On August 15, former Polish President Lech Wałęsa sat at the front row of a blessing that, for him, completed his journey – for many, it was as one of the country’s most consequential figures. It was beneath the massive, 55-metre-tall statue of Our Lady of Mercy – now the tallest Marian statue in Europe; higher even than Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
The Poland that Wałęsa had grown up in, the oft-unruly namesake of the communist Warsaw Pact, had been transformed. “This is the end of my path,” he told the Associated Press. “I started with the Virgin Mary and I end with the Virgin Mary.”
