Special Edition

Stan Krajewski

DETROIT – Stan Krajewski saw the influence of Pope John Paul II on metro Detroit's Polish-American community from his vantage point as editor of Dzenik Polski – the Polish Daily News.

After 40 years with the newspaper, Krajewski retired in 1988, and now lives in Sunny Hills, Fla.

"I met him first in 1969, when he was archbishop of Krakow, and visited Orchard Lake when he came over to attend the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia," Krajewski says of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the man who would later become Pope John Paul II.

"Then, in 1976, when he came to Orchard Lake a second time, he granted me an interview," Krajewski recalls, adding that he was impressed by the cardinal's "openness and sincerity."

One of the significant events Krajewski recalls of that 1976 visit was when Cardinal Wojtyla celebrated Mass at St. Florian Church in Hamtramck with two priests of the Polish National Catholic Church (the result of a 19th-century schism) invited to concelebrate. That symbolized and signaled the movement toward reconciliation that was to later make great strides during his pontificate, he says.

In 1979, when the new pope visited the United States, Krajewski and his wife, Nina, were invited to attend the White House reception thrown by President Jimmy Carter.

"President and Mrs. Carter were accompanying him, and I was impressed that he remembered Nina's name (from when they had met during his 1976 visit to Orchard Lake). He said, 'Nina, how are you?' in Polish. She was so shocked," Krajewski recounts.

Pope John Paul changed the way Polish-Americans viewed themselves and how they were viewed by Americans of other ethnicities, he says.

"His election came a time when the term 'Pollack' and the Polish joke were prevalent, but after he was elected pope the situation changed 180 degrees. People went from ridiculing us to admiring us," Krajewski says.

The change was just as pronounced when it came to Polish-Americans' self-image: "I think he convinced us that we should be proud of our heritage, and not be afraid to speak up about it." Krajewski says Polish-Americans began to have a greater appreciation of the worth of their culture, and to believe in their own possibilities.

Recalling those early years of the first Polish pope, he adds that, even though their homeland was still under Soviet domination, Poles everywhere had a champion and a spokesman in John Paul II.

Besides his key role in bringing about political change in his homeland, Pope John Paul also brought about change in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States. "We started to have more Polish-American bishops," Krajewski says.

By the time Pope John Paul rode in triumph down Joseph Campau during his 1987 visit to the Detroit area, Hamtramck had already begun to change from the solidly Polish enclave it had once been, but Polish-Americans from all over the area lined the street, Krajewski says.

"Hamtramck was not what it used to be, 30 years ago, but I think it was rather symbolic. And the pope was really, really moved to see the turnout," he says.

Krajewski says he believes Pope John Paul II will not only be recognized as a holy man, but as the most outstanding man of his times: "He's THE man of the 20th and 21st centuries."