A Transformed Poland Looks to a Future Without Its Hero

Sunday, their first day without John Paul II reigning on the throne of St. Peter, his numbed compatriots mourned his absence and their own sense of loss, looking ahead to what felt to many like an inevitably diminished role for their nation.

Some said it would not matter that the next pope would not be a Pole, because of all that John Paul had achieved during his 26 years as pontiff. But others said the esteem and attention that had attached to Poland because of its most famous son would certainly be missed.

At the time of Wojtyla's selection as pontiff, Poland was little-known to much of the world, trapped behind the Iron Curtain, seemingly abandoned to its fate as a Communist satellite.

Even President Gerald Ford had seemed deluded about whether Poland had fallen under Soviet control at the end of World War II. "I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union," Ford said during a 1976 election debate.

John Paul helped change all that, and Sunday, as if in thanks, hundreds of thousands of people paid him homage at Masses in Krakow and Warsaw and the country's smaller burgs. They instinctively revisited scenes of his most important triumphs for his homeland, writing notes of love and laying candles and flowers in the shapes of hearts and crosses.

On craggy Wawel Hill in Krakow, the ancient seat of Polish kings, bishops and saints, the 18-ton Renaissance-era Sigismund Bell tolled Sunday, a sound rarely heard out of concern for the delicate national icon. Among those who found herself drawn to the spot was Izabela Brucha, a 54-year-old transportation engineer.

Unlike the young families strolling nearby, she could easily recall what Poland was like before the pope.

"As a Pole, I know that this pontificate was a great event in the history of Poland," she said.

"For the generation born in the era of the Polish pope, it is obviously a sudden shock that it could ever be different. We were making all of our advances under his protection. What our young people are able to do and take for granted today -- travel everywhere, work abroad, be accepted as members of the European Union -- we owe to the great Karol Wojtyla."