A simple “refueling” at an Alaskan airport became the embodiment of the rapprochement between the Holy See and the United States. In 1984, a year marked by the belated establishment of full diplomatic relations between the world’s leading power and the world’s smallest state, John Paul II’s stopover in Fairbanks was a symbol of the good understanding between President Ronald Reagan and the Polish pontiff, in the name of the fight against Communism.
A small city with a big role
It was around 10 a.m. on May 2, 1984, when the globe-trotting pope’s plane landed at the airport of this town of 30,000 inhabitants north of the 64th parallel, where winter temperatures can plunge to 50 degrees below zero.
The Pope was on his way to visit Korea, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Thailand. Fairbanks had already become the second Alaskan city to receive a visit from John Paul II (after Anchorage) on February 26, 1981, that time on his way back from another extensive Asian tour which took him to Pakistan, the Philippines, Guam, and Japan.
Fairbanks, which has the advantage of being an isolated city and therefore easy to secure, would be the venue for an informal summit between the two most targeted men of the time. Both had survived assassination attempts in 1981 and had met for a long meeting the following year at the Vatican.
The video of the Fairbanks meeting posted on YouTube by the Reagan Foundation shows the two men side by side, despite the chilly temperatures, on a mini-stage set up on an aircraft gangway.
Meeting at the crossroads of the world
The American president, who was already 73 at the time, had just returned from a tour of China. He painted an enthusiastic picture of Pope John Paul II in his speech, describing him as “one of humanity’s greatest moral and spiritual forces.”
“In a violent world, Your Holiness, you have been a minister of peace and love. Your words, your prayers, your example have made you — for those who suffer oppression or the violence of war — a source of solace, inspiration, and hope,” President Reagan then added.
Responding in English, John Paul II addressed the entire American population, who were watching his speech on television.
“I hold the people of Alaska and those of the whole of the United States close to me in my heart. I do not forget you, for we are linked together by bonds of friendship, of faith, and of love,” he said, putting this remote location at the center of world geopolitics for a few moments. “In some ways, Alaska can be considered today as a crossroads of the world. President Reagan is returning from visiting the beloved people of China, even as I am making my way to a neighboring area in the Far East,” recalls John Paul II.
Mutual understanding that would change world history
In the astonishing 1980s, between the former actor of Western movies and the former stage actor turned Catholic Church leader, a relationship of trust emerged which would lead to the collapse of Communism.
John Paul II would meet Ronald Reagan again three years later in Miami. The good relations between the two men and their joint support for the Solidarity trade union struggle in Poland would gradually contribute to the loss of influence of Communism, and its gradual collapse in Central Europe from 1989 onwards.
Among the personalities who made the link between the American President and the Pope were Polish-born political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski — an anti-Communist intellectual who was one of the few experts to work successively for Presidents Carter and Reagan, before joining the service of Barack Obama — and General Vernon Walters, head of the CIA, who described the Catholic Church as “the best information network in the world.”
Institutional and personal
This good relationship with the American administration of the time was also evident when Pope Francis granted an audience to the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, on May 4, 1985, in the context of her participation in a meeting on the fight against drugs. As a sign of a personal and not just institutional connection, it was to her, and not to then President George W. Bush, that Pope John Paul II addressed his message of condolence after Ronald Reagan’s death on June 5, 2004.
The previous day, the memory of the two leaders’ common fight against communism had led George W. Bush, visiting Rome for the 60th anniversary of the Liberation during World War II, to present the Polish pontiff with the highest American decoration, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In his speech, the Polish pontiff, himself very weak, spoke of the end of life of the former president, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. “I send my regards to President Reagan and to Mrs. Reagan, who is so attentive to him in his illness,” John Paul II said.
But this visit in 2004, 20 years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Rome and Washington, was also an opportunity for John Paul II to reiterate the Holy See’s firm opposition to the American offensive launched a year earlier in Iraq, and to call for a “speedy return of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
His closeness to the United States in the name of the defense of freedom in no way meant alignment with a political and military agenda whose impasses he had foreseen.
And today we celebrate...