Editing 79-09-A3 (section)

=== Transcript ===
When President Carter and Leonid Breshnev met at the summit in Vienna, Breshnev
is quoted as saying that God would never forgive them if they failed in their mission.
I'm sorry that I can't believe in his sincerity. Indeed I think he was hypocritical
and deliberately using the Lord's name to curry favor or soften up the President who
does believe in God as Breshnev does not.

Atheism is as much a part of Communism as is the Gulag. Every kind of roadblock
is thrown in the way of religion, up to and including imprisonment. Children in Soviet
schools are indoctrinated from grade one with the falsehood that there is no God.

The day after the papers carried Breshnev's quote the Los Angeles TIMES carried a
front page story of another meeting -- this one in Poland. It was a report on Pope
John Paul II's final appearance on his visit to his homeland. This appearance was not
seen on TV and until the TIMES story I don't believe there had been any account of it
in the press.

It seems the Communist rulers of Poland had barred live TV, press passes were
severely limited and at the last minute the agreed upon closed circuit TV had to be
cancelled for "technical reasons" just before the meeting began. The meeting was the
most significant of the Pope's entire visit, significant because it was with the youth
of Poland.

The church officials had given out 30,000 tickets but there were 60,000 there. They
were a cross section of the countries young people, high school students, university
students and working youth. Those without tickets had climbed over 12-foot walls,
helping each other. They had begun arriving while the sun was still high and they sat
through the hot hours waiting, passing bottles of water to each other so that no one
was left thirsty. They spread flowers on the path by which the Pope would enter. When
he finally arrived they threw thousands more flowers; there was a band and symphony
orchestra.

Then there was quiet and they waited for him to speak. "May I say something to
you?" he asked, "I like you very much." Many times he had to hide his emotion as
they came in an hour long procession bringing him gifts. And they sang all the old
hymns from memory while other thousands of people watched from house tops and windows
from as far as the eye could see.

The Pope put aside his prepared sermon and just talked with the thousands of
young people, reminiscing of when he was the arch bishop in that very city. He spoke
humorously at times and at others of the need for high ideals. It was 10:30 at
night when he finished speaking. The time had come for the blessing of the crosses,
a 12-foot one brought by one group and the other smaller ones.

When he invited the presentation there was movement among the young people and then
the meaning of this night for them was revealed; they raised the thousands and thousands
of crosses they had brought -- many of them home made.

These young people of Poland had been born and raised and spent their entire lives
under communist atheism. Try to make a polish joke out of that. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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