
Do you believe in God?
I would like to believe profoundly and envy those, including my late brother who believed, had the grace of deep faith. It's complicated with me. I do. Yes, I do. But you can see for yourself that my extended message shows that I am in problem with it.
Doubt?
Yes, uncertainty. I have no grace of absolute faith.
2005, the Pope's death, his funeral. You're sitting in front of the TV, smoking a cigarette, drinking wine.
It was like that.
It was expected to be the last cigarette, the last glass of wine. At least for a while.
Oh, yeah, for a long time. Then besides to wine and cigarettes I returned and effectively left. At the moment, I barely drink or smoke, which is besides rather complicated due to the fact that if individual smokes....
It's burning.
And I can smoke 2 or 3 cigarettes on a movie set or at theatre rehearsals and that's it.
Like movie or real?
True. Years of habit that the shot was over, so you went out for a cigarette. It's out there somewhere but it doesn't shift to having to scope for another cigarette. It's the same with alcohol. I can sometimes drink at a organization or with friends at home, even a bottle of wine, and there's no consequence that the next day I scope again. Even my wife looks at it with wonder.
I know that after John Paul II's funeral, you went to X-ray your lungs. And a miracle. Clean as if you never smoked.
Yes, indeed, I even said it somewhere in any memory of Charles Wojtyle. possibly the hand of this extraordinary saint Pole, whom I had the chance to meet respective times erstwhile he was already Pope, worked.
Were you his idol?
He liked me. He liked my acting.
Because he was an actor.
A large actor. His speeches showed that he could be a fantastic actor. The proposition of his speech, the ability to pause true, profoundly legitimate, completely different than the pause of our current president, which are alternatively entertaining quite...
Last time we were invited by him, due to the fact that he wanted to see in the company of Andrzej Wajda and a couple of actors Alicja Bachleda Córus and me "Mr. He was tired, sick. I remember sitting, sitting on Wajda's right side, in the back it seems to be Pope Ratzinger. John Paul II invited his Vatican colleagues. Alicia and I were sitting on the left and we had the pope before us. He was sitting on a higher chair like that and we saw his back.
He had a head on his right hand and erstwhile the light went on after the end of the projection, there was silence. Alicia Bachleda said, "I think he's asleep. And then the Pope turned around and had his eyes, his full face full of tears. Then he got up, came up to us, shook me with specified strong mountain hands, and said: large creation. Then he congratulated Alicia, and then hugged and hugged Andrzej Wajada. Then they put his coat on, and we went to the another side of the square.
And he abruptly took my hand again and started: I am Jacek Soplica... And about 2 minutes, which is immense sometimes said Jack Soplica's confession from memory. And I, occasionally, as Gerwazy, hit him twice. This was my last visit to the Vatican.
Would you play John Paul II?
It was played very nicely by respective actors, including our Piotrus Adamczyk. Although I besides played in the movie adaptation "Before the Jeweller's Shop" (the part of Karol Wojtyla —red.) of the young Prince Adam, who was the alter ego of Charles. And at the Vatican screening, I was sitting next to him, then definitely the younger pope. The jeweler, or metaphorical God, played my idol from the time of Burt Lancaster's youth.
After the projection, the Pope leaned towards me and said: I hope the good Lord God will forgive me for this sin of my youth. Years later, I watched this movie and truly had nothing to be ashamed of.
If there were to be a movie now about John Paul II, about what we know about pedophilia, about his surroundings, about cardinals hiding sexual crimes.
If individual had come in with a wonderful script and talked to the director... I'm approaching the age erstwhile the Pope was here, and that could be interesting. I say it would be a movie about a very bitter man. It seems to me that it is good that John Paul II did not have a confrontation with today's time and with what is happening in the Polish Church and with what is happening in the world.
He would gotta decision in his grave after what Pope Francis said about Ukraine. There is simply a scene in "Kordian" erstwhile the Pope tells Kordian: Let Poles pray, worship the Tsar and believe. It's out of my mouth. It's like Francis took the pope out of Slovak.
The church was always on the right side — that is your word.
Adam Michnik, my colleague, although 1 year younger, is my historical-political idol, writes and says that the Church has always stood on the right side in hard times for Poland. I remember from my experience of the times of the Polish People's Republic that it was hard for the Church to accuse anything. We were protecting ourselves in churches, beginning our arms to the Church.
Artist.
Not just artists. Fr Popieluszko — Jurek — to me he was something rather unusual. Adam Michnik and I have been asking each another what position he would be in right now. And we couldn't answer them. We know what position Father Tischner was in, which Father Wierzbicki holds.
Priest Wierzbicki held the position and was fundamentally removed from the Catholic University of Lublin.
Priest Boniecki was banned from speaking publicly. so I can only say that for specified a Church I, the boy of this Church, baptized, communion, confirmation, Catholic education, am ashamed.
Was the wedding church in your life?
Yeah, with her last dead wife. So it's inactive open due to the fact that I'm a church widower. At the moment, a church wedding is inactive possible, and possibly in the old age we will decide to do so. We would just gotta find a priest, and we can surely find a priest with whom we have not only spiritual ties but akin beliefs.
Such priests are, but unfortunately they are minority. And in a dramatic minority. Returning, this is for the authoritative position of the Church in various complex matters of our civilian and political life... For specified a church I am ashamed.
Because this majority of the Church is...
It hurts Poland and itself, which is besides painful. The Church's relation with the alleged throne, with the absolute evil that the eight-year regulation of the Law and Justice in Poland has caused large harm. Not only the believing and unbelieving Polish citizens, but the Church itself.
Why was the Church an alliance with the throne?
I don't know, but things were made up. Sucking up, dancing in Toruń with Father Rydzyk. It's disgraceful to me. These are any of the darkest moments of the Polish Church in a long and beautiful history. They were someway not only politically tamed and bribed.
I remember president Aleksander Kwasniewski saying that in Poland without the Church elections will not be won. He said this in the context of the 2003 EU referendum.
But then the large authority of Charles Wojtyla helped. I even remember specified a poem, which I erstwhile arranged and at a rally, on a truck we stood in Krakowskie Przedmieście and together with Donald Tuski we urged to take part in the referendum and vote for Poland's entry into the EU. It started like this:
No Lepper spit in our face,
Don't let Rydzyk fool
And to the League of Families, our Father,
Let him be ashamed of himself
Charles Wojtyła pointed to the threshold,
We're expected to cross.
So aid us God.
Join Europe.
I wrote it by hand. Donald then says, "Give it to me, give it to me, at the next rally, I'll quote it." Even those who spit on the Union, selfishly monstrously Polish farmers, in their cunning know, contrary to what Lepper explained to them that the Union is beneficial to them. I suppose, on the another hand, that we, as we have been politically for the last 8 years, the Union — for which our Pope has advocated — would not want. We in these last 8 years disgraceful to no Union and to NATO would not be accepted. I don't know what's going to happen to this church right now. The Polish Church can save its absolute chapter from the state.
Breaking the concordat?
I'm not that educated to tell you what to do. On the another hand, I know that the Church has caused us quite a few trouble, and I want him and all of us to get off this bad road.
I envy people without appeal.
If the Church wanted to take you in, if you wanted to go back to the Church, what kind of church would it be? Baby?
I never left the church. Although this year we did not go to the Church with a saint.
Why?
My wife said: somehow, this Church has discouraged me in fresh years and even though this priest is very nice, I will put a basket in the garden for the night, there God is and he will sacrifice it to us without intermediaries. Sad.
You're not cutting yourself off from God. You're cutting yourself off from the Church.
From specified a church.
How would he be if you were in it?
Like priest Tischner, like priest Wierzbicki and any another priests.
Democratic, open?
Detached from politics, from its own, particularal, very frequently mercantile goals.
In the 1980s, did you not announcement that the Church was doing its policy?
He was on the right side.
Now 35 percent of people voted for the Law and Justice. They say the Church is with them, she's on the right side.
Maybe even our conversation will make a difference. I've brought technological aid. And I would like to quote a passage of the conversation with prof. John Hartman, philosopher, bioethic. He said, "The Law and Justice has not been and is not a specified authority." It's a full different category. It's a Moscow criminal organization installed by an agent, registered as a political party.
I asked that question erstwhile to Leszek Miller if he agreed. He replied, "I don't know if it's true, Daniel, but everything this organization did before it came to power with a lie about the Smolensk bombing, dividing society to the degree that I can't remember that the invaders, Hitler and Stalin, could do it. The Russian method has always been to divide Poles. Putin if he was drinking, he'd open the champagne.
PiS had and has the Polish Church behind it.
And here's the deep resentment of people who think like me. Pretension to the Church that in this terrible trap he introduced so much of Polish society. Only Moscow office can enjoy this.
You have a home in Drohichin, Podlasie.
Drohichyn is simply a peculiar place. Mr. Sekielski surely knows this very well, due to the fact that before the war, which my parents and my grandparents told about, there were 3 religions who had a wonderful relationship. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Judaism in fantastic symbiosis. At the moment, there's only a kirkut and there's not a single Jew. My game over Bug is bordered by this cemetery and I can see with emotion that groups of young people come to this place all day.
We've known each another a long time, and I remember talking right after the first ceremony in Jedwabne. You said that if the priests worked, there would be no pogroms.
If they were on a higher moral and intellectual level.
Is it just moral and intellectual?
Is the word "only" valid here? That was adequate to foretell that something like this might happen and inform you of the crime. At my place in Podlasie, in Drohichny there was no specified thing. More than that, I know of families who in our lands deserved to plant a tree close Jerusalem. My parents, who protected my friend, writer Rafał Praga, were besides among them. In the mediate of Warsaw, in an flat on Nowogrodzka Street, in the very centre, they kept it for about a year and a half.
And the full street, not only the tenement knew it. And no 1 did. Rafał Praga was later an excellent chief of the Evening Express and he was giving my father money. My father wrote historical, archaeological articles for the Evening Express. My father was a complicated person. He felt that Połtańska Poland was an illegal state and so did not produce any proof, and so had no pension or job.
Silk and another pogroms are besides the Church's fault?
No, but the sin of omission. Well, what do we say about priests, possibly besides simple intellectually and morally unshaped? Do you remember the first circular of presidential elections between Bronisław Komorowski and Andrzej Duda, an almost completely unknown politician then? Then Andrzej Duda accused president Komorowski of deficiency of patriotism due to the fact that he apologized for Jedwabne.
(The nation of victims had to admit the fact that he was besides a perpetrator — these are the words of president Komorowski. Andrzej Duda felt that these were "false accusations" and president Komorowski "destroys actual historical memory".)
What are we talking about here about the guilt of any simple priests in Jedwabny, erstwhile for 2 terms the winning president says specified things. I remember saying that I don't know, Andrew Duda will be president or not, I hope not, but the man who said something like that doesn't deserve to be given a hand. Fortunately, I was never invited to the Presidential Palace.
You wouldn't shake his hand, would you?
I wouldn't give that man.
Any penance due to the Church?
I'm not a confessor. I'm confessing today. It seems to me that the Church's penance is how society in a dramatic way turns distant from the Church, which the Church deserves to a large extent.