Life influences art—this is obvious. Less
obvious is that art can influence life. I give one such example.
I watched the wonderful film “The
Shoes of the Fisherman”, made in 1968 and based on the prophetic novel by
Australian writer Morris West, published in 1963. The events described in the
book actually happened 15 years later.
The character of the film's
protagonist, Kirill Lakota, was inspired by the life of two Ukrainian Catholic
bishops: Iosif Slepy and Hryhoriy Lakota, both political prisoners of Stalin's
forced labor camps.
In the film, Kirill Lakota was released during
Nikita Khrushchev's time from the Siberian Gulag. After his release, Lakota was
sent to the Vatican, where Pope Pius XIII made him a cardinal.
Lakota was a great Man in all
periods of his life.
In the camp, when he could, he
preached, helped the weak and supported the offended. His humanity, humility and
modesty won the hearts of his colleagues in the Vatican. After the death of
Pope Pius XIII, Lakota was elected Pope.
This was the first Slav Pope in
the history of the Vatican. At the Papal coronation, Cyril took off the Papal
tiara and vowed to sell church property in order to help the poor and hungry.
In real life, in 1978, 10 years
after the film was released, Karol Josef Wojtyla from Poland was elected Pope. He
took the name John Paul II. Prior to this, for almost 5 centuries, only
Italians were elected Popes.
Why was a Polish but not a
Russian national elected Pope as it was in the movie "Fisherman's
Shoes"?
Hryhoriy Lakota, the prototype of
the film hero, was born in 1883, studied in Lvov and Vienna, and from 1913 was
a professor, and then rector of the Przemysl Theological Academy. In 1978 there
were no such people in Russia. After 60 years of communist destruction of the Church,
Russia has become almost entirely atheistic. The life of Russians was guided
by dialectical materialism, and the Russian population had a very vague idea,
if at all, about the spiritual life.
This was not the case in Poland
and other Eastern European countries. Communism was introduced into these
countries after the Second World War by terror and repression. Most of the
population of these countries was born before the war. They retained the ideas
of their pre-war democracies. Communist propaganda in these countries was not
successful.
John Paul II played an important
role in the overthrow of communism in Poland and Eastern Europe. In 1979 the
Pope made his first visit to Poland. Millions attended his sermons. John Paul
preached the need for respect of human rights, as well as national and
religious freedom. He said in his sermons “keep solidarity, don't compromise,
don't be afraid”.
“Do not be afraid” - this phrase Jesus Christ repeats more than 40 times,
and it is used over 100 times in the Bible. Solzhenitsyn said this to the Russian
people, but his words had no consequences because they fell on the ears of his compatriots, deafened
by atheistic propaganda.
During his visit to Gdansk, John
Paul met with Lech Walesa, the workers leader at the Lenin Shipyard. A year
later, Walesa became one of the organizers and leader of the Solidarity
movement. This was the beginning of a peaceful revolution, which led 10 years
later to the fall of communism in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe.
Such a quick victory would not
have been possible without the moral and financial support of United States
President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. They,
like Pope John Paul II, considered communism a moral evil. I will not dwell on
this in detail, as it does not apply to today’s topic, announced in the title.
The Fisherman in the title of the
film is the Apostle Peter. He, together with the Apostle Paul, built a church
in Rome and was its first bishop. The Popes have to fill his shoes.
I am grateful to JN for the
advice to watch this movie.
