Shortly after being elected Pope, the October 16, 1978Saint John Paul II gave special thanks to Saint Hedwig, whose feast day the Catholic Church celebrates today.
In the Mass he presided over At the sanctuary of Jasna Gora on June 5, 1979, John Paul II remembered in a special way the sanctuary of Saint Hedwig, in Trzebnica, on the outskirts of Wroclaw.
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“And I do it for a specific reason. Divine Providence, in its inscrutable designs, chose October 16, 1978 as the day of the definitive change in my life,” he said.
“On October 16 – he continued – the Church in Poland celebrates Saint Hedwig, and hence I feel particularly obliged to dedicate today to the Church in Poland this memory of the saint who, in addition to being the patron saint of reconciliation with nations bordering, is also the patron saint of the day of the election of the first Pole to the Chair of Peter.”
John Paul II remembered Saint Hedwig that day: “Wife of Henry called the Bearded, of the Piast dynasty, she came from the Bavarian family of the Andechs. That saint entered the history of our country and, indirectly, that of all of Europe in the 13th century, as the ‘perfect woman’ (cf. Prov 31, 10) of which Holy Scripture speaks.
“The event whose protagonist was his son, Prince Henry the Pious, was strongly etched in our memory. It was he who put up valid resistance to the invasion of the Tatars, an invasion that crossed Poland in 1241 coming from the East, from Asia, and stopping only in Silesia, next to Legnica,” he narrated.
The Pope also explained that “Henry the Pious fell, it is true, on the battlefield, but the Tatars were forced to retreat and never came so close to the west in their raids. Behind the heroic son was his mother, who gave him courage and entrusted the battle of Legnica to the crucified Christ.”
“May this Pope, who speaks to you here from the Jasna Gora summit, effectively serve the cause of unity and reconciliation in the contemporary world. Do not stop supporting him in this, with your prayers, throughout the Polish land,” concluded Saint John Paul II.
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