to face the danger of an American action to liberate Poland, that is, of a world war and possibly a nuclear one. That would be a tragedy for Poland and also for the world. Now how can Russia, I ask, which shows itself incapable of swallowing Afghanistan, tiny as a beetle, fancy it is going to dominate the noble white eagle of Poland and then face the danger of a fight with the super‑powerful American eagle?

If one considers things from the standpoint of the current version, it is easy to understand how Walesa takes on the stature of a world figure. If the movement he leads topples the Warsaw government, we shall have a catastrophe. If he does not topple it, we shall have peace. So the ideal thing for Poland would be for Walesa to attain as great a success as the Russians will permit. But he cannot go one inch beyond that, for otherwise the hecatomb may come. What many ‑ and very illustrious Poles hope of him is that he will attain this success and gauge it with just the right precision. And it is not only the Poles who expect this of him, but also extreme pacifists all over the world. Nonetheless, there is also among the Poles themselves a considerable segment of the population that wants to overthrow the Warsaw government in the certainty that nothing will happen.

In the face of this situation, what are the direct and indirect goals of the Vatican? The former are clearly enunciated in John Paul II's speech. They are that Walesa gauge his steps exactly to gain some terrain ‑ some little bit ‑without provoking a war. For this purpose, John Paul II gave Walesa the unprecedented reception that everybody saw.

However, it does not seem believable to me that the Vatican, so lucid in its two thousand years of diplomacy, would let itself be impressed by the scowl with which the men of the Kremlin gaze at the West, and forget that the scowlers, who look terrible from this side of the world, are taking a beating in the East from the Afghan dwarf. Why then fear the scowl?

There are mysteries of the world behind the Iron Curtain, mysteries of the Slavic world, mysteries of the international game of Communism, mysteries of the Twentieth Century. One day, all of this will be seen clearly. It is not my intention to expound upon such a vast theme. I will not try to pour the ocean into a thimble.

I believe, nevertheless, that it is a suggestive contribution for the elucidation of the matter to point out that centrist, center‑left an leftist newspapers in Rome gave the reception John Paul II granted Walesa a markedly greater publicity than it received from L'Osservatore Romano, the semi‑official daily of the Holy See.

What is there to discern in this fact itself and behind it?

Walesa is nothing more than a private citizen, the leader of a workers' movement. And he is so controversial a leader that, as more than one international analyst has affirmed, John Paul II gave him such a resounding reception precisely to confer on him just the amount of prestige that he lacks for his difficult task of keeping things under control.

For this the Vatican had the determined cooperation of the three most important labor organizations in Italy. They are, in their order of numerical importance: The CGIL, communist; the CISL, Catholic; and the UIL, socialist.

These organizations helped on the occasion of Walesa's visit (I was writing Lula, but I corrected in time) by inviting him to give talks in Rome, by receiving him at the Fiumicino Airport with abundant speeches and a cheering section, and by affording him the opportunity to appear before auditoriums well packed with workers.

Such a "splash" beginning his visit to Rome it would make it quite natural for Walesa (who was travelling like a celebrity, with members of his family and a numerous retinue) to ask the Supreme Pontiff for an audience. Of course, the essential fruit of his trip, that is, the supplementing of his prestige, would come incomparably more from the Vatican than from the Italian unions. This is the background of the picture. We shall see in the next article how John Paul II granted this supplement with princely liberality.