Lech Walesa in Denver

This is Jim Myers, staff writer for The Colorado Catholic Herald.

I'm in Denver today (Friday) to cover Lech Walesa's visit and speech at Regis University. For those reading this post who are not familiar with Walesa, he was the man responsible for the Solidarity movement in Gdansk, Poland, that eventually spread to the rest of the country and toppled the communist regime in place. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, was elected president of Poland in 1990 and continues to be a shining beacon of freedom through the Lech Walesa Institute.

Walesa will be speaking on topics relating to democracy, free markets and the current state of world affairs. He held a press conference this morning, but I was lucky enough to secure a personal interview with the former president, the contents of which will appear in our next issue. He spoke through a translator.

He is a very engaging man who speaks in colorful tones, and one who is deeply grounded in his Catholic faith. He wore a lapel pin bearing a depiction of what I think was Our Lady of Czestochowa. Here's a snippet of what he said:

Regarding whether Poland's growing economy will shake the strong Catholic roots in that country: "The wiser a man gets, the sooner he realizes happiness does not mean sausage and bread."

On the difficulties of forming a free market society after 50 years of communist rule, using a metaphor to illustrate how easy it is for communists to come to power (this is somewhat of a paraphrase until I check my recorder): "It's like getting fish soup out of an aquarium full of fish. You have all the ingredients there and just have to add heat to it. Imagine the opposite, trying to fill the aquarium with fish out of fish soup...We now have started to get some fish in that aquarium."

One more? How about Pope John Paul II's influence on Poland and his importance in self-determination? "No one predicted we would be given the gift of John Paul II. The very event of the election of Pope John Paul II awoke the nation...(The Soviets) tried to kill the pope. He turned out to be immortal."

He had many other interesting things to say, including how Mikhail Gorbachev's biggest success is the fact that he failed the Soviets so miserably. Keep an eye out for two stories, one focusing on geopolitics and the other on Walesa, Pope John Paul II