The Catholic Church and mainly Easter-Orthodox Russia had always existed in tension, if not outright hostility. Russia had a long history persecuting Catholics within their lands. The U.S.S.R. after World War II carried on that tradition, cracking down with particular force in Poland, where Catholicism flourished, confiscating Church property and arresting clergy members. The Vatican responded by condemning the actions (although without accusing the Communist party), but that confrontational tone led nowhere: only after the Vatican adopted a more conciliatory approach did relations between the two side mend.

On this day, June 2, in 1979, Pope John Paul II, acutely sensitive of the Catholic persecution by communist authorities in his native Poland, returned to the Eastern Bloc country. For John Paul it was not only a return to the land where he was born and served in WW II, but also the first visit by a Pope to a Communist-controlled country.

John Paul’s engagement with the Soviet Union was widely credited with contributing to the fall of the Iron Curtain. The Polish political and labor revolutionary Lech Walesa said of John Paul “Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of communism. He simply said, ‘Do not be afraid, change the image of this land….’” Likewise, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who met John Paul just weeks before the USSR’s dissolution, said “Pope John Paul II’s devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us.”