Word: poznan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tens of thousands of demonstrators who turned out in cities across Poland last week to mock official government ceremonies honoring the international workers' day. Riot squads drenched Solidarity supporters in Warsaw and Czestochowa with water cannons. There were other demonstrations in Szczecin, Lublin, Wroclaw and Poznan. Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban brusquely dismissed the May Day protests as "pitiful" but announced that the police had detained 684 demonstrators for questioning...
Protected from the blazing sun by umbrellas and hats made from folded newspapers, 500,000 people filled Poznan's Park of Culture for an open-air Mass. Some of them, like one taxi driver who had walked all night from his village twelve miles away, had turned the Pope's visit into a personal pilgrimage. Gathered together, they seemed to represent a cross section of the Polish nation. Sunburned farmers in baggy suits and wide ties stood side by side with teen-agers in blue jeans, wearing T shirts printed with words like KUNG FU. There were aged...
While the bells of Poznan pealed and a full-voiced choir intoned a hymn, John Paul mounted the red-carpeted stairway leading to the altar and a gigantic reproduction of the icon of the Black Madonna. With the timing of a seasoned performer, he paused halfway to raise both arms in a gesture of blessing. Then the Pope joined 20 bishops in golden robes in a solemn ceremony beatifying Sister Urszula Ledochowska, a Polish educator who organized Catholic schools before World War I. As the Pope conferred on Sister Urszula the title "blessed," the next-to-last step...
...other stops, the religious ceremony in Poznan had its political moments. The Pope praised farmers of the region for struggling to retain their "profound link with the land." Referring directly to the banned independent farmers' union, John Paul recalled the support that the late Polish Primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski had shown to "representatives of Rural Solidarity" during a meeting in April 1981. The crowd roared even louder when John Paul told them he had come to "kneel in this place and pay homage," in a reference to a memorial to Polish workers slain in Poznan during riots...
Following the Mass over loudspeakers, hundreds of thousands of people lined the flower-strewn streets. Some balanced precariously on bridge railings in hope of catching just a glimpse of the waving Pontiff as he sped by in his Popemobile. If John Paul could not visit the Poznan memorial, a crowd of several hundred people managed to avoid police blockades and rally by the twin crosses. A lonely yellow-and-white papal banner was left behind in the empty torch of an eternal flame that was extinguished soon after the military crackdown in December...