Wojtyła's collaborators

Karol Wojtyła's meeting with Chrzanowska took place in 1957. “Common work for the same idea” united him with Wanda Półtawska even earlier. They had met in the confessional and Priest Karol became the spiritual guide of Półtawska, then the assistant professor at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Medical Academy in Kraków. However, this spiritual relationship quickly developed into a very concrete collaboration. Wojtyła became involved in Półtawska's initiatives - the home for single mothers in need of help after childbirth and the marriage counselling centre, where he provided retreats for failing marriages.

She also did not give up her medical work. She continued to see patients in the psychiatric outpatient clinic and in the counselling centre. She felt she had a job to do: “...in this neurotic world of the 20th century, to show God's axis of integration. I don't think I can stop being a psychiatrist” - she wrote down in the reflections she sent to her spiritual guide. Wojtyła added in the margin: “!! This is your vocation”.

Wanda Półtawska w roku 1960. Fot. IPN

The Archdiocese of Kraków owed her even more - Chrzanowska was a teacher of the practical dimension of mercy here. “I beg for one thing only - she used to say to the priests, the directors of the charity ministry - let the priests not tell us that we perform, what a terribly inappropriate expression, “...the lowest services”. (...) can there be a hierarchy of ministry in the service of the unfortunate human being?”. She helped Wojtyła involve the seminarians in parish nursing, convinced that moments of caring for the sick could be more valuable than a week of classes at the seminary. She convinced hundreds of young people to volunteer for the sick in the parish. In this way, she showed the role that civilians had to play in the Church, therefore Wojtyla involved her, among others, in the work of the Commission for the Secular Apostolate and the Pastoral Synod of the Archdiocese of Kraków.

Hanna Chrzanowska put a lot of effort into organising volunteering, but the real foundation of her concept was her professional work. “A parish caregiver, or a nurse is an employee who is engaged and paid by the parish priest” - this short sentence, which is the basis of the idea of parish nursing, raised much controversy. In the Church, the care of the sick was understood to mean spiritual assistance, so above all assistance in receiving the sacraments as well as being present with the sick. The focus was necessarily on the believers who wanted to receive the sacraments as well as on the poorest people. Hanna Chrzanowska's concept was very innovative: go to everyone - regardless of faith and material status - who needs help in sickness and old age. Care had to be of the highest possible standard, and this required full-time lay people - and therefore paid work. Obviously not paid by the sick but by the parish priest. Voices were raised in the Kraków Church that this would pose a risk of secularisation of the ministry. The fears were unfounded - Hanna Chrzanowska's first and foremost aim was the salvation of her patients but the Apostleship, in her opinion, should consist mainly in the testimony of patient care.

“A young girl came to me, 18 years old, living with a man 15 years older than her. Today he had got drunk and kicked her, she came in bloodied, her face swollen, her lip cut, her hair stuck together (...). I said nothing, stroked her short-cropped head and prayed to her patron saint. It was a strange doctor's visit”, Wanda Półtawska wrote in her diary. Even if many remembered her as an arrogant, harsh woman, her tender concern for others was the main driver of her work. Even more fundamental to her commitment was the conviction that she was fulfilling the God's will: “I think with gratitude of God for making me necessary!” - she wrote.
Likewise Hanna Chrzanowska: “Enormous suffering lies at the root of my present (...) work “, she wrote to Wojtyła. There was a man in her life whom she loved and who loved her. She could have gone to live with to him, but she renounced it. “I want to clarify: I did not renounce for this job (...), nor for any other, but only for the God Himself. (This work - the most beloved of all others - is perhaps the reward. I don't know)”.
The irresistible desire to help others and the conviction of being called to this work by the God meant that both of these collaborators of Wojtyła were prepared to do almost miracles in order to make their work as effective as possible and to attract as many people as possible into it. According to Półtawska, competence is of secondary importance, since a person “attracted” to serve others is ready to learn many things. She was annoyed by people saying “not fit”. “What do you mean, why shouldn't you be able to do it? According to Półtawska, it is possible to find such a place for everyone, where he or she will be useful and where the maximum potential can be released from him or her. You just have to “attract” him or her and this is only possible if you show the right values.

Hanna Chrzanowska and Wanda Półtawska set the bar very high for themselves, aware of the extraordinary dignity of their work. They saw that, when it was done well, its effects exceeded expectations, not only on the outside - among their pupils, patients or students. Their work added to their own dignity, which was so much appreciated by Karol Wojtyła. Not only because they worked in the very field where he needed collaborators. According to Wojtyła, any work - if performed in the right spirit - is worthy of respect. “Work is a man’s welfare - he wrote already as the Pope - (...) since through work man not only transforms the nature, adapting it to his needs, but also realises himself as man, and in a way »becomes human« even more”.