Posted on: Saturday, April 2, 2005
Kailua woman was his student 30 years ago
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
Marta Cybulska Howell was just a teenager — and an angry teenager at that — who was at war with the world in her native Poland. Political strife was everywhere in the mid-1970s, as communism's hold on the country weakened. Unrest was just an extension of her rebellion.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser That man was Pope John Paul II. But 30 years ago, she knew him as Karol Joseph Wojtyla.
Yesterday morning, as she thought of him on his deathbed, she shook her head, as if trying to force the thought out. She'd heard on the radio that he had died, though that report would turn out to be incorrect.
"I thought he was indestructible," she said, close to tears. "I thought he'd get over it."
She was among the students who gravitated toward the tall, radiant man at their Krakow church who'd take students hiking and teach them about inner strength. They went underground in his church in Poland, which served as a safe house of sorts. The archbishop of Krakow then, he would talk to the young people about silencing the outer chaos, about listening to their own inner calm.
"He taught us to control our anger and frustration, to look inward," said Howell. "... I remember when we'd walk with him, he'd take us to the mountains. The mountains in Poland were high and cold. He taught us to go back to nature, to find peace there. To find God inside."
At times, Howell struggled with finding the right words as she translated her native Polish, striving to be fully understood. The wife and mother of four whose children attend Catholic schools in Hawai'i, she knows the debt she owes him is great.
"I would not be here, looking at this big picture of life," she said. "He's the God hand in my life."
She ran her fingers through her hair and remembered one particular bit of wisdom he imparted to her, then attempted to find the English translation that would bring its power to life:
" 'You be the visionary,' he told us. 'Invite God into your picture. If it is meant to be, there will be miracles falling on top of each other (to make it happen). And if it isn't, surrender it without regrets.' Not control — we cannot control the outcome. 'You are God's tools, in God's hands.' "
Howell remembers the happy astonishment when the first non-Italian in 200 years became pope — and it was her teacher.
"We didn't believe it!" said the Enchanted Lake woman. "They were breaking tradition — making the impossible, possible!"
The pope's charisma as a leader of students would translate into a power to connect with people worldwide as a leader of nations, and Cybulska smiled as she recognized how she has been able to share him.
"During his time with him, you believe he belongs to you," she said.
Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8035.
Then a charismatic religious countryman came into her life who helped shape her and turn her into the grace-filled Catholic she would become.
Marta Cybulska Howell, right, was a student of the pope 30 years ago. She's seen here with St. John Vianney School Principal Jane Quinn.
