Thirty years ago this week, the Bishop of Rome returned to Poland for the first time since his recent election to the papacy. America’s premier Cold War historian, John Lewis Gaddis of Yale, is not ambiguous in his judgment of what happened next: “When John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport on June 2, 1979, he began the process by which communism in Poland — and ultimately everywhere — would come to an end.” Professor Gaddis is right: the Nine Days of John Paul II, June 2-10, 1979, were an epic moment on which the history of the 20th century pivoted, and in a more humane direction.

Here’s the end of his homily, delivered to about a million Poles at an open-air Mass in Warsaw on June 2, 1979:

I wołam ja, syn polskiej soil, a zarazem ja – Jan Paweł II, papież, wołam z całej głębi tego tysiąclecia, wołam w przeddzień Święta Zesłania, wołam wraz z wami wszystkimi:
Niech zstąpi Duch Twój!
Niech zstąpi Duch Twój!
I odnowi oblicze ziemi.
Tej Ziemi!

And I—son of Polish soil and at the same time I, John Paul II, pope—cry out from the depths of this millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost, I cry with all of you:
Send down Your Spirit!
Send down Your Spirit!
And renew the face of the earth.
And this land!

The last two lines take advantage of the fact that ziema means both “earth” and “land” (and soil, as I translated it in the first line). In the penultimate line, he’s ostensibly repeating the conventional prayer of Pentecost, “Lord, send down Your Spirit | And renew the face of the earth” (rephrasing slightly Psalm 104:30).

When he repeats it saying “this earth”—it’s clear to any listener he means this land, Poland. Still, the Commies couldn’t bust him on it because he was ostensibly saying a formulaic, uncontroversial prayer. No fool, JP2.

Requiescas in pace et ora pro nobis.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.