Totus Tuus.
I certainly expected to see Pope John Paul II’s motto, “totally yours,” at certain sites in his homeland of Poland, perhaps at his former residence or his birthplace.
But walking early one Saturday morning into Krakow’s main train station, I was surprised to see the motto emblazoned across the side of a public train. “The Pope’s Train,” which was blessed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, carries pilgrims between Wadowice, John Paul’s hometown, and Krakow, the city where he was ordained a priest and later served as archbishop.
The Pope’s Train took me to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, the home of the second most important pilgrimage site in Poland. The site includes the 17th-century Baroque Church of the Angelic Mother of God and more than 40 chapels scattered among the surrounding woods.  
While I only rode the Pope’s Train once in my three weeks in Krakow, it sent a clear outward message about the inner faith of the Polish people as well as the constant presence of John Paul in their lives today.
I was in Poland for the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society, a 16-year-old program that brings together 30 students from North America and Eastern Europe to discuss Catholic social teaching. I learned much about the papacy of John Paul II and the essential role he played in shaping the political and cultural landscape of Poland.
At the heart of the vibrant moral culture of Poland is literally “cult,” or worship, something the late Holy Father taught was the most important of three necessary ingredients in a free and virtuous society. This same culture survived the more than 100 year period during which Poland did not appear on a map of Europe.
While the Poles attending the seminar brought their experience of a sound moral culture to the discussion, the American and Canadian students could speak to the other two key elements of a free and virtuous society — a democratic political system and a free market economy.
The program was hosted by the Polish Dominicans at their order’s historic priory just off the main square in the cultural center of Krakow. The Dominicans, as well as many other orders of priests and sisters, fit perfectly into the daily rhythm of life in the city. Sisters walking through the square toting backpacks, perhaps on their way to the Jagiellonian University (where John Paul II studied) are nearly as common as businessmen on their way to work.
Our lectures centered around Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Centesimus Annus,” and were led by John Paul II biographer and Arlington Catholic HERALD columnist George Weigel; Dominican Fathers Maciej Zięba and Jaroslaw Kupczak; Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things; Legionaries of Christ Father Thomas Williams, dean of theology at Regina Apostolorum University in Rome; and Russell Hittinger, Warren Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, Okla.
A discussion among students from countries like Canada, Poland, Estonia, Croatia and Ukraine about a free and virtuous society brought to light very different opinions of what is free and what is virtuous. The opportunity to discuss culture and political systems with peers whose cultures were suppressed for a generation, and who have known communism as more than a concept in a textbook was priceless. My ideas of freedom and liberty were challenged, and I was confronted with the truth that our version of democracy in America is not flawless — that our moral culture must be just as strong as our polity and our economy to be truly free.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, with its revered Black Madonna icon and the Convent of St. Faustina, who communicated to the world Jesus’ message of Divine Mercy, was another testament to the public faith of the Polish people. The Auschwitz and Birkenau extermination camps and the Communist-designed factory town of Nova Huta were manifestations of the horrors of a society that is forcibly devoid of culture, faith and democracy.
The end of the three week seminar was bittersweet, and while I am glad to be back in the United States applying what I learned there, occasionally when the doors close on the Metro I shut my eyes and imagine I am riding the Pope Train home.

Santolla is an associate in the Office of Communications for the Diocese of Arlington.           

(c) Copyright 2007 by Arlington Catholic Herald