"I Have Been With You"

Under a wintry Italian sky, a gray-suited and solemn Lech Walesa, his wife Miroslawa and a 13-member delegation from Solidarity strode across the Vatican's stone-paved Court of San Damaso to the Apostolic Palace. For the occasion, the Swiss Guards had donned their red-plumed metal helmets, an honor usually reserved for visiting heads of state. The helmets attested to the special significance that the Vatican attached to last week's meeting between the leader of Solidarity and his Pope and countryman, John Paul II, formerly Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Cracow.

The historic meeting of the two men, each in his own way a symbol of freedom to the Polish people, was marked by its simplicity. Approaching the Pope at the threshold of the papal library, Walesa dropped to his knees, kissed the papal ring and bowed his head. A devout Catholic who tries to attend Mass daily, Walesa at first resisted when the Pope tried to lift him from his knees. John Paul then ushered the union leader into the library for a half-hour private chat. One presumed topic of their conversation: how to keep the itchier members of Walesa's organization from touching off a Soviet invasion.

From its beginning, Walesa's independent trade union movement and the Polish Catholic Church have benefited from each other's support. But the church has taken a consistently conciliatory line toward the Communist government of Party Chief Stanislaw Kania, a fact that has irritated Solidarity's militants. The Pope last week seemed intent on soothing the ruffled workers and enhancing Walesa's stature. Observing that his visitor spoke extemporaneously in his public remarks after their library talk, the Pope held up his own carefully prepared notes and joked: "Mr. Walesa is a young man and so is able to speak without notes. But I am an old man and have to read my speech."

Then John Paul gave his unqualified support to the free trade union movement. "I wish to assure you," he told Walesa, "that during your difficulties I have been with you in a special way, above all through prayer, but also in every way discreetly possible." He called the creation of Solidarity "an event of great importance" and asserted that the right to form free associations is "one of the fundamental human rights." However, the Pontiff also counseled moderation, and praised the workers for their maturity "against the background of terror . . . which does not spare the lives of innocent men." The meeting concluded with an exchange of gifts. Walesa gave the Pope a ship model made by the Gdansk shipworkers and a replica of the recently constructed monument to the slain workers of the 1970 Baltic seaport MSA riots. The Pope presented Walesa and his wife with rosaries and a signed photograph of himself.

It was Walesa's first trip outside his homeland, and Italy's infamous paparazzi treated him like a show-biz superstar. The photographers shouted and jostled for position even when Walesa and his companions stopped for a moment of prayer. Near the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, site of a major battle during the Allied invasion of World War II, the group stopped to lay a floral wreath (and a copy of Solidarity's bylaws) at the graves of some 1,000 Polish soldiers who died there; Walesa at one point had to halt the procession for fear that Anna Walentynowicz, a Solidarity presidium member, would be swallowed up in the crowd.

Meanwhile, Walesa was courted by the Italian trade unions. THE WORKERS OF ROME ARE AT THE SIDE OF THE POLISH WORKERS IN THEIR STRUGGLE read posters on the walls of Rome's Savoy cinema house. As he entered the theater he received a thunderous ovation. "I don't know whether I'm in Rome or Poland," commented the gratified visitor.

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